Donald J. Trump is a thrice-married man accused of covering up a sex scandal with a porn star after the world heard him brag about grabbing women by the genitals.

But when Trump’s lawyers presented him to a jury at his criminal trial in Manhattan this week, they focused on a different dimension: “He’s a husband. He is a father. And he is a person, like you and me.”

That half-hour opening statement summed up the former president’s influence over his lawyers and his strategy. It reflected specific contributions from Trump, people with knowledge of the matter said, and echoed his absolutist approach in his first criminal trial.

And while defendants often offer feedback to their attorneys, this particular hands-on client could paralyze them.

Others might admit personal failings so their lawyers can focus solely on gaps in the prosecution’s evidence; on television, it’s usually some version of “My client may not be a good guy, but he’s not a criminal.”

But that traditional tactic is not available to a defendant who is also the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, a man who despises weakness and is allergic to anything but the praise of the people around him. So Trump’s legal strategy reflects his political talking points, while his lawyers portray the case as an unfair attack on the former president’s character.

Since being impeached in Manhattan, Trump has questioned the very notion that anything untoward has occurred, employing a mantra: “no crime.” His lead attorney, Todd Blanche, followed that pattern in his opening statement, asking the jury, “What the hell is a crime?” and adding other Trump-style phrases, including that the former president had “built a very large and successful company.”

People in Trump’s legal orbit have privately noted that the effort to humanize him could be a tough sell to a jury in New York, his hometown, where his presidency was wildly unpopular and his sexual dalliances were staples of the gossip pages. .

But as the trial progresses in the coming weeks, legal experts said, the defense team will have to walk a fine line to appease its two audiences: 12 jurors and a single defendant.

“Taking the case to your client’s vanity, rather than the jury, is a losing game,” said J. Bruce Maffeo, a former federal prosecutor.

Despite the whims and desires of their clients, Trump’s lawyers have deployed some conventional tactics to find holes in the prosecution’s main allegation: that he falsified records to conceal a payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence. And the lawyers, known as skilled litigators, some of them former prosecutors, appear to have scored points.

Blanche, the lawyer who gave the opening statement, urged jurors to “use common sense,” arguing that Trump is accused of falsifying the kind of administrative documentation that a president would never bother to touch. She also noted that the prosecution’s star witness is a criminal and a “confessed liar.” And Blanche’s colleague, Emil Bove, questioned the prosecution’s first witness on Friday, pointing out a possible inconsistency in his story.

These traditional techniques can be effective without undermining Trump’s self-image. Roland G. Riopelle, another former prosecutor, who spent three decades as a defense attorney, noted that “part of being a lawyer and being in a service business is pleasing the client, and I’m sure this client is hard to please.”

Trump is known to be volatile and prone to outbursts. Privately, he has berated lawyers in several of his cases, even questioning their entire strategy minutes before they appeared in court, say people who have seen him in action.

And inside the courtroom, in two recent civil trials, he harassed attorneys, ordering them to object at inopportune times, murmuring complaints in their ears and on two occasions storming away from the defense table. Trump once urged her lawyer, Alina Habba, to “get up” as she hit his arm with the back of her hand.

Those cases ended in defeat. Judges have openly said that the former president’s conduct in the courtroom – and his refusal to accept any responsibility – only harmed him. The judge in a civil fraud case brought against Trump and his company wrote that the defendants’ “complete lack of remorse” “borders on the pathological.”

Inside criminal court, Trump has been better-behaved and more moderate, save for an episode during jury selection that prompted a reprimand from the judge. Blanche also seems to resist some of her client’s interjections; When Trump tapped Blanche on the shoulder at the defense table, he shook his head and ignored the former president.

The discomfort is not surprising in a man who values ​​control and is not used to sitting still. And Trump, whose litigious streak has pushed him in and out of court for decades, knows more about legal procedures than the average defendant.

But he is no master of procedure, and this case presents a unique test for an armchair litigator: After years of filing and fighting lawsuits, it is his first criminal trial. With three other criminal cases against him stuck in delays, this could be the only one he faces before Election Day, underscoring the stakes of the proceedings.

Trump, who faces up to four years in prison, is charged with 34 felonies, one for each record he is accused of falsifying.

Prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, at least for now, have the upper hand, enjoying a salacious set of facts, a list of inside witnesses and a jury drawn from an overwhelmingly Democratic county.

This week, they obtained testimony from former National Enquirer editor David Pecker, who said he and Trump orchestrated a plot to cover up sex scandals that could have derailed his 2016 presidential campaign. Pecker told jurors how he bought and buried a story from a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who said she had an affair with Trump and helped set up the payment to Ms. Daniels.

On cross-examination, Bove implied that the prosecution’s case strained credulity and suggested that the former editor, instead of doing something as grandiose as conspiring with a presidential candidate, was just doing business as usual: paying sources and make coverage decisions that benefited their magazines.

Blanche offered a similar defense of seeing nothing here during the opening speech. “They put something sinister on this idea, like it was a crime,” she said of the conspiracy charge. “You will learn that it is not.”

At its climax, Blanche’s opening statement took aim at Michael D. Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness who paid Daniels hush money in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign, silencing her story of a sexual encounter. with Trump. . Cohen is expected to testify that he acted on Trump’s instructions to avoid damaging his campaign. And when Trump reimbursed him for his $130,000 hush payment, Cohen will likely say, the former president authorized his company to falsify internal records to disguise the true nature of the payment.

Blanche attacked Cohen’s credibility in the opening statement, noting that the former fixer had pleaded guilty to federal crimes, including for his role in paying hush money. She described Cohen as an “obsessed” former employee who sought revenge, arguing that he, not Trump, was responsible for the records.

Blanche also questioned Daniels, characterizing her as an opportunist looking for a payday. She maintained that if she testified, it would be nothing more than a distraction, since she was not involved in the false records at the heart of the case.

“She knows nothing about the 34 counts charged in this case,” he told jurors during his opening statement. “His testimony of her, though lascivious, does not matter.”

But Blanche went a step further and denied that Trump had sexual relations with Daniels, echoing a claim her client has consistently made since the story first became public when he was president. Blanche also accused Daniels of almost trying to extort Trump, prompting an objection from prosecutors that was upheld by the judge.

“There were all kinds of lewd accusations about President Trump, and they were damaging to him and his family,” he said.

That argument might work well on the campaign trail, but it could cost the defense credibility in court.

Whether Trump and Daniels had sex was irrelevant to the underlying charges, legal experts said, noting that the defense’s effort to portray Trump as a family man might not sit well with the jury, which includes five women and two attorneys.

During her opening, Blanche somewhat awkwardly explained to the jury that Trump’s lawyers call him President Trump because “this is a title he earned because he was our 45th president.”

“Todd Blanche is a trial lawyer with enough experience to know that starting with a homily to his client and describing him as a family man probably won’t resonate with a New York jury,” said Maffeo, a former federal prosecutor.

In the hallway outside the courtroom on Friday, Trump wished his wife, Melania, a happy birthday and said he would fly to Florida to spend the night with her.

“It would be nice to be with her, but I’m in court for a rigged trial,” he added.

He ignored several questions from reporters, including what he was doing for his wife’s birthday and whether he had cheated on her with Ms. McDougal.

Kate Christobek contributed with reports.