The jury in Donald Trump’s New York hush money trial finished its first day of deliberations Wednesday without reaching a verdict after meeting for more than four-and-a-half hours.
Jurors will return on Thursday morning at 9:30 a.m. ET to resume deliberations, but the 12 men and women will also again hear from Judge Juan Merchan.
Wednesday afternoon, the jury asked to hear a readback of four separate parts of witness testimony, including from former National Enquirer chief David Pecker and Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen. Jurors also want to re-hear Merchan’s instructions on the law that he had given them earlier Wednesday morning.
The jurors requested four pieces of testimony: Pecker’s testimony about his phone conversation with Trump in June 2016, his testimony about not finalizing Trump’s payment to AMI for Karen McDougal’s life rights, his testimony about the August 2015 Trump Tower meeting, and Cohen’s testimony about the Trump Tower meeting.
The testimony the jurors are requesting relates to interactions Trump had directly with Pecker. The testimony from Cohen and Pecker about the 2015 meeting concerns the meeting where Pecker agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of the campaign, while Pecker testified in his call with Trump in June 2016 that he discussed the McDougal story and whether Trump should buy it.
The jury will ultimately decide whether a former president is convicted of felony crimes for the first time in American history – at the same time that Trump is running against President Joe Biden for president this November.
Judge’s instructions
The political implications of the case were not overtly at issue on Wednesday morning as Merchan spent an hour instructing the jury on the law.
He explained the 34 felony counts against Trump for falsifying business records over the reimbursement to Cohen for hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, going over the elements of the crime that jurors must decide prosecutors have proven beyond a reasonable doubt to return a guilty verdict.
Merchan also reminded jurors they must put aside their biases as they decide the defendant’s fate.
“Remember, you have promised to be a fair juror,” the judge said. “A fair juror is a person who will keep their promise to be fair and impartial and who will not permit the verdict to be influenced by a bias or prejudice in favor of or against a person who appeared in this trial.”
Merchan has asked the jury to clarify Thursday morning whether they wanted the entire, hourlong presentation to be read back, or if there were just portions of it that they needed to hear one more time.
The jury was not given a written copy of Merchan’s charging instructions, something CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said is a problem. While most federal judges will send the actual document with the jury as it deliberates, New York state courts forbid this practice.
“It’s the way that New York State courts do it,” Honig said. “They are obstinate, they are stuck in the past, they are making life difficult for the jury.”
While the deliberations are ongoing, Trump and his attorneys are remaining in the courthouse in downtown Manhattan, so they can be ready if the jury returns any additional notes, which could be questions or requests like the one Wednesday afternoon to re-hear testimony.
The jurors were also given a laptop that had all of the evidence in the trial, so they could consult it while they deliberate. The judge said the laptop does not have internet access.
Meanwhile, the six alternate jurors aren’t yet off the hook. They’ve been asked to come back in the event one of them needs to replace one of the 12 jurors in case they are unable to serve.
