The jury will begin deliberations next week. Here’s the latest. (2024)

Pinned

A swift defense and a decision ahead: 5 takeaways.

Testimony started April 22 with a tabloid publisher called by the prosecution, David Pecker, and ended with a lawyer called by the defense, Robert Costello. In between were a p*rn star, Stormy Daniels; Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen; an erstwhile aide of Mr. Trump, Hope Hicks; and a bevy of lesser-known witnesses, mostly for the prosecution.

The former president is charged with falsifying 34 business records to hide Mr. Cohen’s reimbursem*nt for a $130,000 hush-money payment he made to Ms. Daniels, who says she had sex with Mr. Trump in 2006. Mr. Trump, 77, has denied the charges and the encounter. If convicted, he could face prison or probation.

Here are five takeaways from Mr. Trump’s 20th day on trial.

The defense’s big witness may not have been a great idea.

Mr. Costello, once Mr. Cohen’s informal adviser, continued on the stand on Tuesday, after a reprimand Monday from Justice Juan M. Merchan, who said he had been “contemptuous.”

Mr. Costello had been called by the defense to attack Mr. Cohen’s credibility, but during cross-examination, prosecutors sought to portray him as an agent of Mr. Trump, suggesting he was trying to prevent Mr. Cohen from cooperating with federal investigators. That included reading an email from Mr. Costello saying he was trying to “get Cohen on the right page.”

The defense had hoped to damage Mr. Cohen — a key prosecution witness — beyond repair. Mr. Costello’s choppy performance may be remembered, too.

Trump talked a lot, just not in court.

Mr. Trump’s vociferousness has never been questioned. During the trial, he regularly spoke outside the courtroom, including Tuesday, when he repeated refrains slamming the trial and complaining about the courtroom temperature.

While he called the trial “election interference,” saying it was impeding his campaign, Mr. Trump did squeeze in rallies on weekends and off-days, as well as some golf.

But after teasing an appearance on the stand, he declined to testify. And after violating a gag order 10 times, he carped carefully, particularly after Justice Merchan threatened jail time.

Trump’s entourage exhibited his pull over his party.

Republican politicians might not normally flock to defend a person enmeshed in a trial prompted by a p*rn star’s story of extramarital sex. But Mr. Trump has a tight hold on his party, and right-wing luminaries came to support their presumptive presidential nominee.

Throughout the trial, visitors included several potential vice-presidential candidates — including Senator J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who was once Mr. Trump’s primary opponent — and a brood of Republican lawmakers. Mr. Trump’s son, Donald Jr., also attended Tuesday; another son, Eric, was a regular. There was also a former leader of New York’s Hells Angels chapter.

Many visitors then attacked witnesses, something Mr. Trump could not do because of the gag order.

Perhaps the most notable attendee was Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, who called the trial “corrupt” and a “sham.” It was a remarkable attack on the legal system by a staunch conservative who is second in line to the presidency — and an indication of Mr. Trump’s sway.

Some key figures were never called to the stand.

Notable as some witnesses were, absences were also interesting. One big name: Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who says she had an affair with Mr. Trump in 2006 and 2007. Mr. Trump denies this, and she was not called as a witness, though she indicated she was keeping an eye on the case.

Other unseen characters who were frequently mentioned included Keith Schiller, the former president’s bodyguard, and Dylan Howard, a former editor of The National Enquirer, who had a medical condition that prevented him traveling from Australia.

Both might have told interesting tales: Mr. Howard helped buy up and bury unflattering stories about Mr. Trump, including Ms. McDougal’s. He also participated in discussions about Ms. Daniels’s story.

Mr. Schiller was close to Mr. Trump, and fielded a call from Mr. Cohen in which Mr. Cohen says he discussed Ms. Daniels with the former president. But Mr. Schiller was not called by the prosecution or defense.

It will be at least a week before the jury starts to deliberate.

Jurors will return May 28 for closing arguments, which Justice Merchan predicted would last the entire day. On Tuesday afternoon, lawyers argued over jury instructions, an important part of any trial.

After several hours of debate, with both sides seemingly winning some points, Justice Merchan said he would provide a final version of those instructions on Thursday.

Justice Merchan said he hoped deliberations would begin May 29. And after sitting silently through 22 witnesses over 16 days of testimony, the jurors’ verdict will be unprecedented: the first in an American president’s criminal trial.

Testimony in the case is over. The next time we see the jury will be a week from now, for closing arguments. Thanks for reading.

Justice Merchan finally expressed impatience as Bove continued to argue. But Bove insisted it was important, and Merchan gave him one more chance to speak. Now, though, the judge is describing his past decisions on the matter at hand: Michael Cohen having been Trump’s lawyer when the charged conduct took place.

“My answer hasn’t changed, and honestly I find it disingenuous for you to make the argument at this point,” Merchan says, instructing Bove not to stand up again. “I let you speak,” he says to the defense lawyer. Now, the judge says, it is his turn to speak.

Bove says that he is not being disingenuous, after clarifying that he is making his argument for the record — meaning if the defense appeals and other judges evaluate this case, Bove wants them to see this. Merchan tells him again he’s repeating himself. He appears to have lost his patience, as he says that the defense lawyers continue to try to make this argument to the jury, and that they will be barred from doing so.

