Donald Trump’s hush money trial: Highlights from first day of jury deliberations

The short answer? New York state law is among the strictest in the country when it comes to media coverage of court proceedings.

AP reporter David Bauder took a deep dive into this question at the start of the trial — he reported that it comes down to the strength of the state’s defense lawyer lobby, who say that in-court cameras could harm the legal process.

New York did spend a decade experimenting with cameras in the courtroom, but shut it down in 1997. Today, it’s one of two states, alongside Louisiana, that completely restrict video coverage.

▶ Have a question about Trump’s hush money trial? Ask AP reporters. We’ll answer a few more during live coverage tomorrow as jury deliberations resume.

“The judge ought to end it and save his reputation,” Trump told reporters after conferring with his campaign and legal teams.

The former president also railed that “a lot of key witnesses were not called,” even though his side ultimately chose to call only two witnesses to testify.

He again said it’s “very unfair” that he has to be in court instead of out campaigning and is again labeling the case “a Biden witch hunt” and “weaponization.”

Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said the testimony that jurors want read aloud to them involves “a lot of little snippets that are not very long,” but a total of about 35 pages.

Judge Merchan has returned to the bench and Trump is also back in the courtroom.

“OK, where do we stand?” Merchan asked the lawyers, who have been going through trial transcripts to isolate portions requested by the jury.

After going through areas of agreement about how to respond to some of the jury’s requests, the two sides are now asking the judge to settle disagreements about exactly which lines of Pecker’s testimony about the Trump Tower meeting will be read to the jurors.

One reason why the process is somewhat painstaking is that witnesses aren’t always asked about events in one fell swoop. Sometimes lawyers will return to a topic at different points in their questioning, and the same events can be covered again and again on direct examination and cross-examination. One of the goals of sifting through the transcripts is to ensure that no relevant testimony is left out.

The lawyers also want to make sure that testimony they feel isn’t relevant to the jury’s request is left out of whatever is read back to the panel. Opposing sides often debate what is and isn’t pertinent.

With Trump gone from the courtroom, a pair of prosecutors and a pair of Trump lawyers are huddled around the defense table poring over hardcopies of the transcripts.

Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass is leaning over a thick, bound transcript, reading through lines as his colleague Susan Hoffinger jots notes on a notepad. Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove are standing at their spots at the defense table, reading through yet more transcripts and conferring with their opposite numbers. At one point, Steinglass looked up from his volume and flashed a broad smile at Blanche, who reacted in kind — a moment of collegiality among courtroom rivals.

Judge Merchan granted a defense request to allow Trump to return to his waiting area in the courtroom across the hall while the lawyers work on the transcript issue. However, Trump can’t leave the courthouse just yet because the judge wants him nearby in case they require his presence.

He pumped his fist as he walked past reporters but did not stop to speak.

Judge Merchan said they would be summoned to the courtroom after that, once the transcript pages were ready to be reread aloud for them.

Before excusing jurors, Merchan told them that going forward they can work until 6 p.m. each day — but the decision is up to them on how long they want to go after the normal end of the court day at 4:30 p.m.

Merchan said the jury can decide on its own if it wants to hear all of the instructions again, or just some, and then send him another note reflecting that decision.

He estimated that the rereading aloud of the requested testimony would take about a half hour, but he said the relevant transcript pages are still being gathered.

The jurors deliberated for 4½ hours Wednesday.

Prosecutors estimated to Merchan that the sections of testimony from Pecker and Cohen that jurors have asked to rehear are about 30 pages and will take about 30 minutes to be reread.

Judge Merchan said he would bring the jury back into the courtroom to clarify if they wanted to hear all instructions or a portion.

Jurors are asking to have testimony about three critical developments in the alleged hush money scheme reread to them.

They’ve asked to rehear former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker’s and ex-Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s accounts of an August 2015 meeting with Trump at Trump Tower where the tabloid boss agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of his fledgling presidential campaign. Pecker said the plan involved publishing positive stories about Trump and negative stories about his opponents, identifying potentially damaging stories about Trump so they could be squashed before being published. That, prosecutors say, was the beginning of the catch-and-kill scheme at the heart of the case.

Jurors also want to hear Pecker’s account of a phone call he allegedly received from Trump while he was at an investor meeting in New Jersey. The publisher testified that Trump tracked him down and phoned him after hearing a rumor that another outlet had offered to buy former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story alleging that she had a yearlong affair with Trump in the mid-2000s.

