Trump criminal trial to enter deliberations after jury receives instructions

Deliberations in Donald Trump’s criminal trial are expected to begin after a whirlwind day of closing arguments that stretched well into the night. On Wednesday, jurors will first receive instructions from the judge about the law governing the hush money case and what they can consider when evaluating the former president’s guilt and innocence.

The final scenes of Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York unfolded on Tuesday, with Trump’s defense attorney and a prosecutor clashing sharply. over whether the former US president illegally sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 election that sent him to the White House.

“President Trump is innocent,” Todd Blanche declared in his three-hour closing argument. “He committed no crime and the district attorney has failed to prove guilt, period.”

Blanche asked the 12-member jury hearing the case to return “a very quick and easy verdict of not guilty.”

But prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the seven men and five women jurors that Trump, the first president to be charged with criminal offenses, participated in a conspiracy “to corrupt the 2016 election.”

“We asked them to remember to tune out the noise and ignore the sideshows,” Steinglass told the jury. “And if he has done that… you will see that people have presented powerful evidence of the defendant’s guilt.”

Concluding a nearly five-hour argument against Trump, Steinglass said, “The law is the law and it applies to everyone equally. There is no special standard for this defendant.”

Trump didn’t stop to comment on his nearly 11-hour day in court, but during a break in the middle of Steinglass’s arguments, he posted a one-word assessment on his Truth Social platform: “Boring!”

On Wednesday morning, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchán will read legal instructions to jurors before handing the case over to them for closed-door deliberations.

Blanche repeatedly attacked the credibility of the prosecution’s key witness, former Trump political fixer Michael Cohen, calling the convicted perjurer “literally the biggest liar of all time.”

“He lied to them repeatedly. He lied many, many times before they even met him,” Blanche told jurors. “He is biased and he is motivated to tell you a story that is not true.”

Cohen testified during the six-week trial that Trump told him to “just do it”: pay $130,000 in hush money days before the election to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to silence her claim that she had a one night sexual encounter with Trump. in 2006.

Blanche, however, suggested that Cohen made the hush payment on his own and that Trump had no knowledge of it.

“It made a lot of sense for Mr. Cohen in 2016 to make a payment without telling President Trump,” so he could get a senior White House job if Trump won and a better internal job at the Trump Organization if Trump lost. said Blanca.

“What President Trump knew in 2016 you only know from one source, and I’ve said it several times, but it matters, and that’s Michael Cohen,” Blanche said.

Steinglass said: “You could say who cares if Mr. Trump slept with a porn star 10 years before the 2016 election. A lot of people feel that way. It’s harder to say that the American people don’t have the right to decide for themselves. himself whether he wants to or not.” whether you care or not.”

Trump has denied the relationship with Daniels and the entire 34-count allegation he faces that he falsified business records at his real estate conglomerate Trump Organization to conceal the repayment of hush money to Cohen in 2017, after becoming the number one president. 45 in the country. claiming it was because of the legal work Cohen did for him.

Blanche acknowledged, as prosecutors have maintained, that Cohen did not have a written contract to do legal work for Trump, but said they had a verbal agreement and that Cohen was Trump’s personal lawyer after he became president in 2017.

In his closing arguments, Steinglass expressed a different view of the case and of Cohen, 57, who pleaded guilty to perjury for lying to a congressional panel about a Trump Tower construction project in Moscow that never materialized, a campaign financing violation linked to hush money and tax fraud. He served 13 and a half months in federal prison.

“This case is not about Michael Cohen,” Steinglass told jurors. “This is about Mr. Trump and whether he should be held accountable for making false business entries in his own business records. Whether he and his staff did that to cover up election interference.”

The prosecutor said Cohen’s “importance in this case is that he provides context and color to the documents, the phone records. It’s like a tour guide through the physical evidence, but those documents don’t lie and they don’t forget.”

While Blanche described Cohen as incapable of telling the truth, Steinglass said: “We did not choose Michael Cohen as our witness. We did not pick him up at the witness tent.

“The defendant chose Michael Cohen as his mediator because he was willing to lie and cheat on his behalf,” the prosecutor told the jury. Steinglass added that Trump chose Cohen “for the same qualities” that Trump’s lawyers “now urge to reject his testimony because of.”

On Wednesday morning, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchán will read legal instructions to jurors before handing the case over to them for closed-door deliberations.

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.

While Blanche called for Trump’s acquittal, the defense attorney only needs to convince one of the 12 jurors that there was reasonable doubt about Trump’s guilt to achieve a mistrial with a hung jury. For a guilty verdict, American juries have to decide that the evidence presented by prosecutors proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty.

“We have no burden to prove anything,” Blanche told the jury. “The burden always falls on the government.”

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.

If convicted, Trump could be placed on probation or 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.

Cohen testified that Trump twice approved the 2017 repayment plan to return money he sent to Daniels’ lawyer a few days before the 2016 election, including once at the White House less than three weeks after his inauguration.

Trump signed nine of the 11 paychecks to Cohen in 2017, but Blanche suggested that by then Trump was so busy as president that he may not have known what the checks were for.

“He was running the country,” Blanche said.

Steinglass scoffed at the suggestion that Trump was too worried not to know what the checks to Cohen were for, saying that Trump ran his company for 40 years and that his “whole business philosophy” was to be involved in everything, down to “negotiating the cost”. of the light bulbs.”

Trump urged several Republican lawmakers to appear during the trial in seats behind the defense table as a show of support. Lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, often stood for an hour or two testifying and then, not subject to the gag order prohibiting Trump from attacking witnesses and jurors, walked out of the courtroom. and held press conferences to criticize. witnesses against Trump, especially Cohen and Daniels.

Some of Trump’s adult children occasionally attended the trial, but not his wife, former first lady Melania Trump. His two oldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric, were there Tuesday, as was his second daughter, Tiffany Trump.

The question for jurors centers on Cohen’s credibility and whether the case documents overcome any doubts they may have about his checkered history.

Cohen acknowledged during hours of testimony 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 increments. monthly of 35,000 dollars in 2017. .

Despite his pivotal role in the repayment, 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 the prosecution, which Blanche noticed immediately at first. of her final argument.

[Con información del periodista de VOA Ken Bredemeier]

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