Closing arguments are scheduled for Tuesday in the criminal hush money trial against donald trump in New York, the last chance for the former president’s defense lawyer to convince a 12-member jury that he is innocent of charges that he tried to illegally influence the outcome of the 2016 election, as a prosecutor lays out the evidence in his against.
Closing arguments in the first criminal case against a US president could take hours and follow testimony that lasted five weeks.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan is expected to instruct the jury Wednesday morning on the legal issues surrounding the case before it begins deliberating.
Under the US legal system, jurors will have to unanimously decide whether to acquit Trump, 77, or find him guilty. If they can’t reach an agreement, which would result in a hung jury, prosecutors would decide whether to retry the case.
For Trump, the result has consequences, not only for his personal freedom but also for his political destiny. He is the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee and will run again in the November election against President Joe Biden, the Democrat who defeated him in 2020.
National polls show Biden and Trump locked in a tight race, but some opinion polls indicate Trump supporters could switch their votes to Biden or not vote at all if the former president is convicted.
In the criminal case, Trump is accused of sanctioning a scheme in which his political fixer, Michael Cohen, made a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election to prevent her from speaking publicly about her claim of a one-night stand with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament a decade earlier.
Trump has denied the relationship with Daniels and the 34-count indictment he faces: falsifying business records at his real estate conglomerate Trump Organization to conceal the 2017 refund to Cohen, labeling it as payments for legal work he had done for Trump.
If convicted, Trump could face probation or be sentenced to up to four years in prison, although he will surely appeal and could continue running for president.
Trump faces three other indictments, including two that accuse him of illegally trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. But all three cases are mired in legal disputes between his lawyers and prosecutors. As a result, the New York case that is nearing conclusion may be the only one decided before the November elections.
Trump had said many times that he wanted to testify in his own defense at the trial, but in the end he did not do so, which was his right.
Trump’s team only put two witnesses on the stand. One of them, New York lawyer Robert Costello, said that in 2018 Cohen assured him that he had “nothing against Trump” and that he, not Trump, invented the hush-money agreement with Daniels.
Early in the case, Trump frequently attacked Cohen and other witnesses, despite Merchan’s gag order prohibiting Trump from attacking them and jurors. Merchan excluded himself and prosecutor Alvin Bragg from the edict.
Merchan found Trump in contempt of court 10 times and fined him $10,000, after which Trump appeared to aim his broadsides solely at the judge and prosecutor.
Trump urged several Republican lawmakers to appear in the courtroom in seats behind the defense table as a show of support. Lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, often spent an hour or two testifying and then, not subject to the gag order, left the courtroom and held news conferences to criticize the witnesses. against Trump, especially Cohen and Daniels.
Cohen testified that he did little legal work for Trump in 2017, and that the country’s 45th president twice authorized the repayment plan and the claim that it was for legal work, once at his Trump Tower in New York before taking office. presidency and again in the Oval Office of the White House less than three weeks after his inauguration.
But the issue for jurors is Cohen’s credibility.
During hours of testimony, he acknowledged that over the years he has been a serial liar on behalf of Trump and to protect his own wife from tax evasion charges. He said that, as part of the hush money repayment scheme, he stole $60,000 from Trump’s company because he felt Trump had missed his 2016 year-end bonus.
Cohen testified that with Trump’s consent, Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s then-chief financial officer, “increased” the total refund to $420,000, in part to cover Cohen’s tax liability, and that the refund was paid in monthly increments. of $35,000 in 2017, with Trump signing nine of the 11 checks to Cohen.
Despite his pivotal role in the refund, Weisselberg, now serving a five-month prison sentence for lying under oath in an earlier civil business fraud case involving Trump, was not called as a witness by either side.
Early trial witnesses portrayed Cohen as impetuous, profane and volatile. However, on the witness stand, the 57-year-old disbarred lawyer was reserved and did not explode during hours of withering cross-examination by Trump lawyer Todd Blanche.
For years, Cohen was a Trump loyalist, his lawyer and political fixer who catered to Trump’s every whim during his years as a New York real estate mogul and during his run for president in 2016. When news of Daniels’ claim of A relationship with Trump and the repayment of money to Cohen became public in 2018, the relationship between the then-president and Cohen broke down after federal agents raided his then-New York home, a hotel room.
Cohen ultimately pleaded guilty to perjury in connection with lying to a congressional panel about a Trump Tower construction project in Moscow that never materialized, tax fraud and a violation of campaign finance law related to the payment of money to Daniels to maintain his silence. He served 13 and a half months in federal prison and another year and a half in house arrest.
Since then, he has become a persistent critic of Trump. He stated clearly that he hopes Trump will be convicted.
David Pecker, former editor of the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper, testified how in a meeting at Trump Tower in 2015 with Trump and Cohen he agreed to publish positive stories about Trump as he sought the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, along with negative and embarrassing stories about his political opponents. and to prevent other inflammatory stories about Trump from being published.
It was called “catch and kill” in the vernacular of the tabloid news world. In one case, Pecker said he paid $150,000 to Karen McDougal, Playboy magazine’s 1998 Playmate of the Year, to buy the rights to her claim of a 10-month affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007, without intending to publish anything about it. . Trump also denied her claim, but prosecutors did not call her as a witness.
A month before the November 2016 election, The Washington Post unearthed a 2005 outtake from the celebrity-driven show “Access Hollywood” in which Trump boasted that he could grope women at will because he was a star. .
The appearance of the tape led directly to Daniels being paid hush money. The Trump campaign was concerned that the Access Hollywood images could offend female voters and that one more sex-related Trump story would be worse. Daniels, at the same time, was either touting his Trump story or wanting money to stay silent.
Cohen said he created a shell company, transferred money to it from his home equity line of credit and wired Daniels’ attorney the $130,000 in hush money just days before the election. Cohen testified that Trump told him to “just do it,” and Cohen said he would not have made the payment on his behalf without Trump’s consent.
Within a week, Trump narrowly defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton, former first lady and US secretary of state, to win a four-year term in the White House.
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channels Youtube, WhatsApp and to the newsletter. Turn on notifications and follow us on Facebook, x and instagram.
Add Comment