Jury in Trump’s hush money case begins deliberations after instructions
Trump’s lawyer, on the other hand, branded the prosecution’s star witness the biggest liar of all time as he declared his client innocent of all charges and urged the panel for an outright acquittal | File image (Photo: PTI)
Jurors in Donald Trump’s hush money trial are expected to begin their deliberations on Wednesday after receiving instructions from the judge on the law and factors to consider as they seek to reach a verdict in the first criminal case against a former American president.
The deliberations follow a marathon day of closing arguments in which a Manhattan prosecutor accused Trump of misleading voters in the 2016 presidential election by participating in a hush-money program designed to suppress embarrassing stories that he feared would torpedo his campaign.
At its core, this case is about a conspiracy and a cover-up, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors during summonses that stretched from early afternoon into the evening.
Trump’s lawyer, on the other hand, branded the prosecution’s star witness as the biggest liar of all time, declaring his client innocent of all charges and urging the panel for a blanket acquittal.
The lawyers’ dueling accounts, which varied wildly in their assessments of witness credibility, Trump’s guilt and the strength of the evidence, offered each side one last chance to score points with the jury as it prepared for the momentous and historically unprecedented task of deciding whether to convict the presumptive Republican presidential nominee ahead of the November election.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying company records, which carries a penalty of up to four years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing. It is unclear whether prosecutors would seek prison time if convicted, or whether the judge would impose that sentence.
Jurors will have the option to convict Trump of all charges, acquit him of all charges, or hand down a mixed verdict finding him guilty of some charges and not others. If they reach an impasse after several days of deliberations and fail to reach a unanimous verdict, Judge Juan M. Merchan could declare a mistrial.
The lawsuit included allegations that Trump and his allies conspired during the 2016 presidential campaign to suppress potentially embarrassing stories through hush money payments, including to a porn actor who claimed she and Trump had sex a decade earlier. His attorney Todd Blanche told jurors that neither the actor, Stormy Daniels, nor the Trump attorney who paid her, Michael Cohen, can be trusted.
President Trump is innocent. He committed no crimes and the prosecutor did not meet his burden of proof, period,” Blanche said.
Steinglass sought to allay potential concerns from jurors about the credibility of witnesses. Trump, for example, has said he and Daniels never had sex and has repeatedly attacked Cohen as a liar.
The prosecutor acknowledged that Daniels’ account of the alleged 2006 encounter in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite, which Trump has denied, was chilling at times, but he said the details she offered, including about the decor and what she said she saw when she rummaged through Trump’s toiletries. kit was full of touchstones that rang true.
And, he said, the story matters because it reinforces Trump’s motivation to buy her silence.”
Her story is messy. It makes people uncomfortable to hear. It probably makes some of you uncomfortable to hear. But that’s the point, Steinglass said. He told jurors: In the simplest terms, Stormy Daniels is the motive.
The payout came against the backdrop of the revelation of a 2005 Access Hollywood recording in which Trump could be heard bragging about sexually grabbing women without their consent. Had the Daniels story emerged in the aftermath of the shooting, it would have undermined his strategy of subversion. turning away his words, Steinglass said.
“It is critical to realize this,” Steinglass said. At the same time, he dismissed his words on tape as locker-room talk as Trump negotiated to muzzle a porn star, the prosecutor said.
Blanche, who spoke first, tried to downplay the fallout, saying the Access Hollywood tape was not a doomsday scenario.
Steinglass also tried to reassure jurors that the prosecution’s case did not rest solely on Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, who paid Daniels $1,30,000 to keep his mouth shut. Cohen later pleaded guilty to federal charges for his role in the hush money payments, and to lying to Congress. He went to prison and was suspended, but his direct involvement in the transactions made him a key witness at the trial.
It’s not about whether you like Michael Cohen. It’s not about whether you want to do business with Michael Cohen. What matters is whether he has useful, reliable information about what happened in this case, and the truth is he was in the best position to know, Steinglass said.
While the case sometimes featured perfunctory discussion of sex and gossip industry practices, the actual charges involve something decidedly less flashy: reimbursements that Trump signed for Cohen for the payments.
The refunds were recorded as being for legal fees, which prosecutors say was a fraudulent label designed to conceal the purpose of the hush money transaction and illegally interfere with the 2016 election. Defense attorneys say Cohen actually made substantial has done legal work for Trump and his family.
In his own hour-long address to the jury, with sweeping denials that reflected Trump’s “deny everything” approach, Blanche lambasted the entire basis of the case.
He said Cohen, not Trump, created the invoices submitted to the Trump Organization for reimbursement and rejected the prosecutor’s caricature of a detail-oriented manager, suggesting instead that Trump was preoccupied with the presidency and not by the checks he signed. And he rejected the idea that the alleged hush-money scheme amounted to election interference.
Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people working together to help someone win, Blanche said.
As expected, he saved his most animated attack for Cohen, with whom he tangled during a lengthy cross-examination.
Imitating the term GOAT, which is mainly used in sports as an acronym for the greatest of all time, Blanche called Cohen the GLOAT “the greatest liar of all time” and also called Cohen the human embodiment of reasonable doubt. That language was intentional because to convict Trump, jurors must believe prosecutors have proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
He has lied to you repeatedly. He lied many, many times before you even met him. His financial and personal well-being depend on this case. He is biased and motivated to tell you a story that is not true, Blanche said, a reference to Cohen’s relentless and often bitingly personal social media attacks on Trump and the lucrative income he has derived from books and podcasts about Trump.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)