The jury empaneled in the NY v. Trump case said it has reached a verdict.
The 12-person jury - which has requested 30 minutes to fill out the paperwork - will soon enter the courtroom and announce what it has decided. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged former President Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, and Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Judge Juan Merchan will invite the jury in to read its verdict.
Prior to receiving the jury's note around 4:20 p.m., Merchan had indicated he would excuse the jury for the day at 4:30 as a growing number expected a mistrial due to a hung jury however the presence of a verdict means that we will shortly know if the jury has found Trump "guilty" or "not guilty."
Prosecutors needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic performer, in the lead-up to the 2016 election to silence her about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, was the prosecution’s “star witness.”He testified that he personally made the $130,000 payment to Daniels using a home equity line of credit in an effort to conceal the payment from his wife.
Cohen said he did this because Trump told him to “handle it” and prevent a negative story from coming out ahead of the election.But Trump’s defense attorneys maintained that the president never directed Cohen to do so.
We all know the verdict already, because this thing was rigged from the beginning. A dirty prosecutor ran an illegal case using a corrupt judge and a jury pool of left-wing Biden voters to convict and sideline the ruling regime’s top political opponent. You don’t hate these…
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) May 30, 2024
