Closing arguments are set for Tuesday in the New York hush money criminal trial of Donald Trump, the last chance for the former president’s defense lawyer to convince a 12-member jury that he is innocent of charges that he illegally tried to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, while a prosecutor lays out the evidence against him.
The final arguments in the first-ever criminal case against a U.S. president could take hours and follow testimony that lasted five weeks.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan is then expected to instruct the jury Wednesday morning about the legal issues linked to the case before it begins deliberating.
Under the U.S. legal system, the jurors will have to unanimously decide whether to acquit the 77-year-old Trump or find him guilty. If they cannot agree, resulting in a hung jury, prosecutors then would decide whether to retry the case.
For Trump, the outcome is consequential, not only for his personal freedom but his political fate. He is the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate, set to run again in the November election against President Joe Biden, the Democrat who defeated him in 2020.
National polls show Biden and Trump locked in a tight contest, but some opinion polls indicate Trump supporters could switch their vote to Biden or not vote at all if the former president is convicted.
In the criminal case, Trump is accused of sanctioning a scheme in which his political fixer, Michael Cohen, made a $130,000 hush money payment to porn film star Stormy Daniels just ahead of the 2016 election to keep her from talking publicly about her claim of a one-night tryst with Trump at a celebrity golf tourney a decade earlier.