Trump jury deliberations begin
Donald Trump’s case is now with the jury, which will have decide unanimously whether Trump made or caused the falsification of business records with the intent to commit a second crime.
The prosecution’s case is that the second crime was a violation of New York election law, which makes it a crime to “promote the election of any person to public office”.
The jury, per the instructions, does not have to be unanimous on what unlawful means Trump used to violate election law – whether it was a campaign contribution limit violation, whether it was a tax laws violation, or whether other business records were falsified to cover up the crime.
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Jury begins deliberations
The jury was instructed to start deliberating just before 11:30am ET and left the courtroom.
Judge Juan Merchan sent jurors back into the jury room to start deliberating.
Two more jurors are going to return to his courtroom for instructions on how to use a laptop with evidence during deliberations.
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Two jurors have volunteered to be shown how to use a laptop that contains evidence in the case.
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Judge concludes instructions on the law
Judge Juan Merchan told jurors “that concludes my instructions on the law.”
He’s called both sides to the bench.
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Judge Juan Merchan is now going over general juror conduct rules.
“While you are here in the courthouse deliberating on the case, you will be kept together in the jury room,” Merchan said.
Lunch will be provided.
If you have a cell phone or another electronic device, please give it to a court officer to hold...throughout deliberations.
Each juror, Mechan said, can have their view heard by other jurors.
During your deliberations, you must discuss the case only among yourselves.
Merchan said said that the plan is to work until 4.30pm ET but even if they did work late, it likely wouldn’t go beyond 6pm.
Judge tells jury verdict must be unanimous
Your verdict, on each count you consider, on either guilty or not guilty, must be unanimous. That is, each and every juror must agree to it.
Judge Juan Merchan continues:
You should not surrender an honest view of the evidence simply because you want the trial to end or because you’re outvoted.
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Judge Juan Merchan is now explaining the difference between motive and intent.
“Motive, however, is not an element of the crimes charged – therefore, the people are not required to prove a motive for the commission of the charged crimes,” Merchan said.
Nevertheless, evidence of a motive, or lack of a motive, may be considered by the jury.
“The person acts with intent to defraud when his or her conscious effort or purpose is to do so,” Judge Juan Merchan said.
Again, he said, this doesn’t have to be a specific person or entity.
A general intent to defraud any person or entity suffices.
Judge Juan Merchan is now going through the counts with which Donald Trump is charged.
(Recall: each count pertains to a specific business record. During the trial, prosecutors provided a chart.)
Merchan is now going over definitions of words and phrases used in the law – enterprise, records, intent, etc.
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Judge Juan Merchan’s instructions to the jury regarding election law means that basically, some jurors could think that Donald Trump violated federal election law, and others could think that he was violating tax laws with his puffed up repayment to Michael Cohen.
They don’t have to agree on how, specifically, he violated state election law – but, if they are to find guilty, they do have to unanimously agree that he did.
Judge Juan Merchan is now explaining the New York election law that Donald Trump is accused of violating.
Merchan says the jury need to be unanimous in determining whether he broke this state election law but they do not need to be unanimous in how, specifically, he broke the campaign law.
Judge Juan Merchan is now going over how jurors can determine whether a defendant had the intent to commit a crime.
In doing so you may consider the person’s conduct and all of the circumstances surrounding that conduct ... what if anything did the person do, or say ... what result, if any, followed the conduct, and was that result the necessary, natural, and probably consequence of that conduct.
“A general intent to defraud any person or entity suffices,” Merchan says of what jurors can consider when weighing whether the defendant had an intent to defraud.
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Judge Juan Merchan is now explaining the specifics of the law Donald Trump is accused of breaking – and the idea of how one could be found guilty even one didn’t break the law directly themself.
That happens when “one person engages in conduct which constitutes an offense, another is criminally liable for such conduct when, acting for the state of mind required for that offense, he or she solicits, requests, commands, importunes or intentionally aids [...] in that conduct,” he says.
To find a defendant guilty of committing a crime via others, “you must find beyond a reasonable doubt, first, that he solicited, requested, commanded, importuned or intentionally aided the person to engage in that crime and second, that he did so with the state of mind required for that offense...”
Donald Trump appears to have swapped fatigue for thirst. He could be spotted taking several sips of water.
“Some of the factors you may want to consider in evaluating the testimony of a witness,” judge Juan Merchan said, include:
Was the testimony of the witness plausible, likely to be true, or was it implausible not likely to be true? Was the testimony of the witness consistent, or inconsistent, with the other testimony in the case?
“Did the witness have a conscious bias, hostility, or some other attitude” that could have affected the testimony? “Did the witness have unconscious bias?”
“You may consider whether a witness had, or may have had, a motive to lie,” Merchan said.
You may consider whether the witness hopes for, or expects, a benefit from [...] testifying.