Pecker testified that on the call, 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.” He added that Trump told him he doesn’t buy stories because they always get out and that Cohen would be in touch.

The publisher said he came away from the conversation thinking Trump was aware of the specifics of McDougal’s claims. Pecker said he believed the story was true and would have been embarrassing to Trump and his campaign if it were made public. The National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., eventually paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story in an agreement that also included writing and other opportunities with its fitness and other publications.

The fourth item jurors requested is Pecker’s testimony about his decision in October 2016 to back out of an agreement to then sell the rights to McDougal’s story to Trump through a company Cohen had established for the transaction, known as an “assignment of rights.”

“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 testified that he reiterated to Cohen that he wasn’t going forward with the agreement and told him to, “Rip it up.”

“Michael Cohen said, ‘The Boss is going to be very angry at you,’” Pecker testified.

▶ Read more about what witnesses said throughout the trial.

The jury has a verdict sheet and a laptop loaded with documents and other exhibits presented in the case, but not much else. They can’t have any of the transcripts of testimony in the case while deliberating, nor can they be given a written copy of the instructions that were read to them Wednesday morning. Instead, the panel must send a note to the judge each time it wants to have a snippet of testimony read out or get a refresher on the instructions it must follow.

He’ll bring jurors into the courtroom and have it read to them once the testimony is collected.

The jury has four requests. It wants to hear David Pecker’s testimony regarding the August 2015 Trump Tower meeting where he agreed to identify negative stories for Trump, a phone call he says he had with Trump about the McDougal deal and his decision not to sell the rights to McDougal’s story to Trump. The jury also wants to hear Michael Cohen’s testimony about the same Trump Tower meeting.

The note’s contents have not yet been made public, but it should be read in court soon.

The jury, which is deliberating in secret in a side room, indicated it had a note by ringing a courtroom bell at 2:56 p.m., about 3½ hours into deliberations. While deliberating, juries can only communicate with the judge by note. They may involve questions such as a request to hear portions of testimony or rehear certain instructions.

The jury isn’t sequestered, the legal term for isolating the panel from the outside world, and leave court at the end of each day. That was once mandatory for many felony cases in New York state, but the requirement was lifted in 2001, and sequestration is now rare.

Trump is continuing to complain on social media as the jury deliberates. “IT IS RIDICULOUS, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, AND UNAMERICAN that the highly Conflicted, Radical Left Judge is not requiring a unanimous decision on the fake charges against me brought by Soros backed D.A. Alvin Bragg,” he wrote. “A THIRD WORLD ELECTION INTERFERENCE HOAX!”

In fact, any verdict has to be unanimous: guilty or not guilty. If the jurors disagree, they keep deliberating. If they get to a point where they are hopelessly deadlocked, then the judge can declare a mistrial.

If they convict, they must agree that Trump created a false entry in his company’s records or caused someone else to do so, and that he did so with the intent of committing or concealing another crime — in this case, violating a state election law.

What the jurors do not have to agree on, however, is which way that election law was violated.

They will deliberate as long as they need to. The standard court day runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with a break for lunch (jurors’ meals will be delivered). But judges sometimes extend the hours if jurors wish. In this case, Judge Merchan already has decided that deliberations will proceed on Wednesday, which is normally a day off from the trial.

There’s no limit on how many days deliberations can continue.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden isn’t monitoring the start of jury deliberations in the hush-money case against the former president.

“The president’s focused on the American people, delivering for the American people,” she told reporters traveling with Biden to Philadelphia, where he has campaign events scheduled Wednesday. “That’s his focus.”

As the jury begins its deliberations, claims are spreading across social media that Judge Merchan told the panel they don’t need a unanimous verdict to convict Trump.

That’s false.

To convict Trump, Merchan told the jury they will have to find unanimously — that is, all 12 jurors must agree — that the former president created a fraudulent entry in his company’s records or caused someone else to do so, and that he did so with the intent of committing or concealing another crime.

What’s being distorted by some online is the judge’s instruction about how to reach a verdict about that second element.

Prosecutors say the crime Trump committed or hid is a violation of a New York election law making it illegal for two or more conspirators “to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”

Merchan gave the jurors three possible “unlawful means”: falsifying other business records, breaking the Federal Election Campaign Act or submitting false information on a tax return.

For a conviction, each juror would have to find that at least one of those three things happened, but they don’t have to agree unanimously which it was.

The courtroom is shutting down for its usual lunch hour. No action will occur and no notes will be passed during the 1 to 2:15 p.m. break.

