After revising portions of the court’s guidance and rehearing testimony from several important testimonies about the alleged program at the heart of the history-making case, the judge in former president Donald Trump’s hush money test resumed discussion on Thursday. The judge reread 30 sites of judge instructions on how conclusions may be drawn from data in response to a judge request.
A newspaper editor and Trump’s former attorney and individual plumber testified on Thursday morning, which the 12-person jury deliberated for roughly 4 1/2 hours without coming up with a conviction.
How much the discussions may continue is unknown. A innocent verdict would give the presumptive Republican nominee a magnificent legal victory as he fights to reclaim the White House, while an conviction would be a significant victory for him and boost his morale on the campaign trail.
Since verdicts must be unanimous, it’s also possible the case ends in a mistrial if the jury ca n’t reach a consensus.
Trump plan senior consultants Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles criticized the proceedings as a “kangaroo judge” and asserted that the case may not matter in November in a letter sent on Wednesday evening.
” The bottom line is this case does n’t have an impact on voters”, they wrote.
Trump struck a pessimistic tone on Thursday, again, with the statement that” Mother Teresa could n’t bear these charges,” which on Wednesday appeared to be priming supporters for the possibility of a guilty verdict.
” It’s all rigged. The whole thing, the entire system is rigged”, he said. He used the same vocabulary to defend against defeat in the GOP primary in Iowa in 2016 and the 2020 presidential election.
In connection with an reported plot to conceal potentially embarrassing information about him during his 2016 presidential election campaign, Trump is accused of allegedly falsifying company documents at his company on 34 works.
The offense stems from payouts made to then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen after he paid a$ 130, 000 hush money to movie professional Stormy Daniels to discredit her says that she and Trump had sex in 2006.
Trump is accused of fabricating Cohen’s legal costs to conceal the existence of quiet income payments.
Trump has entered a not-guilty plea and asserts that Cohen’s bills were for genuine legal services. Additionally, he has denied having an adulterous relationship with Daniels.
The judge would have to decide universally whether Trump had acted with the intention of committing or concealing another murder. He had also had to establish that he had made a false access in his company’s records.
The murder that Trump is accused of concealing is a felony under New York law, which prohibits two or more conspirators from “promoting or preventing the election of any individual to a public office by using any illegal means” according to the prosecution.
The jury members do n’t have to agree in all cases whether something was done to promote Trump’s election campaign.
The jury members, who represent a wide range of professional and resident backgrounds, were frequently captivated by the evidence in the trial, including those from Cohen and Daniels. Some took notes and subtly watched as witnesses answered questions from Trump’s lawyers and lawyers.
After a long time of closing arguments in which a counsel spoke for more than five hours, jurors began deliberating, underscoring the problem the district attorney’s office faces in order to prove Trump’s grief beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The Trump team must rely on at least one judge discovering that the prosecution’s case has not been properly established for them to avoid being found guilty.
Jurors asked Cohen and former National Enquirer editor David Pecker to rehear evidence in their first contact with the judge regarding a meeting with Trump at Trump Tower in August 2015, where the magazine boss agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of his fledgling political campaign.
Pecker claimed that the plan included identifying potentially damaging Trump stories so they could be hacked before being made public. That, prosecutors say, was the beginning of the catch- and- kill scheme at the heart of the case.
Additionally, Pecker’s account of a phone call he claimed to have received from Trump in which they discussed a rumor that another outlet had offered to buy former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s account that she had a yearlong affair with Trump in the middle of the 2000s is wanted by the jurors. Trump has denied the affair.
Pecker testified that Trump told him,” Karen is a nice girl”, and asked,” What do you think I should do”? Pecker said he replied:” I think you should buy the story and take it off the market”. Trump informed him that Cohen would contact him and that he would not buy stories because they always get published.
The publisher claimed that he believed Trump was aware of the specifics of McDougal’s claims when he left the conversation. Pecker said he thought the story was accurate and that if it had been made public, it would have embarrassed Trump and his campaign.
In an agreement that also included writing and other opportunities with its fitness magazine and other publications, the parent company of The National Enquirer, American Media Inc., paid McDougal$ 150, 000 for the rights to her story.
The second item that the jurors requested is Pecker’s testimony regarding his decision to withdraw from a deal to sell McDougal’s story to Trump through a business that Cohen had established for the transaction, known as an “assignment of rights,” in October 2016.
” I called Michael Cohen, and I said to him that the agreement, the assignment deal, is off. I am not going forward. It is a bad idea, and I want you to rip up the agreement”, Pecker testified. ” He was very, very, angry. Very upset. Screaming, basically, at me”.
Pecker claimed that he repeatedly told Cohen that he was n’t going to carry the deal forward.
He claimed that Cohen had said to him,” The boss is going to be very enraged at you.”
