trump on trial
By Intelligencer Staff
Trump departs court after being found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree at Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
A Manhattan jury has found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts related to his alleged effort to cover up the payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. The 12 jurors, whose identities have been kept confidential by the court, have spent the past six weeks hearing evidence from prosecutors and the defense, including key testimony from Daniels and Michael Cohen. Below are the latest updates on the verdict and aftermath.
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Nia Prater
Biden calls criticism of Trump verdict ‘reckless’
President Joe Biden gave his first official remarks on Trump’s conviction at the beginning of a planned speech on ongoing conflict in Gaza, saying that the verdict reaffirmed that “no one is above the law.”
Biden took aim at Trump’s criticism of the verdict, noting that his Republican rival had opportunities to defend himself and that his legal team took part in the selection of the jury.
“Now, he’ll be given the opportunity, as he should, to appeal that decision just like everyone else has that opportunity. That’s how the American system of justice works,” Biden said. “And it’s reckless, it’s dangerous, and it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”
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Nia Prater
Trump: This is a rigged trial
On Friday morning, Trump gave his first press conference in the aftermath of his 34-count conviction by a Manhattan jury. “This is a case where if they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” he began, and it was off to the races from there.
In typically winding and free-wheeling remarks, Trump continued his trend of railing against Judge Juan Merchan and Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, painting the six-week trial against him as “unfair.” “This is a scam. This is a rigged trial,” he said. “It shouldn’t have been in that venue. We shouldn’t have had that judge.”
Trump acknowledged that he was still officially under a gag order that bars him from disparaging witnesses, but still made clear references to his former attorney Michael Cohen who testified for the prosecution, calling him a “sleazebag” and laying all responsibility for any legal issues at his feet. Trump was previously found to have violated the gag order ten times with Merchan threatening to institute jail time for any future infractions.
The former president also seemed to imply that his ultimate decision not to testify was based on concerns that, had he taken the stand, he would’ve been found guilty of perjury. “The theory is you never testify. If it were George Washington, don’t testify because they’ll get you on something that you said slightly wrong and then they sue you for perjury,” Trump said.
At first, Trump focused on his trial result, but he eventually went fully into a standard campaign stump speech, lashing out at Biden over immigration and crime. Though Trump tried to project an air of confidence despite the conviction, it appeared to slip in one moment as he spoke about Allen Weisselberg, the former CFO of the Trump Organization. He talked about how Weisselberg’s life was “destroyed” after he was jailed following the fraud trial against the company, noting their similar ages.
“Nobody ever says that about me. I’d like them to say, ‘Gee, we have to have a little sorrow for this man’ because they just don’t say that about me,” he said. “But maybe I’m better off that way.”
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Chas Danner
Trump gives a press conference
You can watch it here:
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Chas Danner
There will be political fallout, but how much and what kind?
Here’s what Semafor’s Benjy Sarlin said he’s watching out for, via an X thread:
1) Many people who told pollsters they’d switch votes over convictions were likely lying to the pollster or themselves. I give it near-zero credence.
2) BUT the actual reaction is unpredictable. A lot of people expected ol’ Donny T to wriggle his way out of this. And it’ll be the most attention yet.
3) A big q is how much it stays in the public eye/front of mind. Sentencing is right before RNC, so that’s one huge news peg on the political calendar.
4) How much it becomes a voting issue might depend on how much D’s make it one. Does this open the floodgates to Biden camp, outside groups actually going with “You can’t elect a felon”? They’ve been extremely reluctant to touch this.
5) Does this change voters’ perspective on Trump’s other trials, none of which are likely before the election? I.e. “You can’t elect this guy, we’re going to have him on trial his whole presidency”
Some other thoughts:
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Chas Danner
Now more than ever, retribution is on the ballot
Trump has already been campaigning on the promise to go after his (and what he says are thus America’s) enemies if he’s elected president again. Following the verdict, a whole lot of his allies on the right called for that explicitly, as Reliable Sources’ Oliver Darcy explains:
Indeed, it is not only thatMAGA Mediapersonalities are assailing the unanimous guilty verdict returned by a jury of 12 New Yorkers, calling it unfair and rigged. Some of the right’s most popular talking heads are openly calling for the weaponization of government to seek retribution against Trump’s political opponents.
