Trump Trial Day 4: Highlights on the Court Proceedings on Hush Money Case - Update from AP News
The jury is set in the hush money trial of Former President Donald Trump. It’s the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to reach trial, and it may be the only one to return a verdict before voters decide whether to elect the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
Today’s live coverage has ended. Catch up on what you missed below and follow the latest on apnews.com.
A full jury of 12 New Yorkers and 6 alternates has been seated in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial, setting the stage for opening statements next week in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.
Here’s what to know:
- The jury: The list of 12 seated jurors includes a sales professional, a software engineer, an English teacher, multiple lawyers and an investment banker. Keeping them anonymous during selection came with its own set of challenges.
- The case: Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to bury stories that he feared could hurt his 2016 campaign.
- Man set himself on fire outside court: The man took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories and spread them around the park before dousing himself in a flammable substance and setting himself aflame, officials said. He was in critical condition Friday afternoon.
Editor’s Note: The Associated Press removed a LIVE feed from its YouTube channel outside the New York state courthouse where a trial for former U.S. President Donald Trump is being held because it showed a man setting himself on fire in a park across the street. Showing a potential suicide attempt does not meet AP standards. The deleted live feed of the courthouse has been replaced by a new one.
A man who set himself on fire across the street from the courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush money trial is taking place is in critical condition.
Trump returned to the cameras to deliver a brief closing message following his first week as a criminal defendant.
“This is really a concerted witch hunt, very simple,” Trump charged to reporters.
The presumptive GOP nominee complained of his treatment in New York, calling out Arthur Engoron and Lewis Kaplan, the judges who heard his earlier New York civil fraud trial and defamation case.
“What’s happening here with the judicial system is an outrage,” he said, before casting the case, yet again, as an effort to damage his candidacy.
“This is the only way they think they can win but it’s not going to work,” he said.
An appeals court judge has once again denied a request by Trump’s attorneys to halt his criminal trial as they seek to have the case moved outside of Manhattan.
Justice Marsha Michael issued the ruling just minutes after a brief hearing. The arguments in the midlevel appeals court came hours after the jury selection process concluded in Trump’s criminal trial, which is currently taking place roughly two miles south.
The ruling will allow opening statements to take place as soon as Monday in Trump’s criminal trial.
Trump left the courtroom without coming to speak to the cameras. But when asked whether he would testify, he turned his head and shouted, “Yes!”
Merchan refused again to give Trump’s lawyers a blanket ruling excluding certain evidence from his time in the White House on presidential immunity grounds.
Rather, the judge said, Trump’s lawyers can argue for immunity on a piece-by-piece basis during the trial. The defense argues three of Trump’s 2018 tweets about Cohen and his 2018 financial disclosure report — all of which are publicly available — are official acts and therefore fall under presidential immunity. They also contend any testimony about official acts Trump took as president, such as the accounts of former White House staff, should be excluded.
As a taxing week of jury selection and legal arguments neared an end with yet more back-and-forth over legal particulars, the trial judge told Trump’s lawyers to stop importuning him to revisit his litany of pretrial rulings.
“I’ve entertained your arguments in good faith, I’ve handed down decisions, but at some point, you need to accept the court’s rulings,” Merchan said.
“There’s nothing else to clarify. There’s nothing else to reargue. We’re going to have opening statements on Monday morning. This trial is starting.”
Trump’s lawyers are fighting to keep prosecutors from questioning him, if he testifies, about the outcome of his recent civil fraud trial as well as a separate defamation case.
In the fraud trial, state Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump, his company and key executives deceived bankers and insurers for years by grossly padding his wealth on financial statements used to secure loans and coverage.
In the second case, a jury found that Trump defamed writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexual assault years earlier.
Trump lawyer Emil Bove argued those allegations, dating to the 1990s, are “too attenuated, too far back in time to call into question President Trump’s credibility at this trial.”
Trump has said he wants to testify at the hush money trial, but he is not required to and can always change his mind.
Judge Merchan said he would reserve judgment on whether prosecutors can ask Trump about his past legal setbacks if he chooses to testify. Merchan said he would issue a decision in the coming days.
In a brief response, the appellate chief for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Steven Wu, accused Trump’s attorneys of mischaracterizing the jury selection process, which he described as “unusually detailed and careful.”
He added that Trump had “amplified and stoked the very press coverage” that had caused some jurors to reconsider if they could serve impartially.
“We have 18 ordinary New Yorkers ready to serve on Monday morning when this trial should begin,” Wu added. “It would be unfair to them and it would be unfair to the public for this trial to be delayed further.”
A decision on the appeal is expected this afternoon.
An attorney for Trump, Clifford Robert, is arguing before a midlevel appeals court that Judge Merchan has rushed through the process of jury selection in the hush money criminal case, preventing Trump from receiving a fair and impartial jury. He is arguing for an interim stay of the trial pending a motion to have the venue moved outside of Manhattan.
“The way that such a large cross section of people were immediately disqualified because of the biases they mentioned to the court is proof positive … to the predispositions of these people,” Robert said.
He described the speed of jury selection as “untenable,” accusing Merchan of failing to properly uncover bias among the prospective jurors. As an example, he cited a woman who was initially picked for the jury but asked to be removed the following day after acknowledging that she could not be fair.
Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors are sparring over the prosecution’s request to seal four pieces of evidence.
This includes phone records and approximately 39,000 contacts stored in Michael Cohen’s cell phone.
Prosecutors had sought to keep that evidence out of public view because it pertained to third parties not involved in the case. Judge Merchan agreed over the objections of Trump’s lawyers, who argued prosecutors were trying to make an end run around transparency and trampling Trump’s right to a public trial.
He raised his fist before returning to the courtroom.
With jury selection done, there is now a hearing on prosecutors’ desire to question the former president, if he testifies, about his recent civil court losses.
The man who set himself on fire across the street from the courthouse is in critical condition in a burn unit, police said Friday.
The man first walked into the park around 1:30 p.m., took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories and spread them around the park before he doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials said.
Officials believe the man had traveled from Florida to New York in the last few days.
Authorities said they were also reviewing the security protocols outside the courthouse.
“We are very concerned. Of course we are going to review our security protocols,” Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said.
.jpeg)
Comments
Post a Comment