update: The jury in Donald Trump's hush trial sent a note to the judge this afternoon asking him to read the testimony of two key prosecution witnesses, David Pecker and Michael Cohen.
After about 3 hours and 30 minutes of deliberation, the note was sent. Judge Juan Merchan read a memo to the prosecution team and Trump and his legal team.
Pecker is the former CEO of American Media, the parent company of the National Enquirer. He testified that he masterminded a “catch and kill” plan to buy in to suppress embarrassing stories about Trump.
Cohen is Trump's former lawyer who implicated Trump in a scheme to pay $130,000 in hush money to Stormy Daniels and falsify business records to conceal the payment.
The memo called for Pecker's testimony about his phone call with Trump. Pecker's testimony regarding the decision regarding his “catch and kill” contract with Playboy model Karen McDougal. Celebrity Apprentice master; Pecker and Cohen's testimony about their meeting with Trump at Trump Tower in 2015.
Before: Jurors in Donald Trump's hush trial spent about 90 minutes deliberating before taking lunch at 1 p.m. and resuming at 2 p.m.
They are armed only with a verdict containing 34 charges that can mark them as guilty or not guilty, and their cellphones and electronic devices are controlled by uniformed court officers.
In the morning, the 12 jurors spent about 70 minutes receiving instructions from Judge Juan Merchan. The instructions themselves were sometimes the subject of fierce disputes between prosecutors and defense attorneys.
Much of what Merchan says about the law in general, regarding reasonable suspicion, fraudulent intent, and other legal standards and definitions, is repeated in most criminal trials. But the announcement took on greater weight in the context of the first criminal indictment against a former U.S. president. Trump routinely criticizes his judges for their gag orders and evidence limitations and calls the case a political witch hunt.
“In fact, nothing I said during this trial was ever intended to imply that I had an opinion on this case,” Merchan said. “If you get the impression that I have an opinion, put it out of your mind and ignore it.”
“It is not my responsibility to judge the evidence here. It’s yours,” Merchan told the jury and six alternates. The latter group is excluded from deliberations but is told to stay put in case they are needed.
Murchan urged the panel to be careful and set aside biases and stereotypes and “adjudicate this case fairly according to the evidence and the law.”
General guidelines for how to evaluate a witness' credibility – “You can consider whether the witness has an incentive to lie,” Merchan said. Considering how aggressive former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen is, it's hard not to like him. The defense portrayed him as a vengeful liar and showed how much prosecutors depended on him to solve the case.
Cohen was the source of hush money for porn star Stormy Daniels and, according to prosecutors, was the recipient of an illegal repayment scheme approved by Trump that was carried out using counterfeit checks, pay stubs and Trump Organization ledger entries that misrepresented repayment amounts. — $420,000 overall — for routine legal work.
Merchan also spoke about Cohen by name. “Under our laws, Michael Cohen is an accomplice,” he explained. This means that Cohen’s testimony cannot be the basis for a conviction “unless it is supported by corroborating evidence.”
Cohen testified that he acted under Trump's orders to “deal with” Daniels' silence about her claims of sexual contact with Trump.
Referring to the law underlying the 34 charges, Merchan began by saying that under New York law, two or more individuals “may be held criminally liable for the actions of the other.” He encouraged his opponent to commit an illegal act.
Merchan also read two related statutes to the jury twice: falsification of business records and conspiracy to promote or prevent an election.
He said, “The prosecution found that the defendant acted in a state of mind necessary to commit the crime… Whether individually or jointly with others… “We have the burden of proving it beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.
“Your verdict must be unanimous on each count you consider, regardless of whether you are guilty or not,” Merchan said. “But to find a defendant guilty, there does not have to be unanimous agreement on whether the defendant committed the crime, or whether he committed the crime in concert with others, or both.”
In setting the rules for conducting jury deliberations, Merchan said the foreman (Juror No. 1) could send a signed note if he had any questions. A moment later he clarified: “Please don’t sign with your real name.” This was another reminder of the security surrounding cases with anonymous juries, as all artifacts from the trial, including jury notes, are included in the case file.
Merchan also thanked the six alternate candidates who were asked to remain out of deliberations. “I can honestly say that you all were very involved,” he said.
Jurors had to eat lunch inside the courthouse, but the atmosphere outside on this sunny afternoon was more relaxed than it had been since the trial began. More than two dozen people, mostly Trump supporters, some carrying flags, gathered in a corner of the park overlooking the courthouse.