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who commands a following of millions of subscribers onYouTubeand social media, said after the verdict that Trump “should make and publish a list of ten high ranking Democrat criminals who he will have arrested when he takes office.”The Federalistchief executiveSean Davissaid he wants “to see lists of which Democrat officials are going to be put in prison.” AndFox News’ Jesse Wattersdeclared, “We’re going to vanquish the evil forces that are destroying this republic.”
Suffice to say, that unhinged, reckless, and dangerous rhetoric is not normal. And it even exceeds some of the highly charged rhetoric that played out during Trump’s administration when then-Special Counsel Robert Muellerprobed the then-president over his ties to Russia. But as the legal wallsactuallybegin to close in on Trump, the commentary in right-wing media is getting angrier, more menacing, and taking a markedly darker tone.
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Chas Danner
Trump campaign wants all that guilty money for itself
Politico reports that the campaign is telling others not to raise money off the verdict:
Trump’s political operation views the guilty verdict in the New York hush money trial as a small-dollar goldmine — so much so that they are warning other Republicans not to raise money off it and siphon off money that could otherwise go to the Trump campaign.
“Any Republican elected official, candidate or party committee siphoning money from President Trump’s donors are no better than Judge Merchan’s daughter,” said Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita. “We’re keeping a list, we’ll be checking it twice and we aren’t in the spirit of Christmas.”
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Chas Danner
The most apoplectic responses to the verdict from the right
Semafor’s David Weigel rounds up a “taxonomy of Republican rage” from various GOP lawmakers and others on the right, including the ilk who said it marked the end of democracy and/or America itself:
“Millions of Nazi and Imperial Japanese soldiers could not take down America but one Scumbag New York judge just did,”wroteWisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a freshman who Democrats are targeting in November.
“Biden and the MARXIST CLOWNS in his NYC Circus just declared WAR ON DEMOCRACY and the American people!!”wroteTexas Rep. Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician who Trump helped elect to Congress, on X. “They just convicted their political opponent in order to win an election! This is no different than what happens in Communist China, North Korea, or the former Soviet Union.”
In states and districts that have yet to hold primaries, the Trump verdict reaction became a differentiator. Blake Masters, who’s facing Hamedeh in the race for a suburban Phoenix House seat, shared an X post from Tucker Carlson, warning that Trump would “win the election if he’s not killed first.” That had been a refrain for part of the pro-Trump right — that the ex-president’s opponents would simply not let him win again, and would stop him by means legal or otherwise.
“That’s a little tough, as a son, to read,” Donald Trump, Jr.saidafter reading the post on “Triggered,” his live show on the conservative video network Rumble. “That’s a little hard. But probably not wrong.”
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Chas Danner
Should Democrats go big in their response?
Brian Beutler argues that yes, they should:
Donald Trump isn’t just a felon, he’s also a disgrace. Like basically all politicians who get convicted of felonies he should withdraw from politics. If it were a Democratic presidential nominee, his career would be over. It won’t happen, but that’s what would be proper. Democrats should say so freely.
Because hewon’twithdraw from the race, Democrats and the rest of us should follow the logic of his conviction wherever it leads. Trump should be denied classified candidate briefings, just as felons are disqualified from classified clearance. Trump should be denied the right to vote in his home state of Florida, and if Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans try to create a special exception for him, Democrats should challenge it. They should feel free to demand he be punished to the full extent of the law. …
I would call it shameful for a major American party to nominate a felon for the presidency, and call on the party of Lincoln to go back to the drawing board.
I would note that felons are frequently ineligible for employment and housing, and it’s the height of arrogance for Trump to insist that he, as a felon, be eligible for America’s most important job, which comes with America’s most famous house.
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Chas Danner
Michael Cohen’s acronym retort
He’s dragging Trump attorney Todd Blanche, who called him the “greatest liar of all time” during the trial:
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Chas Danner
The poetic justice of yet another woman taking down Trump
At the Cut, Laura Bassett celebrates Trump’s guilty verdict as another cathartic victory for women:
Trump ascended to the presidency afterbragging on tapethat he can “grab” women “by the puss*” whenever he wants, because he’s a “star.” He’s been accused by over a dozen women of sexual misconduct; found civilly liable for rape; bragged about personally gettingRoe v. Wadeoverturned; andcalled women “dogs” and “fat pigs.”Both Daniels and [E. Jean] Carroll were smeared as lying grifters throughout their trials and have said they were threatened by Trump’s supporters; Daniels’s lawyersaid she even had to wear a bulletproof vestto go testify. So there’s an immense catharsis in watching these women claim victory against Trump in court — one making him pay hundreds of millions in damages, and the other, complicating his re-election chances and putting him behind bars. (And, on top of that, Fulton County District AttorneyFani Willismanaged to fend off a Trump lawyer’s egregious grilling about her personal life and will continue to prosecute the election interference case against him in Georgia, so a third woman could yet deal a legal blow to the former president.)
