New York:

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday welcomed a delay in his New York hush money fraud case that pushed sentencing on his 34 felony convictions until after the election.

“The Manhattan D.A. Witch Hunt has been postponed because everyone realizes that there was NO CASE, I DID NOTHING WRONG!… This case should be rightfully terminated, as we prepare for the Most Important Election in the History of our Country,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

New York:

A judge eased a gag order on Tuesday that was imposed on Donald Trump during his criminal trial which saw him convicted of 34 counts, according to a court filing.

Judge Juan Merchan imposed the limited gag order ahead of the trial, restricting Trump from commenting publicly on jurors, witnesses, prosecutors and court staff, later expanding it to include his own family and that of the prosecutor.

Merchan, who will sentence the presidential hopeful on July 11, said that “circumstances have now changed. The trial portion of these proceedings ended when the verdict was rendered, and the jury discharged.”

The order means Trump, the first ever former US president to be convicted of a felony, can now comment publicly about witnesses who testified at his trial, as well as discuss the jury and their verdict.

But Merchan said that measures barring the disclosure of jurors’ identities would remain in place.

Trump was fined $10,000 by the Manhattan court for breaking the order on 10 occasions — and threatened with jail for openly flouting the judge’s ruling.

Before the gag order was imposed ahead of Trump’s trial, the ex-president repeatedly attacked likely witnesses and the prosecutors via posts on his Truth Social platform.

On May 30 jurors found Trump, who is seeking to retake the presidency in this year’s election, guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal in the final stages of the 2016 presidential campaign.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Donald Trump’s defence team attacked the hush money case against him on Tuesday by calling the star witness a liar, seeking to discredit weeks of testimony that prosecutors say prove the former president interfered in the 2016 election through a scheme to suppress stories seen as harmful to his campaign.

The closing arguments, which were expected to last the entire day, gave attorneys one last chance to address the Manhattan jury and to score final points with the panel before it starts deliberating the fate of the first former American President charged with felony crimes.

“President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period,” said defence attorney Todd Blanche, who said the evidence in the case should “leave you wanting.” In an hourslong address to the jury, Mr. Blanche attacked the foundation of the case, which charges Mr. Trump with conspiring to conceal hush money payments prosecutors say were made on his behalf during the 2016 presidential campaign to stifle a porn actor’s claim that she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump a decade earlier.

With sweeping denials mirroring his client’s “deny everything” approach, Mr. Blanche countered the prosecution’s portrayal of Trump as a detail-oriented manager who paid dutiful attention to the checks he signed; disputed the contention that Mr. Trump and the porn actor, Stormy Daniels, had sex; and rejected the idea that the alleged hush money scheme amounted to illegal interference in the election.

“Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people who are working together to help somebody win,” Mr. Blanche said.

After more than four weeks of testimony, the summations tee up a momentous and historically unprecedented task for the jury as it decides whether to convict the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in connection with the payments.

Because prosecutors have the burden of proof, they will deliver their arguments last.

Trump lawyer calls Michael Cohen a liar

Prosecutors will tell jurors that they have heard enough testimony to convict Mr. Trump of all charges while defense attorneys aimed to create doubts about the strength of the evidence by targeting the credibility of Michael Cohen. Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer pleaded guilty to federal charges for his role in the hush money payments and served as the star prosecution witness in the trial.

“He’s literally like an MVP of liars. He lies constantly,” Mr. Blanche said of Cohen. “He lied to Congress. He lied to prosecutors. He lied to his family and business associates.” After closing arguments, the judge will instruct the jury on the law governing the case and the factors the panel can take into account during deliberations.

Mr. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, charges punishable by up to four years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. It’s unclear whether prosecutors would seek imprisonment in the event of a conviction, or if the judge would impose that punishment if asked.

The case centres on a $130,000 payment Mr. Cohen made to Ms. Daniels in the final days of the 2016 election to prevent her from going public with her story of a sexual encounter she says she had with Mr. Trump 10 years earlier in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite.

Mr. Trump has denied Ms. Daniels’ account, and his attorney, during hours of questioning in the trial, accused her of making it up.

When Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen, the payments were logged as being for legal services, which prosecutors say was designed to conceal the true purpose of the transaction with Ms. Daniels.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers contended throughout the trial that they were legitimate payments for actual legal services. Mr. Blanche, delivering a PowerPoint presentation to jurors, pointed to emails and testimony showing that Mr. Cohen did indeed work on some legal matters for Mr. Trump that year.

While Mr. Cohen characterised that work as “very minimal,” Mr. Blanche argued otherwise.

The attorney’s voice became even more impassioned as he revisited one of the more memorable moments of the trial: when Mr. Blanche sought to unravel Mr. Cohen’s claim that he had spoken to Mr. Trump by phone about Ms. Daniels arrangement on October 24, 2016.