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Prosecutors fired back, arguing that Trump should be treated like any other defendant. The unique importance of the case, they argued, was not a reason for “deviating from the law, it’s a reason for applying the law.” Merchan appeared to agree, saying, “There’s no reason to rewrite the law for this case.”

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But if there’s nothing wrong with Trump having participated in the meeting, Justice Merchan asks, why not suggest to the jury that he did so? He then reserves judgment on the wording addressing Trump’s participation in the conspiracy — it sounded to me as if he were inclined to side with the prosecution on that issue, but we won’t know for some time.

The reporters in the room have bristled at the suggestion that the deal with The National Enquirer, in which the tabloid killed negative stories on Trump’s behalf, was a typical agreement for a publication to strike with a politician.

But Justice Merchan pointed out that the felony falsifying business records charges that Trump faces include an intent to conceal another crime. The law doesn't require prosecutors to show that Trump intended to orchestrate a conspiracy, but rather that by falsifying business records, he intended to hide one.

Merchan says he will leave that instruction as is, in a win for prosecutors. It would have been far harder for them to show that Trump intended to orchestrate a conspiracy.

One person has a foot kicked up on a small suitcase. Real Friday energy in here, as the jury has gone home until next week.

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This may be one of the few times the judge, prosecutors and the defense all found something funny.

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Trump has already been fined $10,000 for violating the gag order, and Justice Merchan earlier this month threatened to imprison him if he violated it again. Such threats have recently been central to Trump’s claims on the trail and in fund-raising emails that the trial is biased against him.

He has, however, reserved his final decision on the argument over the word “willfully.”

That second crime, prosecutors have specified in their proposed jury instructions, is a violation of a state election law that forbids a person from seeking election by “unlawful means.”

So, currently, the defense and prosecution are debating what types of unlawful means apply. The defense is asking for additions that would make it clear that only crimes should count, while the prosecution suggests that civil violations should apply, too.

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For this reason, we will strive to give our readers high-level updates that we hope will help them understand what both sides want, and where the judge seems to be leaning.

Prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers will jockey for an edge with jurors in a charge conference.

During the charge conference, the two sides are expected to lay out their dueling visions for how the judge should instruct the jury as it prepares to weigh the charges against Mr. Trump — 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Jury instructions are typically meant to translate legal treatises into something intelligible to the 12 laypeople who will decide the case. The instructions provide jurors with a road map to help them apply the law to the facts they have gleaned from the witnesses, documents and other evidence that has been presented to them.

The New York Times has obtained early drafts of each side’s proposed jury instructions, which were filed with the court in recent days and will underpin their arguments to the judge, Juan M. Merchan. That conference will take place outside the presence of the jury.

The prosecutors’ proposed instructions, among other things, ask the judge to give the jury what legal experts said was unusual flexibility in determining whether Mr. Trump had a role in the creation of the false records at the center of the charges.

Prosecutors argue that even if Mr. Trump did not create the records himself, the jury can find him responsible if the creation of the false records was “a reasonably foreseeable consequence of his conduct.”

The defense’s request drilled down on a variety of other issues that they already sought to raise at trial.

One such issue is their suggestion that Michael D. Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, improperly deleted data from his phone. In their request for jury instructions, they asked the judge to tell the jurors that they can infer that anything Mr. Cohen may have deleted would have been unfavorable to him.

The proposed instructions provided by both sides, and their arguments in the conference in court, give the lawyers the opportunity to have some input. But the judge has broad leeway in how he will instruct the jury on the law. The jurors will not actually receive the instructions until next week, after they hear closing arguments and shortly before they begin deliberations.

Jury instructions are always crucial, but they will be even more important in this case, which focuses on the cover-up of a sex scandal, but hinges on complex and untested legal issues. That means the outcome of the case could very well turn on the substance of the instructions jurors receive.

Here’s more about the proposals from each side.

Prosecutors want to offer jurors options to convict Trump

To convict Mr. Trump of the felonies he is charged with, prosecutors must show that he falsified business records in order to commit or conceal another crime. The prosecution’s proposed instructions say that other crime is the violation of an election law statue that makes it illegal to conspire to promote or prevent a candidate’s election by “unlawful means.”

But what are those unlawful means? Prosecutors want the judge to instruct the jurors that they can choose any of three options: a federal election law violation; the falsification of other business records; or a tax crime.

The jurors must unanimously agree that Mr. Trump conspired to promote his own election by unlawful means. But prosecutors are asking the judge to instruct jurors that they do not need to reach a unanimous conclusion about what the unlawful means were.

The defense is taking aim at Cohen’s work for Trump

Mr. Trump’s lawyers appear to be referencing one possible defense that Justice Merchan has already rejected: the idea that Mr. Trump was simply following the legal advice of his one-time lawyer, Mr. Cohen.

In their proposed instructions, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked the judge to remind jurors that Mr. Cohen had served as a lawyer for Mr. Trump while he worked at the Trump Organization. That could suggest to jurors that the former fixer’s role as Mr. Trump’s lawyer should affect the way they view the case as a whole.

