Here’s what jurors at Trump’s hush money trial are considering as they deliberate whether to convict ex-prez
A jury of 12 Manhattanites is weighing whether to convict Donald Trump of illegally concealing a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.
The panelists, five women and seven men, could find the ex-president guilty of some or all of the 34 felony counts of falsifying business records that Trump faces — felonies that each carry theoretical prison time of up to four years.
Here are the details that jurors — including two lawyers, a retired wealth manager, a speech therapist, an engineer, and some who complimented Trump for “speaking his mind” or criticized his “selfish” public persona — are weighing while they work toward making a decision.
Were these 34 different business documents ‘falsified’?
Jurors were presented with 34 different business records that prosecutors say were tied to Trump’s alleged reimbursement of the hush money his former “fixer” Michael Cohen paid to Daniels.
For each of the 34 records, jurors will be tasked with deciding whether they are “false” beyond a reasonable doubt.
The evidence presented by prosecutors at the seven-week trial in Manhattan Supreme Court showed that Cohen received $35,000 per month from Trump’s trust account throughout 2017.
Jurors also saw the handwriting of Cohen and then-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg on a document describing a scheme to pay Cohen a “grossed-up sum” of $420,000 that year, including a bonus and to account for income taxes he’d have to pay.
Cohen and Weisselberg wrote these notes on a copy of a bank statement that described Cohen’s shell company paying Daniels’ lawyer $130,000 in October 2016, days before the election.
Yet the Trump company documents, including 11 invoices, 12 vouchers and 11 checks, all describe the purpose of Cohen’s payments as phony “legal services” — rather than as payback for silencing a porn star, prosecutors said.
Did Trump have ‘intent’ to cover up a ‘conspiracy’ to elect him in 2016 by ‘unlawful means’?
If they choose to unanimously find him guilty of first-degree “falsifying business records,” the jury needs to then find that Trump fudged the records with the “intent” to cover up another crime.
That crime, according to prosecutors, is a New York state law that makes it illegal to enter into a “conspiracy” to get someone elected to public office by “unlawful means.”
David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer magazine, testified to working with Trump and Cohen to bury women’s stories about affairs with Trump, and to publish puff pieces extolling his virtues.
Jurors need to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump had the “intent” — defined as “conscious objective or purpose” — to cover up this alleged conspiracy.
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But prosecutors “need not prove that the other crime was in fact committed,” Justice Juan Merchan explained Wednesday morning.
In other words, to convict, jurors need to believe that the conspiracy existed and that Trump tried to conceal it, but don’t need to believe that the conspiracy happened beyond a reasonable doubt.
What were those ‘unlawful means’? Jurors have three choices:
If jurors make it this far, they’ll then have to decide whether they believe that the alleged 2016 election conspiracy — which involves hush money payouts to both Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal — was done using what are called “unlawful means.”
But panelists can take a choose-your-own-adventure path to deciding what those “unlawful means” are.
They have three choices, Merchan explained.
They could find that the hush money payouts breached federal campaign finance laws by exceeding the $2,700 cap on individual donations to campaigns, but only if the payouts wouldn’t have happened anyway even if Trump wasn’t running, the judge said.
Jurors could also find that the hush money payouts violated tax law, or that more business records were “falsified” during the alleged conspiracy.
For example, jurors could find that the “unlawful means” are that Cohen fudged records by not being honest with banks when he created his shell companies that he used for the payoffs, Merchan said Wednesday morning.
Jurors, if they choose to convict, have to agree unanimously that the “unlawful means” happened. But they could individually believe that Trump, Cohen and Pecker used different underlying “unlawful means” and still convict, the judge said.
Could Trump be found guilty of only some of the counts?
The jury could also choose to acquit Trump on all of the counts — for which he would not be allowed to be re-tried — or to convict him on some of the counts, like for example the checks that he signed himself.
They could also fail to come to an unanimous verdict and deadlock, in which case the judge could order a mistrial.
Any new trial would almost certainly not happen until after November’s presidential election, if at all.
