Legal experts sound off as Trump criminal verdict draws closer

23 May 2024

With the prosecution and defense having rested their cases, both sides in Donald Trump's hush money/falsified business records trial are scheduled to make their closing arguments after Memorial Day on Tuesday, May 28. And after that, jurors will begin their deliberations.

How long it will take the jurors to reach a verdict — and what they will ultimately decide — remains to be seen.

In article published on May 23, Politico's Ankush Khardori leads a panel discussion featuring four journalists who cover legal matters for the publication: Meridith McGraw, Josh Gerstein, Erica Orden and Ben Feuerherd — all of whom offer their views on where things stand as a verdict draws closer in the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president.

Feuerherd said of Robert Costello — a pro-Trump attorney who testified for the defense — "Costello said Cohen told him that Cohen didn't believe he had anything on Trump in these meetings and these phone calls that he had in 2018, but I feel like that's going to be a hard pill to swallow for the jury."

Orden weighed in on Trump's decision not to testify, telling her Politico colleagues, "I think Trump probably knew that (Justice Juan) Merchan would have very little tolerance for Trump doing what he did in the civil fraud trial. I have to imagine that he saw that he was going to run into a lot of trouble, given what happened in the E. Jean Carroll trial."

McGraw, meanwhile, said of Trump's decision not to testify, "I don't think we're going to see this move the needle much on public opinion, or public polling, at least among Republicans and Trump supporters themselves. In a lot of the recent polls, it's said that among Trump supporters if he is convicted, that they might reconsider voting for him, but the key word being 'reconsider.'"

Khardori brought up the fact that "we don’t really know what the jury's instructions will be on some very important legal issues," asking Gerstein to weigh in.

Gerstein explained, "I think the main category that is most critical is around the question of what kind of intent the prosecutors need to prove, on Trump's part. Having sat through a good chunk of that trial, I think, at the end of the day — despite a lot of questions about Michael Cohen's credibility, and other things that aren't clear in the trial — that the basic facts of what happened are going to be pretty well established in terms of who has paid what amounts and when."

Gerstein added, "It seems pretty clear that Trump signed most of these $35,000 reimbursement checks to Cohen. We have this almost amazing document where the Trump financial people are sketching out what this $420,000 to Michael Cohen represents. It's sort of a dream piece of evidence for prosecutors."

Read Politico's full article at this link.

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