As Juan Merchan’s instructions proceed, courtroom observers are again confronted by the questionable idea that everyone is equal under the law.
For example, court officers, pursuant to the judge’s courtroom orders, routinely bark warnings at the press corps that their phones must be put away. Phones cannot be seen at all, even if on silent, lest one be at risk for removal from the courtroom.
Moments ago, however, noise blared from a device that in a Trump supporter row. The noise appeared to emenate from between Trump lawyer Alina Habba and Donald Trump Jr.
Merchan looked in that direction, and some court officers looked in that direction, and there was a brief pause, but nobody said or did anything.
Trump’s cronies routinely take out their cell phones whilst sitting in rows behind him, even if they’re not attorneys (most aren’t).
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Jury instructions – which judge Juan Merchan will not provide public copies of until he’s done addressing jurors – go into granular detail about how jurors can consider evidence.
With Michael Cohen, for example, he tells jurors that the former Trump consigliere’s guilty pleas can be considered for context, but “you may not consider that in [deciding] whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty”.
With some text messages, for example, they can also be used for context as well – not as proof of innocence or guilt.
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Judge Juan Merchan tells jurors that they should not read into anything he said as indicating his opinion on the case – or the defendant’s innocence or guilt.
It is not my responsibility to judge the evidence here. You are the judgers of the facts.
Merchan says the possibility that Donald Trump could wind up jailed is not something they should think about.
“You may not speculate with matters related to sentencing or punishment,” Merchan said, saying it’s “my responsibility” to determine this, should a guilty verdict come down.
A group of pool photographers snapped photos of Donald Trump as he sat at the defense table.
There was crouching and neck craning and arm stretching in an effort to land what could be a watershed photo of the ex-president: Jurors are expected to soon weigh his fate.
Judge Merchan begins delivering jury instructions
Members of the jury, I will now instruct you on the law.
The trial is further inching towards its final phase with judge Juan Merchan commencing jury instructions.
He tells jurors “these instructions will take about an hour”.
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Judge Juan Merchan has entered the courtroom.
They are due back in court at 10am – of course, it’s just past 10 at the moment, but court tends to move at its own pace or run late.
When proceedings do start back up, Judge Juan Merchan will instruct jurors on the law, which is basically a roadmap for how they should deliberate the case.
Trump enters the courtroom
Donald Trump entered the courtroom just before 10 am. He’s wearing a marigold tie and white shirt.
Unlike most mornings before court proceedings, Trump did not speak to the press and instead walked directly into the courtroom.
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Donald Trump’s motorcade has arrived at the courthouse.
It only takes one of the 12 jurors to unravel the prosecution’s case and result in a hung jury, and Donald Trump’s lawyers are reportedly pinning their hopes on one particular juror.
Politico Playbook cites a report in the Bulwark which points to one juror who has “appeared to nod along in seeming accordance with the defense at times” and “lit up” when the Republican senator for Ohio, JD Vance, and other GOP lawmakers have appeared in court to support Trump. The report cites a source as saying:
There are eight people on that jury who definitely hate Trump. If there’s one person who doesn’t, it’s [this] juror.
Another source noted how this person “makes eye contact or gives ‘a smile or a nod’ in the defense’s direction at times”.
Harry Litmam, a Democrat and former deputy attorney general, posted to X:
There's one juror that people are worried about and I share the worry. can't identify her or him per judge's orders but seems less engaged and slightly irritable.
— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) May 28, 2024
Donald Trump has left Trump Tower and is en route to the Manhattan criminal court, where the jury is expected to begin deliberations shortly.
Outside the Manhattan courthouse during closing arguments on Tuesday in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial, the actor Robert De Niro denounced the former president as a “clown” who wants to “sow total chaos”.
“This is my neighborhood, downtown New York City. I grew up here and feel at home in these streets,” the 80-year-old Oscar winner said, before remarking on the strangeness of Trump being in a courtroom across the street, “because he doesn’t belong in my city”.
De Niro invoked the lessons of Monday’s Memorial Day holiday, held to celebrate the US’s fallen military heroes, and quoted Abraham Lincoln in saying they had died so that “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth”. Stepping back into Hollywood gangland rhetoric, De Niro warned:
Under Trump, this kind of government will perish from the earth. I don’t mean to scare you. No, no, wait – maybe I do mean to scare you. If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted. And elections? Forget about it.
Trump railed against the actor in an early Wednesday Truth Social post, writing:
I never knew how small, both mentally and physically, Wacko Former Actor Robert De Niro was. Today, De Niro, who suffers from an incurable case of TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, commonly known in the medical community as TDS, was met, outside the Courthouse, with a force far greater than the Radical Left - MAGA.
Who is on the Trump trial jury?