This appears to be something of an end run around Justice Merchan’s earlier decision that Mr. Trump could not pursue a so-called advice-of-counsel defense, which argues that someone is not guilty of a crime because they acted based on a lawyer’s advice.

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Costello’s task was to get Cohen on the ‘right page’ for Trump.

Mr. Costello’s testimony centered on his relationship with the prosecution’s star witness, Michael D. Cohen. Mr. Costello, a prosecutor turned defense lawyer, was an informal adviser to Mr. Cohen, the former president’s onetime fixer. Mr. Cohen had made a $130,000 hush-money payment to a p*rn star on the eve of the 2016 election to silence her account of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cohen testified that Mr. Trump had ordered him to buy the silence of the woman, Stormy Daniels. And he said that he suspected that Mr. Costello was trying to ensure that he would not cooperate with prosecutors after the hush-money deal came to light in 2018. Mr. Costello, Mr. Cohen noted, was close with Mr. Trump’s lawyer at the time, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

On Tuesday, Ms. Hoffinger echoed that claim, suggesting that Mr. Costello was actually an agent of Mr. Trump working to prevent Mr. Cohen from flipping on the then-president.

She produced a litany of emails underscoring her point, including one in which Mr. Costello wrote to his law partner, saying, “Our issue is to get Cohen on the right page without giving him the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the president.”

And once Mr. Cohen turned on Mr. Trump, pleading guilty to federal crimes for his role in the hush-money, Ms. Hoffinger noted that “you lost control of Michael Cohen for the president.”

Mr. Costello, defiant, declared: “Absolutely not.”

During her questioning, Ms. Hoffinger aimed at Mr. Costello’s credibility, seeking to turn the tables on the defense, which had called Mr. Costello to do the same to Mr. Cohen.

She began by citing Mr. Costello’s first meeting with Mr. Cohen in April 2018, and asked him to confirm that he played up his connection to Mr. Trump’s then lawyer.

“Not true,” Mr. Costello replied, prompting Ms. Hoffinger to show a pair of emails that appeared to contradict his denial.

“I told you my relationship with Rudy which could be very very useful for you,” Mr. Costello wrote Mr. Cohen two days after their meeting.

She also displayed one that Mr. Costello sent to a law partner, saying that Mr. Cohen had good reason to hire him “because of my connection to Rudy Giuliani, which I mentioned to him in our meeting.”

And when Mr. Costello equivocated about when he offered to serve as a back channel to Mr. Trump’s legal team, Ms. Hoffinger showed him an email he sent to Mr. Cohen using that exact phrase. The email recounted a conversation Mr. Costello said he had with Mr. Giuliani, who was “thrilled and said this could not be a better situation for the President or you.”

Mr. Giuliani, he added, “said thank you for opening this back channel of communication and asked me to keep in touch.”

Mr. Costello’s session on Tuesday was more placid than his combustible performance the day before.

Shortly after Mr. Costello took the stand on Monday, prosecutors objected to a series of questions. When the judge sided with them, Mr. Costello muttered “jeez,” registering his dismay and irking the judge, Juan M. Merchan. Mr. Costello tried to retract his remark, mumbling under his breath that he wanted to “strike” it from the record.

The testimony continued, but after more objections, Justice Merchan again grew frustrated. He dismissed the jury, and excoriated the witness: “If you don’t like my ruling, you don’t say, ‘jeez,’ and you don’t say, ‘strike it,’ because I’m the only one who can strike testimony in court,” he said, adding: “Are you staring me down?”

He then cleared the courtroom, dismissing reporters while allowing a group of Mr. Trump’s supporters to remain.

Then, according to a transcript, the judge told Mr. Costello that his conduct was “contemptuous” and said, “If you try to stare me down one more time I will remove you from the stand,” adding, to the defense lawyers, “I will strike his testimony, do you hear me?”

Mr. Costello asked, “Can I say something, please?” And Justice Merchan replied: “No. No. This is not a conversation.”

Matt Whitaker, a former acting attorney general who was a top Trump campaign surrogate in Iowa, said: “We have witnesses who are liars and stealers.”

While this group of close to a dozen people gives a news conference in the streets outside the courthouse, we have dueling chants in the background. As a few people call out “we love Trump,” one woman shouts over them, “lock him up,” a twist on Trump supporters’ rallying cry in 2016.

A man who happened to be walking by this gaggle shouted at Donald Trump Jr., calling him “phony,” adding an expletive, and saying: “We hate you in New York.”

The collision between the courtroom and the campaign trail has long been evident, but of note today: As the Trump campaign has been courting Hispanic voters, Representative Maria Salazar of Florida — in both English and Spanish — is denouncing the Manhattan case as something akin to what takes place in totalitarian Latin American regimes. Trump will hold a campaign event on Thursday in a heavily Latino area in the South Bronx.

Asked why his dad didn’t testify, Donald Trump Jr. did not directly answer the question but repeated his previous description of the trial as a farce. “How do you justify this insanity?” he said. “Look at the clowns” on the stand.

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