Mr. Cohen said he had contacted Mr. Trump’s bodyguard as a way of getting a hold of Mr. Trump, but Mr. Blanche asserted that at the time Mr. Cohen was actually dealing with a spate of harassing phone calls and was preoccupied by that problem.

“It was a lie,” Mr. Blanche said. “That was a lie, and he got caught red-handed.” Mr. Blanche also sought to distance Mr. Trump from the mechanics of the reimbursements, saying checks to Mr. Cohen were signed as Mr. Trump was preoccupied with the presidency in 2017.

He pointed to the testimony of a former Trump Organisation controller, who told jurors that he never talked to Mr. Trump about how to characterise the payments sent to an accounts payable staffer. Mr. Blanche also noted that another Trump aide said Mr. Trump would sign checks while meeting with people or while on the phone, not knowing what they were.

The nearly two dozen witnesses included Ms. Daniels, who described in sometimes vivid detail the encounter she says she had with Mr. Trump; David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, who testified that he used his media enterprise to protect Mr. Trump by squelching stories that could harm his campaign; and Mr. Cohen, who testified that Mr. Trump was intimately involved in the hush money discussions. “Just pay it,” the now-disbarred lawyer quoted Mr. Trump as saying.

Prosecutors are expected to remind jurors of the bank statements, emails and other documentary evidence they have viewed, as well as an audio recording in which Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump can be heard discussing paying $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to keep her from going public with a claim that she had had a yearlong affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump has denied a relationship with Ms. McDougal too.

Defence lawyers called two witnesses — neither of them Trump. They focused much of their energy on discrediting Mr. Cohen, pressing him on his own criminal history, his past lies and his recollection of key details.

On cross-examination, for instance, Mr. Cohen admitted stealing tens of thousands of dollars from Mr. Trump’s company by asking to be reimbursed for money he had not spent. Mr. Cohen acknowledged once telling a prosecutor he felt that Ms. Daniels and her lawyer were extorting Mr. Trump.

The New York prosecution is one of four criminal cases pending against Mr. Trump as he seeks to reclaim the White House from Democrat Joe Biden. It’s unclear if any of the others will reach trial before November’s election.

Closing arguments are expected on Tuesday in Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York, wrapping up what is likely to be the only case against the former U.S. president to reach a jury before the November election.

Here is a look at what comes next.

WHAT HAPPENS DURING CLOSING ARGUMENTS?

Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office will present their summations first and seek to convince a dozen New Yorkers that Trump falsified business records to cover up an alleged sexual encounter with porn star Stormy Daniels – a liaison Trump denies.

Prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump intentionally made or directed others to make false entries in business records, did so with intent to commit another underlying crime and sought to conceal the commission of that crime. They must also prove the 34 records in question were falsified.

Trump’s lawyers face a lower burden and only need to sow sufficient doubt in jurors’ minds to secure an acquittal, or sway at least one holdout among the 12 to deadlock the jury and trigger a mistrial.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER CLOSING ARGUMENTS?

The judge overseeing the case, Juan Merchan, will give the jury lengthy instructions on how to interpret the law and evidence during their deliberations.

Jurors will be told that they can only convict Trump if they believe he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

During deliberations, jurors will have access to all of the evidence and be able to ask questions of the judge, who will confer with prosecutors and defense lawyers before deciding how to answer.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN JURORS REACH A VERDICT?

The verdict must be unanimous, and if the jury deadlocks, Merchan will declare a mistrial.

Once jurors inform the court they have reached a verdict, Merchan will summon the parties to the courtroom to hear it read by the foreperson. Merchan must still affirm the verdict and enter a final judgment. Either side can ask him to effectively overrule the jury.

WHAT HAPPENS IF TRUMP IS CONVICTED?

If Trump is convicted, it would likely be several weeks or months until he is sentenced. As a first-time offender of a nonviolent crime, he would likely be released on bond in the meantime.

It is rare for people with no criminal history who are convicted only of falsification of business records to be sentenced to prison in New York. Punishments like fines or probation are more common.

The maximum sentence for Trump’s crime of falsifying business records is 1-1/3 to four years in prison, but in cases involving prison time, defendants are typically sentenced to a year or less.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Former U.S. President Donald Trump was intimately involved with all aspects of a scheme to stifle stories about sex that threatened to torpedo his 2016 campaign, his former lawyer said Monday in matter-of-fact testimony that went to the heart of the former president’s hush money trial.

“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” said Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer-turned-foe and the prosecution’s star witness in a case now entering its final, pivotal stretch.

In hours of highly anticipated testimony, Mr. Cohen placed Mr. Trump at the centre of the hush money plot, saying the then-candidate had promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.