Another section of the park allocated to Trump critics has regained some of its pre-trial routine, with downtown courthouse staff resting on benches and eating lunch. In the walkway between the park and another courthouse, people slid past metal barricades to claim bench seats that had previously been off limits.
The jury is scheduled to continue deliberations until 4:30 p.m. today.
Before: Jurors in Donald Trump's hush trial have begun deliberating whether the former president is guilty or not guilty of charges that he covered up potential sexual misconduct in the 2016 presidential election and falsified business records to illegally fund his first White House bid.
The 12 Manhattan residents, whose identities have been withheld from the public due to security measures, left the courtroom around 11:30 a.m. after Judge Juan Merchan instructed them on the law in general and as it applies to them for about 70 minutes. It contains the charges against Trump and tells you how to do your duty as a juror.
Before deliberations began, two jurors who volunteered to learn how to operate the laptop containing all the evidence in the case returned to the courtroom for a quick tutorial and then rejoined their colleagues in the jury room.
Jurors in Donald Trump's hush trial have begun deliberating whether the former president is guilty or not guilty of covering up potential sexual misconduct during his 2016 campaign and falsifying business records to illegally support his bid for the White House.
Outside court, Trump again criticized the judge and accused the case against him of being “rigged.” “Mother Teresa could not stand these accusations. But we will see,” he said, according to the pool report.
Before: After marathon closing arguments in Donald Trump's New York hush trial, jurors are ready today to begin deliberating the former president's fate on 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records. It says the place he named it.
A jury will have to decide whether Trump's legal fixer Michael Cohen's 2016 settlement of nearly $130,000 in compensation from porn star Stormy Daniels was a “conspiracy and cover-up to deceive voters” as a Manhattan aide. Attorney Joshua Steinglass said Tuesday, citing “mountains” of documentary evidence corroborating the testimony of Cohen, Daniels and numerous other witnesses.
Defense attorney Todd Blanche presented jurors with another option. That means viewing the entire deal as a sordid backstage campaign drama not worthy of a felony indictment, and one that can't be proven in any case against the convicted and disbarred lawyer Cohen (“GLOAT” or “The Greatest Liar of All Time”). considered). ” In Blanche’s words – as the prosecution’s star witness.
President Trump said the claim that Daniels had sexual contact with him in 2006 was not true. His lawyers said the 34 checks, pay stubs and ledger entries paid to Cohen in 2017 totaling $420,000 were for legal work and were forged documents in a scheme that prosecutors alleged was designed to disguise Cohen's refunds and keep voters in the dark. He claimed no.
Whatever the verdict or however long it takes, this first criminal trial of a former U.S. president will likely be the only one of the four charges Trump will be tried by a jury before the November election. On that basis alone, the verdict could be positioned as an electoral event that could have implications for Trump's third run for the White House.
In one sign of the trial's heightened risk, the 12 jurors and six alternates were granted anonymity from the day they arrived as prospects, and their names were kept from public records as a security measure. that much The People vs. Donald Trump April 15 at the sprawling Art Deco courthouse in lower Manhattan, where film producer Harvey Weinstein was tried and convicted of sexual assault and where he returned in May after his conviction was overturned in 2020. It opened with jury selection.
Once the panel is selected, Trump's trial will proceed with six weeks of evidence, testimony and arguments. The actual time jurors spent processing the case in Judge Juan Merchan's courtroom was an unimpressive 17 days, including opening arguments through Tuesday's final summary. However, the trial consumed a huge amount of bandwidth due to other actions. It disrupted the jurors' daily lives. Security redoubts of uniformed court officers, Secret Service details, and NYPD vehicles visible behind barricaded fences; And there is a full-time media camp comprised of local, national and international journalists and experts covering the latest “trial of the century”.
Trump himself, adept at making himself the center of attention, has succumbed to becoming a criminal defendant in the same way Trump did. With Blanche by his side and supporters watching, he delivered twice-daily rants to poolside reporters in the hallway about “fabricated” cases and “conflicted” judges with Democratic family ties. He continued to do so this morning in a series of Truth Society posts, criticizing the judge and calling the proceedings a “kangaroo court”.
He tested the limits of Merchan's gag order on public statements to trial witnesses, jurors and others and complained about the “icebox” in the courtroom on the 15th floor. He had to sit out his presidential campaign while he preferred to be elsewhere.
However, President Trump entered the courtroom without stopping to talk to reporters even just after 10 a.m. on this day. It was the second time in a row, including Tuesday night's quick exit, that he skipped a routine that has become one of the trial's running subplots.