"If the jury deliberating in Donald Trump's criminal trial makes the historic decision to convict him, the judge overseeing the case will face a monumental choice: whether to sentence the 2024 Republican presidential candidate to time behind bars."
After five weeks of sometimes graphic testimony, defense lawyers have today been making their final pitches to the jury. Trump is accused of falsifying business records to cover up a payment to a pornstar in the run-up to his presidential campaign back in 2016. Jessica Le Masurier reports from New York. #Trump#trial#StormyDaniels
Heading into what may be the final week of the #TrumpTrial, here are links to my threads for each day of coverage starting w/opening statements & then testimony (excludes jury selection)
Cross-examination of #MichaelCohen resumes, an opportunity for the defense to poke holes in his testimony & perhaps trip up or provoke the state’s key witness. The questioning of Cohen, #Trump’s fmr fixer, is the beginning of the end of Trump’s #criminal trial, which began April 15 & might conclude before Memorial Day weekend at this pace.
"Star witness Michael Cohen directly implicates Trump in testimony at hush money trial.
Donald Trump's fixer-turned-foe, Michael Cohen, directly implicated the former president in a hush money scheme Monday, telling jurors that his celebrity client tasked him on several occasions to stifle stories about sex that he feared could torpedo his 2016 presidential campaign."
The prosecution asks that the defense be precluded from asking #StormyDaniels whether she was arrested. Justice #Merchan agrees w/the prosecutors, saying that “anybody can be arrested” & that it “doesn’t prove anything.”
The people call Stormy Daniels back to the stand
#Trump atty #Necheles begins questioning by saying that in 2011, Daniels denied having had sex w/Trump.
#metoo likely revival as women and the men who love them, react to the badgering of #stormydaniels and the overall treatment of women by Republicans and denial of #abortion and #bodyautonomy to women. #vote like #democracy is on the line. It is.
Let’s get real. Future felon Trump’s legal team demanding that the NY election interference trial be dismissed has nothing to do with Stormy Daniels being ‘combative’ … a tactic Trump himself constantly uses … it’s because they know Trump is going to lose.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the testimony given by Stormy Daniels during Trump’s election interference trial.
Stormy apparently crossed a line or two during her testimony but it was far less destructive than Trump’s continued rhetoric about the trial and his antics inside that NY courtroom.
I almost want to applaud Daniels for using Trump’s own tactics against him. #stormydaniels#trumptrial
Someone posted this and i did not want to disfigure their post. But I am not sure they got the caption correct. This looked like #stormydaniels taking #trump for a ride. #goldenboy maybe not. #trumptrial@GottaLaff so you get something to smile at today.
"Yesterday, witnesses established that the paper trail of payments to Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who forwarded the money to Daniels, had been falsified. … A number of observers have suggested that the evidence presented through documents yesterday was not riveting, but historians would disagree."
From Kaitlan Collins
Notable moment in court today where the judge told the defense he could hear Trump cursing:
Judge Merchan: "I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually and that's contemptuous...I am speaking to you here at the bench because I don't want to embarrass him."