A jury of 12 people empaneled for the first criminal trial of a former president in US history is made up of seven men and five women who live in different parts of Manhattan, including the Upper East Side, Harlem, Hell’s Kitchen and the West Village.
They come from a range of personal backgrounds and employment histories. Several jurors said they had no strong opinions on Trump, and a few said that they do not closely follow the news. The exact racial makeup of the jury, and the ages of the jurors, is unclear.
The full identities of the jury will remain anonymous because of security concerns, but during jury selection the individuals were asked to provide some personal details about themselves. Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the criminal hush-money trial, barred reporters from revealing the current and former employers of jurors and urged them not to use physical descriptors that could compromise their identity.
If Trump is convicted, what would punishment be?
If a Manhattan jury convicts Donald Trump on any of the 34 counts of falsifying business records in the hush-money case, the immediate next question will be what punishment the former president should receive.
It’s a decision that rests entirely with Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing the case. The crime Trump is charged with, falsifying business records in the first degree, is a class E felony in New York, the least serious category, and punishable by up to four years in prison.
But Trump is unlikely to be sentenced to prison if he’s convicted, experts say. He is a first-time offender, and the crime he is charged with is a non-violent paper crime. “I think the judge would probably not incarcerate him under those circumstances alone,” said Cheryl Bader, a law professor at Fordham University who called any sentence of incarceration “unlikely”.
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When to expect a verdict
So when can we expect a verdict?
Proceedings are expected to kick off at 10am ET – and the judge has to instruct jurors on the law of the case before deliberations can begin.
According to Politico, a verdict before lunchtime is highly unlikely but the Playbook team believe things could move very quickly and few observers are expecting the case to stretch into next week.
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The court does not usually sit on a Wednesday but if yesterday’s marathon day in court was any indication, the judge might be keen to wrap this trial up.
On Tuesday, closing arguments ended at 8pm ET after roughly 10 hours that saw the defense and the prosecution sum up their cases. During the previous five weeks of the trial, court tended to end around 5pm ET, suggesting Merchan wanted to move things towards a conclusion.
If you need a refresher on what happened in court on Tuesday, here are some of the highlights:
Trump was accompanied by his children Donald Jr, Eric and Tiffany, alongside their spouses. Ivanka and Melania Trump were noticeably absent with someone calling out, “Where’s Melania”? as Trump walked into the courtroom.
Trump spoke to reporters before heading into the courtroom. He called the judge, Juan Merchan, “corrupt” and “conflicted” but said he couldn’t speak about the trial because of the gag order. He added: “We’ll see how it goes. This is a very dangerous day for America. It’s a very sad day.”
During his closing argument to the jury, Blanche emphasized that Michael Cohen had lied to the jury, calling him the “MVP of liars” and tried to cast doubt on the integrity of a 2016 audio recording that Cohen made of Trump. Blanche also called Cohen a GLOAT, “greatest liar of all time”, in a play on the word GOAT (greatest of all time).
Robert De Niro spoke outside of the building where Trump’s hearing was held to talk about the threats he believes the nation will face if Trump is elected again in 2024. “We don’t want to wake up after the election saying ‘What again? My God, what the hell have we done?’” the actor told reporters.
Steinglass began his closing argument by telling the jury that despite Blanche’s swipes at Cohen’s credibility, “this case is not about Michael Cohen. This case is about Donald Trump,” Steinglass said. “Three rich and powerful men, high up in Trump Tower, tried to become even more powerful by controlling the information that reached voters.”
Steinglass also brought up the Access Hollywood recording of Trump from 2005 and its impact on Trump’s campaign strategy, saying: “The video was vulgar, to say the least,” Steinglass said. “That media strategy shifted from deny, deny, deny, to spin. Ms Hicks testified that among campaign leadership, the consensus was that this was a crisis.”
Trump’s frugality was referenced several times as Steinglass tries to convince the jury that Trump falsified legal documents to cover up repayment to Cohen for allegedly paying hush money to Stormy Daniels.
As he wrapped his hours-long closing statement Steinglass emphasized that Trump allegedly acted in concert with his team to effect a cover-up. “Mr Trump doesn’t have to do these acts himself. He can act in concert with others, and that’s what the allegation is,” Steinglass said.
Jury deliberations expected to start
Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York inches towards its concluding stages on Wednesday as the judge in the case is expected to start jury deliberations.
Once Juan Merchan has instructed jurors on the law, they will begin their deliberations. Merchan’s directives on the law are intended on guiding jurors about how they are supposed to weigh the case.
As a reminder: Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in relation to paying off adult film actor Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. Trump is the first US president, former or present, to face a criminal trial.
Manhattan prosecutors allege that Trump’s then attorney, Michael Cohen, shuttled $130,000 to Daniels days before the election, so that her claim of an extramarital sexual liaison wouldn’t go public and tank his chances at the polls.
We’ll bring you the latest news from Manhattan’s criminal court.
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