While there, the former president has continued making a series of posts on his social media network quoting legal commentators and political talking heads who view the case in his favor.

The deliberations will proceed in secret, in a room reserved specifically for jurors and in a process that’s intentionally opaque.

Jurors can communicate with the court through notes that ask the judge, for instance, for legal guidance or to have particular excerpts of testimony read back to them. But without knowing what jurors are saying to each other, it’s hard to read too much into the meaning of any note.

It’s anyone’s guess how long the jury will deliberate for and there’s no time limit either. The jury must evaluate 34 counts of falsifying business records, so that could take some time, and a verdict might not come by the end of the week.

To reach a verdict on any given count, either guilty or not guilty, all 12 jurors must agree with the decision for the judge to accept it.

Things will get trickier if the jury can’t reach a consensus after several days of deliberations. Though defense lawyers might seek an immediate mistrial, Merchan is likely to call the jurors in and instruct them to keep trying for a verdict and to be willing to reconsider their positions without abandoning their conscience or judgment just to go along with others.

If, after that instruction, the jury still can’t reach a verdict, the judge would have the option to deem the panel hopelessly deadlocked and declare a mistrial.

Trump told reporters that the charges were rigged and again accused the judge of being conflicted while saying that “Mother Teresa could not beat these charges.”

“What is happening here is weaponization at a level that nobody’s seen before ever and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” Trump said.

Trump repeated accusations that the criminal charges were brought by the Biden administration to hit him, as the president’s main election opponent.

Judge Merchan told Trump and the lawyers, “You cannot leave the building. We need you to be able to get here quickly if we do receive a note.”

After Merchan left the bench, Trump turned and walked to chat with his son, Donald Trump Jr. and lawyer Alina Habba.

After the main jury left, Merchan spoke to the six alternates who remained in the courtroom, telling them they would be on standby in the courthouse as deliberations got underway.

He thanked them for their service and diligence, noting he saw one of the alternates go through three notebooks. “There might be a need for you at some point in deliberations,” he said.

The alternates will be kept separate from the main jury and must also surrender their phones to court officers while deliberations are in progress. If a member of the main panel is unable to continue, an alternate can take that person’s place and deliberations will begin anew.

After conferring with lawyers from both sides, Merchan clarifies that any jury notes should be signed by the foreperson using only his juror number — 1 — not his actual name. Jurors names are being kept from the public and any notes will be put on the public docket.

Merchan, winding down with more standard instructions, told jurors that all deliberations must happen in secret in the jury room and that they should only communicate with him by note, in part so there are no misunderstandings. He said jurors must give their cell phones to court officers to hold for them while deliberating.

Lunch, he said, “will of course be provided.”

Prosecutors are required to prove two elements for each of the counts in order to find Trump guilty, Judge Merchan told the jurors.

They must find that he “personally or by acting in concert with another person or persons made or caused a false entry in the records” or a business. Prosecutors must also prove that Trump did so with the intent to commit or conceal another crime.

Prosecutors allege the other crime that Trump intended to commit or conceal was a violation of a state election law regarding a conspiracy to promote or prevent an election by unlawful means.

The alleged unlawful means that jurors must consider are:

• Violations of federal campaign finance law
• Falsifying other business records, such as paperwork used to establish the bank account used to pay Stormy Daniels, bank records and tax forms
• Violation of city, state and federal tax laws, including by providing false or fraudulent information on tax returns, “even if it does not result in underpayment of taxes”

Trump has largely continued his posture of leaning back in his chair, sitting relatively still with his eyes closed and head tilted as Merchan instructs the jury. He has occasionally sat up straight and gazed at the judge for a few minutes as he speaks.

At one point, Trump leaned forward to look at the papers on the table in front of him, then relaxed back into his chair.

Merchan went over New York’s law against “conspiracy to promote or prevent election,” a statute that’s important to the case. That’s because prosecutors claim that Trump falsified business records in order to cover up alleged violations of the election conspiracy law. The alleged violations, prosecutors say, were hush money payments that really amounted to illegal campaign contributions.

Under New York law, it’s a misdemeanor for two or more people to conspire to promote or prevent a candidate’s election “by unlawful means” if at least one of the conspirators takes action to carry out the plot.

The law also requires that a defendant have the intent unlawfully to prevent or promote the candidate’s election — not just that a defendant knows about the conspiracy or be present when it’s discussed.

In the defense’s closing argument Tuesday, Trump attorney Todd Blanche urged jurors to reject prosecutors’ election conspiracy assertions, insisting that “every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate.”

