Trump likens himself to Mother Teresa as jury
weighs fate in hush-money case
After Judge Juan Merchan instructs jury, Trump rails
against proceedings, saying even saint ‘could not beat these charges’
Victoria
Bekiempis
Wed 29 May
2024 12.25 EDT
Donald
Trump’s criminal hush-money case in New York inched towards its conclusion on
Wednesday with jury deliberations starting just before 11.30am local time.
Right after
jurors began weighing the former president’s fate, Trump railed against the
proceedings and compared himself to a saint, saying in the hallway: “Mother
Teresa could not beat these charges. The charges are rigged. The whole thing is
rigged.”
Jurors
deliberated for approximately four-and-a-half hours and were sent home at 4pm.
They sent two notes to the court late in the afternoon: one was a request to
hear some trial testimony from two key witnesses.
The other
note was a request to re-hear judge Juan Merchan’s instructions. Before the
start of deliberations, Merchan instructed jurors . Merchan’s directives on the
law were intended to guide jurors about how they are supposed to weigh the
case.
Early on in
his instructions, Merchan said that jurors should not look to his comments
during the trial as suggesting that Trump was innocent or guilty.
“It is not
my responsibility to judge the evidence here,” Merchan said. “You are the
judges of the facts.”
He also
told jurors that they should not consider Trump possibly winding up in jail
when rendering their verdict.
“You may
not speculate with matters related to sentencing or punishment,” Merchan said.
The judge remarked that it was “my responsibility” to determine a possible
sentence – not jurors’.
The former
president is charged with falsifying business records in relation to paying off
the 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 would not go public and tank his chances at the polls. They said
that Trump, Cohen and tabloid honcho David Pecker met at Trump Tower in summer
2015, where they hatched a plan to keep unfavorable information under wraps.
The trial
testimony requested by jurors included Pecker’s testimony on a phone call with
Trump, his testimony about his handling of one alleged Trump paramour’s life
rights, his testimony regarding the Trump Tower meeting and Cohen’s testimony
on that same confab.
Merchan
explained how a person could be found guilty of breaking the law in this case,
even if they didn’t break the law directly. This relates to Trump, as his
intermediaries are accused of performing the actions that constitute crimes,
but prosecutors contend that he has criminal liability by directing them to do
so.
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,” Merchan explained.
To find a
defendant guilty of committing a crime via others, Merchan said, “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 ...
This next
step of Trump’s case marks a pivotal moment. If jurors reach a verdict, they
will determine whether he is guilty or not guilty.
If Trump is
found guilty, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate faces the
possibility of jail – albeit unlikely – when he is sentenced. Trump denies the
charges against him.
Trump also
faces three other criminal cases: one for trying to influence the 2020 election
in Georgia, another for his conduct around the January 6 Capitol attack, and a
third one involving his treatment of sensitive documents after he left the
White House. These other three cases have been pushed back and it is unlikely
that any would conclude before the November election.
Trump’s
legal woes do not appear to have affected him in the polls. He still boasts a
narrow edge over Joe Biden in some polls and is proving strong in some states
that are key to winning the race.
On Tuesday,
the defense and prosecution presented their summations. Prosecutor Joshua
Steinglass insisted that the case was about far more than paying off Daniels.
Rather,
Steinglass said, Trump’s plot with Cohen andPecker in summer 2015 – where the
scandal sheet publisher said he would keep an eye out for damaging information
about the then candidate – deprived Americans of true choice at the ballot box.
“Three rich
and powerful men, high up in Trump Tower, tried to become even more powerful by
controlling the information that reached voters,” Steinglass said.
“The value
of this corrupt bargain. It turned out to be one of the most valuable
contributions to the Trump campaign. This scheme cooked up by these men, at
this time, could very well be what got Donald Trump elected.
“In
simplest terms, Stormy Daniels is the motive,” Steinglass said at one point.
Trump’s
defense lawyer Todd Blanche insisted that Cohen was a liar and that even if
there were a conspiracy, it was not a big deal.
“It doesn’t
matter if there was a conspiracy to try and win an election,” Blanche said of
the alleged scheme involving Trump. “Every campaign in this country is a
conspiracy to promote a candidate.”
Blanche
phrased this as a hypothetical – he did not admit there was a conspiracy and in
fact, denied one. But, even if there were, Blanche insisted it was business as
usual.
“Many
politicians work with the media to try and promote their image,” Blanche said,
telling jurors at one point that in order for it to be a legal problem, “you
have to find that this effort was done by unlawful means”.
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