ALSO READ | A respite: On the Trump case 

“We need to stop this from getting out,” Mr. Cohen quoted Mr. Trump as telling him in reference to porn actor Stormy Daniels’ account of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump a decade earlier. The then-candidate was especially anxious about how the story would affect his standing with female voters.

A similar episode occurred when Mr. Cohen alerted Mr. Trump that a Playboy model was alleging that she and Mr. Trump had an extramarital affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” was Mr. Cohen’s message to Mr. Trump, the lawyer said. The woman, Karen McDougal, was paid $150,000 in an arrangement that was made after Mr. Trump received a “complete and total update on everything that transpired.”

“What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Mr. Cohen testified.

Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied having sexual encounters with the two women.

Mr. Cohen is by far the prosecution’s most important witness, and though his testimony lacked the electricity that defined Ms. Daniels’ turn on the stand last week, he nonetheless linked Mr. Trump directly to the payments and helped illuminate some of the drier evidence such as text messages and phone logs that jurors had previously seen.

The testimony of a witness with such intimate knowledge of Mr. Trump’s activities could heighten the legal exposure of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee if jurors deem him sufficiently credible. But prosecutors’ reliance on a witness with such a checkered past — Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments — also carries sizable risks with a jury and could be a boon to Mr. Trump politically as he fundraises off his legal woes and paints the case as the product of a tainted criminal justice system.

The men, once so close that Mr. Cohen boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Mr. Trump, had no visible interaction inside the courtroom. The sedate atmosphere was a marked contrast from their last courtroom faceoff, when Mr. Trump walked out of the courtroom in October after his lawyer finished questioning Mr. Cohen during his civil fraud trial.

This time around, Mr. Trump sat at the defence table with his eyes closed for long stretches of testimony as Mr. Cohen recounted his decade-long career as a senior Trump Organization executive, doing work that by his own admission sometimes involved lying and bullying others on his boss’s behalf.

Jurors had previously heard from others about the tabloid industry practice of “catch-and-kill,” in which rights to a story are purchased so that it can then be quashed. But Mr. Cohen’s testimony, which continues Tuesday, is crucial to prosecutors because of his direct communication with the then-candidate about embarrassing stories he was scrambling to suppress.

Mr. Cohen also matters because the reimbursements he received from a $130,000 hush money payment to Ms. Daniels, which prosecutors say was meant to buy her silence in advance of the election, form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were logged, falsely, as legal expenses to conceal the payments’ true purpose. Defence lawyers say the payments to Mr. Cohen were properly categorised as legal expenses.

Under questioning from a prosecutor, Mr. Cohen detailed the steps he took to mask the payments. When he opened a bank account to pay Ms. Daniels, an action he said he told Mr. Trump he was taking, he told the bank it was for a new limited liability corporation but withheld the actual purpose.

“I’m not sure they would’ve opened it,” he said, if they knew it was ”to pay off an adult film star for a nondisclosure agreement.”

To establish Mr. Trump’s familiarity with the payments,Mr. Cohen told the jury that Mr. Trump had promised to reimburse him. The two men even discussed with Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization chief financial officer, how the reimbursements would be paid as legal services over monthly instalments, Mr. Cohen testified.

And though Mr. Trump’s lawyers have said he acted to protect his family from salacious stories, Mr. Cohen described Mr. Trump as preoccupied instead by the impact they would have on the campaign.

He said Mr. Trump even sought to delay finalising the Ms. Daniels transaction until after Election Day so he wouldn’t have to pay her.

“Because,” Mr. Cohen testified, “after the election it wouldn’t matter” to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cohen also gave jurors an insider account of his negotiations with David Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer, who was such a close Mr. Trump ally that Mr. Pecker told Mr. Cohen his publication maintained a “file drawer or a locked drawer” where files related to Mr. Trump were kept.

That effort took on added urgency following the October 2016 disclosure of an “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women sexually.

The Daniels payment was finalised several weeks after that revelation, but Monday’s testimony also centred on a deal earlier that fall with Ms. McDougal.

Mr. Cohen testified that he went to Mr. Trump immediately after the National Enquirer alerted him to a story about the alleged Ms. McDougal affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” he said Mr. Trump told him.

Mr. Trump checked in with Mr. Pecker about the matter, asking him how “things were going” with it, Mr. Cohen said. Mr. Pecker responded, ‘We have this under control, and we’ll take care of this,” Mr. Cohen testified.

Mr. Cohen also said he was with Mr. Trump as he spoke to Mr. Pecker on a speakerphone in his Trump Tower office.

“David had stated that it’s going to cost them $150,000 to control the story,” Mr. Cohen said. He quoted Mr. Trump as saying: “No problem, I will take care of it,” which Mr. Cohen interpreted to mean that the payment would be reimbursed.