Merchan instructed jurors on the concept of accessorial liability, under which a defendant can be held criminally responsible for someone else’s actions.

That’s a key component of the prosecution’s theory of the case because, while Trump signed some of the checks at issue, people working for his company processed Cohen’s invoices and entered the transactions into its accounting system.

In order to hold Trump liable for those actions, Merchan said jurors must find beyond a reasonable doubt that he solicited, requested or commanded those people to engage in that conduct and that he acted intentionally.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass touched on accessorial liability in his closing argument Tuesday, telling jurors: “No one is saying the defendant actually got behind a computer and typed in the false vouchers or stamped the false invoices or printed the false checks.”

“But he set in motion a chain of events that led to the creation of the false business records,” Steinglass said.

Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies wrongdoing.

Because Cohen is considered an accomplice to the alleged crimes, the judge is instructing the jury that under the law, Trump cannot be convicted solely by Cohen’s testimony unless it is supported by corroborating evidence.

Merchan gave the jury some guidance on factors it can use to assess witness testimony, including its plausibility, its consistency with other testimony, the witness’ manner on the stand and whether the person has a motive to lie.

But, the judge said, “There is no particular formula for evaluating the truthfulness and accuracy of another person’s statement.”

The principles he outlined are standard but perhaps all the more relevant after Trump’s defense leaned heavily on questioning the credibility of key prosecution witnesses, including the ex-president’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.

Jurors appear alert and engaged as Merchan instructs them. Several are taking notes as he recites instructions.

Echoing standard jury instructions, Merchan notes that even though the defense presented evidence, the burden of proof remains on the prosecutor and that Trump is “not required to prove that he is not guilty.”

“In fact,” noted Merchan, “the defendant is not required to prove or disprove anything.”

Merchan is reminding jurors of their solemn responsibility to decide Trump’s guilt or innocence, gently and methodically reading through standard jury instructions that have a special resonance in the former president’s high-profile case.

“As a juror, you are asked to make a very important decision about another member of the community,” Merchan said, underscoring that — in the eyes of the law — juror and Trump are peers.

Merchan also reminded jurors of their vow, during jury selection, “to set aside any personal bias you may have in favor of or against” Trump and decide the case “fairly based on the evidence of the law.”

Per the law, jurors will not receive copies of the instructions, Merchan says, but they can request to hear them again as many times as they wish.

Trump leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as Merchan told jurors that he would take about an hour to read them the instructions.

The judge told jurors, “It is not my responsibility to judge the evidence here. It is yours.”

He did not stop to speak to reporters as he typically does before court each day.

Trump posted again on his social media network before he left Trump Tower to head to the courthouse, making another all-caps rant about the trial, the judge and Cohen. He called it a “KANGAROO COURT!” and falsely claimed that the judge barred him from defending himself by claiming that his alleged actions were taken on the advice of his then-lawyer, Cohen. Trump’s lawyers in March notified the court that they would not rely on that defense.

“THERE WAS NO CRIME, EXCEPT FOR THE BUM THAT GOT CAUGHT STEALING FROM ME!” Trump said, apparently referring to Cohen. He added: “IN GOD WE TRUST!”

The gag order prohibits Trump from making out-of-court statements about witnesses, and he was previously penalized for comments about Cohen. But, it’s unclear if Trump’s latest rant would rise to the level of a violation — or if prosecutors would seek to have Trump sanctioned for it. The judge has also indicated that he’d give Trump leeway in certain instances to respond to attacks from Cohen.

Donald Trump won’t be the only notable defendant in Manhattan’s criminal courthouse on Wednesday.

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein will be in a courtroom two floors below for a hearing in his New York rape case.

Trump’s trial resumes at 10 a.m. on the 15th floor of the courthouse at 100 Centre Street. Weinstein’s hearing is slated for 2:15 p.m. on the 13th floor.

Weinstein faces a retrial as soon as September after New York’s highest court threw out his 2020 conviction last month, ruling that the trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that weren’t part of the case.

Weinstein had been convicted of rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actor in 2013 and of sexually assaulting a former TV and film production assistant in 2006. Weinstein, 72, has maintained his innocence.

Wednesday’s court hearing will address various legal issues related to the retrial.

Weinstein’s original trial was held in the same courtroom where Trump is now on trial, but the two men are unlikely to bump into each other: Weinstein is in custody and will be brought to and from the courtroom under guard. Trump is not in custody.