In one of his many false campaign promises, Trump said back in 2016 that if elected one of his first moves as president would be tosue all the womenwho’d accused him of sexual assault and harassment. Instead, he’s spent the last year of campaigning for a second term being sued and criminally indicted himself, with two of the women whom he cast as unhinged extortionists turning out to be some of his most formidable opponents in court. The “puss*es,” one could say, have grabbed back.
Read the rest of her response here.
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Chas Danner
Trump’s botched defense
In a New York Times op-ed, Renato Mariotti writes that Trump’s legal team could have prevailed if they had focused on presenting the best defense instead of serving their client’s ego:
The defense lost a winnable case by adopting an ill-advised strategy that was right out of Mr. Trump’s playbook. For years, he denied everything and attacked anyone who dared to take him on. It worked — until this case.
I have practiced criminal law for over 20 years, and I have tried and won cases as both a federal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney. I’ve almost never seen the defense win without a compelling counternarrative. Jurors often want to side with prosecutors, who have the advantage of writing the indictment, marshaling the witnesses and telling the story.
The defense needs its own story, and in my experience, the side that tells the simpler story at trial usually wins.
Instead of telling a simple story, Mr. Trump’s defense was a haphazard cacophony of denials and personal attacks. That may work for a Trump rally or a segment on Fox News, but it doesn’t work in a courtroom. Perhaps Mr. Trump’s team was also pursuing a political or press strategy, but it certainly wasn’t a good legal strategy. The powerful defense available to Mr. Trump’s attorneys was lost amid all the clutter.
Trump leaving court in a motorcade following the verdict. Photo: Mark Peterson
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Matt Stieb
What happens to Trump now?
The phrase “convicted felon Donald Trump” has a gleeful ring to it for the many Americans rooting against the former president. Unfortunately for that crowd, experts say it is extremely unlikely that he would leave the courthouse in handcuffs. He will also likely remain free on bail in the time before sentencing.
The major question on Judge Merchan’s plate now involves the sentence itself. Already, Merchan has approved a sentencing date of July 11, which was agreed to by both parties. In that time, Merchan will have to determine if a non-violent offender with no criminal record, convicted of class-E felonies — the lowest tier of felonies in New York state — deserves jail time or probation. From there, the long and arduous appeal process will begin.
The Washington Post notes several possible scenarios for Trump as he navigates the New York criminal justice system following his conviction, even if he only receives a sentence of probation:
[Trump may now face conditions] he may consider insulting, including a required inmate review by the New York City Department of Probation. The probation office on the 10th floor of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse prepares presentencing reports for judges. There, Trump would be interviewed about his personal history, his mental health and the circ*mstances that led to his conviction. …
TheClass E felony chargesare punishable by 16 months to four years in prison. Among the key issues to be determined would be whether Trump faces some form of incarceration, either in a government facility or a private location, or a less-restrictive experience through probation.
If he is sentenced to probation, for example, Trump would be required to clear any out-of-state travel — such as to campaign rallies and fundraisers — with a probation officer. If Trump were to serve home confinement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., New York authorities would probably have to work with counterparts in Florida to accommodate him, the experts said.
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Chas Danner
Yusef Salaam: ‘I take no pleasure at today’s verdict’
The city councilman and exonerated member of the Central Park Five put out a statement following the verdict:
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Chas Danner
Stormy Daniels’s lawyer says she’s relieved
Daniels attorney Clark Brewster said in a statement that she: “is relieved that this case is now over. … She always had great faith in our justice system and in the solemn oath jurors take in undertaking their service. No man is above the law, and the selfless hardworking service of each of these jurors should be respected and appreciated.”
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Chas Danner
The Trump campaign rolls out ‘political prisoner’
The campaign’s post-verdict fundraising pitch was heavy on playing the victim, as Bloomberg notes:
The appeal, which refers to Trump as a “political prisoner,” was posted online just minutes after a jury found him guilty … “They’ve raided my home, arrested me, took my mugshot, AND NOW THEY’VE JUST CONVICTED ME!,” a fundraising appeal says. “Before the day is over, I’m calling on TEN MILLION pro-Trump patriots to chip in.”
