Jurors in President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial are scheduled to begin deliberations Wednesday after receiving instructions from the judge on the law and factors they will consider to reach a verdict in the first criminal case against a former U.S. president.
The hearing came after a day of marathon closing arguments in which Manhattan prosecutors accused Trump of participating in a hush-money scheme to hide embarrassing stories that could have damaged his campaign and of “attempting to deceive” voters in the 2016 presidential election.
“The essence of this case is one of conspiracy and cover-up,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors in closing arguments that began in the early afternoon and continued into the evening.
In contrast, Trump’s lawyers have declared their client innocent of all charges, urged the jury for a blanket acquittal and denounced the prosecution’s key witness as “the biggest liar in history.”
The defense arguments, which have differing sharply on assessments of witness credibility, Trump’s responsibility and the strength of the evidence, have given both sides a final chance to score points with a jury preparing to begin the monumental and historically unprecedented task of deciding whether to convict the presumptive Republican presidential nominee ahead of the November election.
Trump faces 34 felony charges of falsifying business records, which carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty and denies any wrongdoing.
It is unclear whether prosecutors will seek prison time if convicted, or whether a judge would impose that penalty.
Jurors will have the choice of finding Trump guilty of all charges, acquitted of all charges or returning a mixed verdict finding him guilty of some charges and not guilty of others.
If they are unable to reach a unanimous verdict after several days of deliberations, Judge Juan M. Marchan could declare a mistrial.
The trial focused on allegations that Trump and his associates conspired to cover up potentially embarrassing stories during the 2016 presidential campaign, including through hush money payments to a porn star who claimed to have had sex with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche told jurors they couldn’t trust actor Stormy Daniels or Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer who paid her.
“President Trump is innocent. He committed no crime and the district attorney has not met his burden of proof,” Blanche said.
Steinglass sought to allay concerns jurors might have about the credibility of witnesses, such as Trump, who has said he never had sex with Daniels and has repeatedly attacked Cohen as a liar.
Prosecutors acknowledged that Daniels’ account of the 2006 incident in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite, which Trump has denied, was “horrifying” at times, but said the details she provided – such as the décor and what she saw when she peered into Trump’s bathroom closet – were full of touchstones that “ringed some truth.”
And this story is important because it “strengthens[Trump’s]incentive to buy her silence,” he said.
“Her story is complicated and it’s uncomfortable to hear, and maybe it’s uncomfortable for some of you, but that’s what it’s about,” Steinglass said. He told jurors, “Simply put, Stormy Daniels is the motive.”
The reckoning unfolded against the backdrop of the revelation of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump bragged about making sexual advances on women without their consent. If Daniels’ story had emerged in the aftermath of the recording, Steinglass said, it would have undermined the strategy to spin Trump’s statements.
“This is crucial to understand,” Steinglass said. While Trump has denied his words on the tape, calling them “locker room talk,” the prosecutor said he was “negotiating to silence a porn star.”
Blanche, who spoke first, tried to downplay the impact, saying the “Access Hollywood” tape was not a “doomsday event.”
Steinglass also tried to convince jurors that the prosecution’s case did not rely solely on Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal intermediary, who paid Daniels $130,000 in hush money.
Cohen later pleaded guilty to federal charges of participating in the hush money payments and lying to Congress. He served time in prison and was disbarred, but was a material witness at the trial because of his direct involvement in the transactions.
“This is not a question of whether you like Michael Cohen or not. It’s not a question of whether you want to do business with Michael Cohen or not. It’s a question of whether he can provide useful and credible information about what happened in this case, and the truth is that he was in the best position to know it,” Steinglass said.
While the case has featured some sometimes sordid discussions of sex and tabloid-industry practices, the actual charges concern something decidedly less flashy: Trump’s reimbursement of payments to Cohen.
The reimbursements were recorded as legal expenses, but prosecutors say they were false statements designed to conceal the purpose of the hush money deals and illegally interfere with the 2016 election.
The defense argues that Cohen actually performed substantial legal work for Trump and his family.
In his hours-long address to the jury, Blanche delivered a sweeping denial reminiscent of Trump’s “deny everything” approach and slammed the entire foundation of the case.
He said Cohen, not Trump, prepared the invoices submitted to the Trump Organization for repayment, rejected prosecutors’ caricature of him as a detail-oriented manager, suggested Trump was preoccupied with the presidency and not the checks he signed, and rejected the idea that the hush money scheme amounted to election interference.
“Every political campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people working together to help someone win,” Blanche said.
As expected, he engaged in lengthy cross-examination with Cohen, but his fiercest attacks were directed at Cohen.
Branche called Cohen a “GLOAT,” meaning “the greatest liar of all time,” in a nod to the acronym “GOAT” used primarily in sports, and called him “the embodiment of reasonable doubt.” The term was deliberate, because to convict Trump, jurors must believe the prosecution proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
“He has lied to you repeatedly. He has lied to you repeatedly, over and over, since before you even met him. His financial and personal well-being depends on this case. He is biased and is trying to tell you a story that is not true,” Blanche said, referring to Cohen’s relentless and often scathing personal attacks on Trump on social media, as well as the significant income he has made from his books and podcasts about Trump.
