Former U.S. President Donald Trump (left) returns to Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, U.S., after a break on Tuesday, May 28, 2024. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, part of an alleged plan to silence complaints of extramarital sexual encounters during his 2016 presidential campaign.
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Jurors in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial will begin deliberating a possible verdict on Wednesday after receiving instructions from a judge in a New York courtroom.
Trump’s lawyer and a prosecutor gave closing arguments throughout Tuesday and into the early evening hours.
The case is the first time a former US president has been prosecuted.
But Trump also faces three other criminal cases, with trials currently not expected to begin until November, when the Republican is on track to face President Joe Biden in a rematch of his 2020 campaign.
Trump is charged in the case with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with reimbursements he and his company, the Trump Organization, made to his then-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen for paying porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen testified in the Manhattan Supreme Court trial that he paid Daniels at Trump’s direction to buy her silence about an alleged one-time sexual tryst with Trump in 2006.
Prosecutors allege that by falsely recording the refunds to Cohen as legal fees, Trump criminally concealed their true purpose, which was to protect his then-floating campaign from defeat in the 2016 election to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
At the time of the payment to Daniels, Trump’s candidacy had been rocked by the revelation of the so-called “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged to a television host about groping and kissing women without their consent and getting away scot-free. Star”.
Judge Juan Merchan is expected to spend about an hour briefing the 12-member jury on the law before sending the panel to private deliberations on Wednesday.
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Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass, in his summary Tuesday, attributed the payment to Daniels as hush money, which he paid before the election to a former alleged Trump mistress, Karen McDougal, and to the doorman at a Trump estate, who watched a story about Trump impregnating a housekeeper.
“Everything Mr. Trump and his cohorts did in this case was shrouded in lies,” Steinglass said. “The watchword was obfuscation, and all roads lead to the man who benefited most from it: Donald Trump.”
Trump’s lawyers argue that Trump did nothing wrong and that Cohen is a habitual liar motivated by anger at his former client.
“The story Mr. Cohen told you on the witness stand is not true,” defense attorney Todd Blanche said in his own summary.
“There is no evidence that President Trump knew about the payment before it was made,” Blanche told Daniels.
“As I told you in the opening statement, it doesn’t matter whether there was a conspiracy to win the election,” Blanche argued.
“Every election campaign is a conspiracy to promote one candidate.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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2024-05-29 13:32:10
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