WinRed, the platform the Trump campaign uses for online fundraising, briefly crashed in the minutes after the verdict, but was soon up and running again.
But the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman also highlights how the verdict is going to be more difficult to spin:
One thing important to keep in mind: the Trump team often has a playbook for spinning news and what will happen, an approach that starts with the candidate himself. They’d predicted a hung jury as a strong possibility, their allies put out word that one juror was making affirming eye contact with a Trump supporter who attended the trial, and so forth. In the end, it took this jury less than two full days to convict on all counts. By following this playbook, Trump’s team can usually create enough confusion to leave people questioning outcomes. Not so with a jury verdict.
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Nia Prater
Bragg: ‘I did my job. We did our job.’
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg held a press conference shortly after his office’s historic conviction of Trump, and he began by thanking the jurors for their work over the past several weeks, calling their service the “cornerstone of our judicial system.”
“Their deliberations led them to a unanimous conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant Donald J. Trump is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree to conceal a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election,” Bragg said. “And while this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial and, ultimately today, at this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courtroom doors by following the facts and the law and doing so without fear or favor.”
Bragg declined to say whether he planned to seek a prison sentence for Trump, saying his team will continue to speak through court filings.
“I did my job. We did our job. Many voices out there — the only voice that matters is the voice of the jury and the jury has spoken,” he said.
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Chas Danner
New York, the Trump Trial State
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Chas Danner
‘I’m glad it’s over’
A reporter spoke with the Trump trial’s most committed in-person watcher:
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Chas Danner
Will Trump be able to vote for himself in November?
Most likely — unless he is in prison, or more specifically, has received a prison sentence, and having lost all his appeals, is serving that sentence on Election Day. NBC News’ Jane C. Timm explains:
Experts say Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is unlikely to be disenfranchised by the felony convictions in the New York case, noting that it would come down to whether he goes to prison as part of his sentence.
Forty-eight states prohibit some or all Americans with felony convictions on their records from voting, according to the Sentencing Project, and an estimated 4.4 million Americans — about 2% of the voting-age population — could not vote in the 2022 elections because of those laws.The group estimatesthat more than 1 million of them live in Florida, where Trump established his official residency in 2019.
Floridadefers to other state lawswhen it comes to disenfranchising voters who are tried and convicted elsewhere. That means Florida voters like Trump lose their voting rights only if the states where they were convicted would disenfranchise them for the crimes, too. And if the states of their convictions would restore their voting rights, so would Florida, said Blair Bowie, an attorney at the Campaign Legal Center who advocates for the end of felony disenfranchisem*nt.
New York prohibits those serving time behind bars for felony convictions from voting, and voting rights are restored as soon as a person leaves prison. Those convicted of felonies who do not go to prison never lose their voting rights. In the New York case, “the only way he wouldn’t be able to vote is if he is in prison on Election Day,” Bowie said.
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Chas Danner
And yes, he can still be president
Politico’s Ben Feuerherd offers a refresher:
As a candidate for federal office, Trump is restricted only by requirements in the U.S. Constitution. Those requirements are straightforward: The president must be at least 35 years old, must be a natural-born U.S. citizen and must have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years. There’s nothing on criminal convictions.
Now, if Trump is sentenced to prison and also wins the presidency, that would pose obvious practical complications. It’s implausible he could run the country from a cell, and some legal experts say the resulting constitutional crisis would require that his sentence be suspended so that he could fulfill his duties as the nation’s chief executive. It may be a few weeks before the judge in the hush money case delivers Trump’s sentence, which could span up to four years behind bars — or no time at all.
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Chas Danner
The judge didn’t warn the jurors about the risk of speaking out
It’s a notable difference from the last time a jury judged Trump:
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Chas Danner
Trump is stuck in traffic
Not having a great day, our former president:
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Chas Danner
The jury’s official verdict
They deliberated for about ten hours.
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Chas Danner
The guilty counting quickly became a meme
As Vulture’s Zoe Guy notes, people on the internet were definitely amused while watching the number of guilty counts climb:
See the rest Zoe collected here.
