The jury found Trump guilty of all counts in the trial

The First Criminal Trial of the Stormy Daniels – The U.S. President’s Relations with Michael Cohen During the 2011 Inquiry

The 12 jurors will need to unanimously agree to either convict or acquit Trump in the first criminal case against a former or sitting U.S. president. Trump will need to wait in the building until the jurors are done with the case. This could take many hours, or days.

The jurors are back in the courtroom at 9:30 a.m. to look at the requests they made in their first five hours of deliberations. Several portion of testimony had been asked to be read back to them.

The jury heard from 22 witnesses during about four weeks of testimony in Manhattan’s criminal court. Jurors also weighed other evidence — mostly documents like phone records, invoices and checks to Michael Cohen, Trump’s once loyal “fixer,” who paid Daniels to keep her story of an alleged affair with the former president quiet.

Though historic, it’s just the first of several separate federal and state cases Trump is currently facing, all while he tries to regain his old seat at the White House. Trump Organization reimbursed Michael Cohen for hush money payments toStormy Daniels to prevent her from going public with information about their relationship. The trial had witnesses who were involved in the Daniels deal, including Cohen, the former publisher of the Enquirer, and Daniels.

The verdict of Alvin Bragg in Trump’s epoch of lying in business records is “rigged, disgraceful”

The jury instructions that were sent to the New York Judge had information about New York tax law, liability, and definitions of intent.

Trump was accused of making up business records. It was brought as a felony case because Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg alleges he committed the crime with the intent to commit or conceal another crime, like violating federal campaign finance laws or state election law, though he’s not directly charged with those crimes.

As the verdicts were read, Trump remained silent and still. But the former president spoke to reporters outside the courtroom, calling it a “rigged, disgraceful trial,” and said the “real verdict” will be rendered on Election Day.

The jury in Manhattan found the former President guilty of all counts for lying in his business records about payments he made to suppress unflattering stories.

The real verdict will be on November 5th, according to Trump. We did not do a thing wrong. I am a very innocent man. The charges weren’t brought by the government but by the district attorney’s office, and he blamed the Biden administration for that. The X account for Trump’s presidential campaign posted an image Thursday evening, showing him with his fist raised and the words “NEVER SURRENDER,” along with a link to his campaign site.

Reporters in the courtroom from outlets such as CNN and The New York Times noted that Trump’s demeanor quickly changed from lighthearted to more serious when he learned a verdict had been reached.

The former president’s future legal battles include challenges over his retention of classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago bathroom and his alleged election interference through a phone call to a Georgia election official imploring them to “find” enough votes for him to win the state.

The New York decision is likely to affect Trump‘s campaign as the presumptive Republican nominee. The other 54 criminal charges have not deterred potential voters, nor has the cases spurred support for him. A conviction is not good news for swing voters.

The defense presented just two witnesses, including Robert Costello, an attorney who wanted to represent Cohen after Cohen’s home and office were searched by the FBI in 2018. Costello had been put on the stand to refute Cohen’s claim that Costello was pressuring Cohen to stay on Trump’s “team.” But Costello’s emails showed that Trump was deciding which of Cohen’s lawyers he wanted to pay, and that Costello was concerned about not giving “the appearance that we are following instructions from [Rudy] Giuliani or the president,” referring to the former New York City mayor who was Trump’s lawyer at the time.

Cohen said he and Weisselberg met and discussed the agreement with Trump shortly before he left for Washington, on or about Jan. 17, 2020. Cohen said Trump approved the deal, saying at the end of the meeting that “it was going to be one heck of a ride” in Washington. In early February, Cohen said he and Trump had another discussion about the arrangement. Photos and White House records corroborated that the two met in the Oval Office at the time.

The payments would be described as pursuant to a “legal retainer.” Weisselberg is currently serving jail time for perjury in the civil trial of Trump.

Cohen ultimately wired the money himself to Daniels, with the understanding, he said, that he would be repaid by Trump. Cohen testified that he had conversations with Trump, and that he had wiretaps on the day of the payments. The defense was rattled when it showed that the call Cohen had said was made by Trump’s bodyguard was actually for a 14-year-old who had made prank calls.

Still, the heart of the case rested on the testimony of what happened after the election, when the records were falsified, in particular the handwritten notes and documents from the Trump Organization’s former comptroller, Jeff McConney.

This point, that Trump was making the payment to influence the election by keeping women voters on board, was corroborated by a number of other witnesses. Hicks testified Trump, by then in the White House, told her that it was better the story came out in 2018, rather than 2016.

She claimed that Trump had offered her a position on his show. A mis trial was requested by the defense because of the detail that Sex wasn’t entirely wanted. It was a reason for Trump to suppress the story. prosecutors said thatTrump knew what happened in that hotel room and didn’t want it to come out The testimony included intimate details of her alleged sexual encounter, which the judge agreed with the defense was not necessary.

Daniels threatened to go public with her accusations that she had sex with Trump in a hotel suite during a celebrity golf tournament if it wasn’t stopped, according to the claims by Cohen and Davidson.

In early October 2016, according to the testimony of former Trump communications aide Hope Hicks, the campaign was rocked by the release of the Access Hollywood tape, where Trump could be heard boasting “When you’re a star they let you do it. You have the ability to do anything. Grab ’em by the p****.”

Two months after Trump decided to run for president in August of 2015, the publisher of the National Enquirer met with Trump and Cohen, according to testimony from the two men.

It was agreed at that meeting that he would be the eyes and ears of the Trump campaign. His job was to look out for negative stories from women he could “take off the marketplace,” by buying up the rights but never publishing them.

The Manhattan Trial of Donald Trump: The First Sentencing or Former President to Face a Grand Jury in the U.S. Senate

After more than a year, a grand jury returned a verdict against Trump, making him the first sitting or former president to face criminal charges.

Republicans quickly dismissed the indictment as an overreach of power by Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who had brought the charges. Trump called the case an interference in his campaign.

Welcome to Opinion’s coverage of the guilty verdict in the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump. The Times Opinion writers discuss the significance of the trial and its impact on the presidential election in a special feature.