May 29, 2024 11:55 AM UTC

Jury Deliberates Trump Hush Money Case

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Washington Post reports, the jury in the New York criminal trial against ex-President Donald Trump on charges of falsifying business records to conceal a “hush money” payment to porn star Stormy Daniels is now deliberating the historic case:

The jury in Donald Trump’s hush money trial began deliberating Wednesday morning in the first criminal case against a former U.S. president — weighing a momentous decision that could brand the presumptive GOP presidential nominee as a felon just five months before Election Day.

“You are the judges of the facts, and you are responsible for deciding whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty,” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said while giving the jurors their final legal instructions.

The judge emphasized that the verdict is solely theirs to make and that they should not take anything he has said or done as suggestive of a verdict. The entire panel appeared to be paying close attention to the judge, and at least one juror was taking notes…

Now comes the wait for the jury to conclude its deliberations and return a verdict. Trump’s legal team fought hard to delay this trial and then to either dismiss the case or get a mistrial ruling, but none of those attempts succeeded. Through 20 witnesses including National Enquirer publisher David Pecker who described the “catch and kill” arrangement with Trump to prevent the publication of negative stories during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Trump’s former “fixer” Michael Cohen who described the hush money plot in detail, prosecutors have built the case for their criminal charges–while also providing damaging broader context about Trump’s attempts to cover up his multitudinous misdeeds that will leave lingering questions no matter what the verdict is.

And in the worst case, the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States is about to be a convicted felon. Stay tuned with literally the rest of the world.