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Nia Prater
Michael Cohen: ‘The truth always matters’
Despite his previous comments, the star witness didn’t gloat in his statement responding to the verdict:
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Chas Danner
Being a convicted criminal may not hurt Trump as much as some hope
Jonathan Chait offers words of caution for anyone assuming Trump is now finally finished, politically:
Life isn’t fair, nor is the legal system. Throughout Trump’s life, the unfairness has run overwhelmingly in his favor. The balance of the unfairness remains on his side. He is now officially a criminal, but that is a designation that a fair system would have applied to him long ago.
Read the rest of Jon’s response to the verdict here.
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Chas Danner
Can the Biden campaign leverage the conviction?
Gabriel Debenedetti reports on how the Biden team is handling the trial and verdict:
For months now, Biden’s allies have responded to liberal gloom over his trailing polls against Trump by arguing that it will improve once semi-engaged Americans finally come to terms with the reality that they will effectively have a binary decision to make between Biden and Trump. Yet neither Trump’s easy GOP primary victory nor the heavily covered trial itself forced that realization or caused a clear polling bump for Biden, nor has the tens of millions of dollars’ worth of advertising the Biden camp has recently poured into swing states. At least not yet. Biden troops are, of course, hopeful that the historic guilty verdict — and their new ability to call Trump a convicted felon — could help their cause. (For what it’s worth, Trump’s priceimmediately doveon election betting markets.) But they have evidently determined that no matter what, they must turn the first month of this summer into a period of attention-seeking that reminds Americans specifically of Trump’s lawlessness and chaos.
In the campaign’s first statement after the verdict, it offered a reminder: “Today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president,” said communications director Michael Tyler. “The threat Trump poses to our democracy has never been greater. He is running an increasingly unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution, pledging to be a dictator ‘on day one’ and calling for our Constitution to be ‘terminated’ so he can regain and keep power.” It’s an effort that they hope will culminate in the earlier-than-ever June debate that Biden arranged to reframe the way voters are thinking — or not thinking — about the race.
Read the rest of Gabe’s report here.
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Nia Prater
Trump world is appalled
After the verdict came down, members of Trump’s family and other allies voiced their anger at the jury’s decision:
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Margaret Hartmann
But Melania and Ivanka weren’t (ever) there
As I just explained in another post, the pair remained a notable absence:
While three of Trump’s five children eventually put in an appearance at the Manhattan criminal courthouseIvanka TrumpandMelania Trumpdidn’t appear once. When the juryfound Trump guilty on all countson Thursday only Eric Trump was in the courtroom with his father.
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Chas Danner
The scene outside the courthouse
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Chas Danner
Biden campaign’s response: ‘No one is above the law’
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Chas Danner
He will be sentenced on July 11
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Chas Danner
Trump says the trial was rigged
Speaking with reporters outside the courtroom, Trump called his conviction a “disgrace” after “a rigged trial by a conflicted judge.”
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Chas Danner
Defense quickly moved for a acquittal, but no
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Chas Danner
One market’s reaction
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Chas Danner
Guilty on all 34 counts
Donald Trump is now a convicted felon.
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Chas Danner
The jury is about to return to the courtroom with their verdict
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Chas Danner
The Trump team’s body language
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Chas Danner
Some pre-verdict pundits guess bad news for Trump
Of course nobody really knows, though.
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Chas Danner
But we might have to wait a little bit
Meanwhile inside the courtroom:
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Chas Danner
The verdict is about to be in
The jury sent a note to the judge:
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Nia Prater
The road so far
The case of The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump began on April 15 with several days of jury selection where some prospective jurors broke down in tears due to the stress of the impending trial. Despite the early emotions, the trial has largely been a staid affair with hours of testimony on business records punctuated with the occasional sordid detail.
Throughout the trial, the prosecution painted a portrait of then-candidate Trump knowingly orchestrating a conspiracy to hide evidence of a pre-election payoff to adult film star Stormy Daniels for her silence about an alleged affair, later signing reimbursem*nt checks to lawyer Michael Cohen from the Oval Office after his 2016 win. In contrast, the defense painted Cohen, the prosecution’s key witness, as untrustworthy and the invoices and checks at the center of the case as normal business transactions with no nefarious intent. Over six weeks, the 12-member jury heard from 22 witnesses over the course of the trial including former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, Hope Hicks and Daniels herself who described the 2006 encounter with Trump in a penthouse suite in Lake Tahoe.
This post has been updated throughout.
More on the Trial
- What the Polls Are Saying After Trump’s Conviction
- The Courage of Alvin Bragg’s Conviction
- What Happens to Trump Now?
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