To lay the foundation that the deals were done with Mr. Trump’s endorsement, prosecutors elicited testimony from Mr. Cohen designed to show Trump as a hands-on manager. Acting on Trump’s behalf, Cohen said, he sometimes lied and bullied others, including reporters.

“When he would task you with something, he would then say, ‘Keep me informed. Let me know what’s going on,’” Mr. Cohen testified. He said that was especially true “if there was a matter that was troubling to him.”

Defence lawyers have teed up a bruising cross-examination of Mr. Cohen, telling jurors during opening statements that he’s an “admitted liar” with an “obsession to get President Trump.”

Prosecutors aim to blunt those attacks by acknowledging Mr. Cohen’s past crimes to jurors and by relying on other witnesses whose accounts, they hope, will buttress Mr. Cohen’s testimony. They include a lawyer who negotiated the hush money payments on behalf of Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal, as well as Mr. Pecker and Ms. Daniels.

After Mr. Cohen’s home and office were raided by the FBI in 2018, Mr. Trump showered him with affection on social media and predicted that Mr. Cohen would not “flip.” Months later, Mr. Cohen did exactly that, pleading guilty to federal campaign-finance charges.

Besides pleading guilty to the hush money payments, Mr. Cohen later admitted lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project that he had pursued on Mr. Trump’s behalf during the heat of the 2016 campaign. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but spent much of it in home confinement.

Former President Donald Trump, with his attorney Todd Blanche, speaks to reporters following the day’s proceedings in his trial on May 7, 2024, in New York.
| Photo Credit: AP

Donald Trump returns to his hush money trial on May 7 facing a threat of jail time for additional gag order violations as prosecutors gear up to summon big-name witnesses in the final weeks of the case.

Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who has said she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, and Michael Cohen, the former lawyer of Mr. Trump and personal fixer who prosecutors say paid her to keep silent in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, are among those who have yet to take the stand but are expected to in the coming weeks.

The jury on May 6 heard from two witnesses, including a former Trump Organisation controller, who provided a mechanical but vital recitation of how the company reimbursed payments that were allegedly meant to suppress embarrassing stories from surfacing and then logged them as legal expenses in a manner that Manhattan prosecutors say broke the law.

The testimony from Jeffrey McConney yielded an important building block for prosecutors trying to pull back the curtain on what they say was a corporate records cover-up of transactions designed to protect Mr. Trump’s Republican presidential bid during a pivotal stretch of the race. It focused on a $130,000 payment from Mr. Cohen to Ms. Daniels and the subsequent reimbursement Mr. Cohen received.

Mr. McConney and another witness testified that the reimbursement checks were drawn from Mr. Trump’s account. Yet even as jurors witnessed the checks and other documentary evidence, prosecutors did not elicit testimony May 6 showing that Mr. Trump dictated that the payments would be logged as legal expenses, a designation that prosecutors contend was intentionally deceptive.

Mr. McConney acknowledged during cross-examination that Mr. Trump never asked him to log the reimbursements as legal expenses or discussed the matter with him at all. Another witness, Deborah Tarasoff, a Trump Organisation accounts payable supervisor, said under questioning that she did not get permission to cut the checks in question from Mr. Trump himself.

“You never had any reason to believe that President Trump was hiding anything or anything like that?” Mr. Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked.

”Correct,” Ms. Tarasoff replied.

The testimony followed a stern warning from Judge Juan M. Merchan that additional violations of a gag order barring Mr. Trump from inflammatory out-of-court comments about witnesses, jurors and others closely connected to the case could result in jail time.

The $1,000 fine imposed May 6 marks the second time since the trial began last month that Mr. Trump has been sanctioned for violating the gag order. He was fined $9,000 last week, $1,000 for each of nine violations.

“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent. Therefore going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction,” Mr. Merchan said before jurors were brought into the courtroom. Mr. Trump’s statements, the judge added, “threaten to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue.”

Mr. Trump sat forward in his seat, glowering at the judge as he handed down the ruling. When the judge finished speaking, Mr. Trump shook his head twice and crossed his arms.

Yet even as Mr. Merchan warned of jail time in his most pointed and direct admonition, he also made clear his reservations about a step that he described as a “last resort.”

“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Mr. Merchan said. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings.”

The latest violation stems from an April 22 interview with television channel Real America’s Voice in which Mr. Trump criticised the speed at which the jury was picked and claimed, without evidence, that it was stacked with Democrats.

Prosecutors are continuing to build toward their star witness, Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments. He is expected to undergo a bruising cross-examination from defence attorneys seeking to undermine his credibility with jurors.

Mr. Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments but has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. The trial, the first of his four criminal cases to come before a jury, is expected to last another month or more.