The prosecution and defense gave their closing arguments on Tuesday after weeks of former President Trump’s first trial. He is accused of 34 counts of falsifying business records over a hush-money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels for her to remain quiet about an affair she alleges they had.
Trump has denied the affair happened, and his defense team sought to attack the credibility of his former lawyer Michael Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness who testified that Trump directed him to make the payment.
The verdict could be handed down any day now, in as short as a few hours or it could be a few days or longer. But the impacts of any verdict on the election itself are unclear.
The trial getting underway has not done much harm to Trump’s poll numbers, at least so far. He remains largely neck-and-neck with President Biden in national polling and leading him narrowly in most of the key swing states.
As The Hill’s Brett Samuels reports, if Trump is convicted, he will be the first former president and likely nominee of a major political party to be a convicted felon, giving Democrats new lines of attack against him as the election cycle heats up. But if he is acquitted, Trump will likely declare victory and that the verdict shows the charges against him were trumped up, as he has long alleged.
Trump could also point to an acquittal to support his claims that the many other charges he is facing in three other criminal cases are also politically motivated.
Polling has also been mixed on whether the public expects Trump to be found guilty. One poll from Suffolk University/USA Today found 65 percent of registered voters expect Trump to be convicted on all or some counts, while another from the Economist/YouGov found only 22 percent expect him to be convicted.
Regardless of what the public expects, the jury much reach a unanimous verdict on all counts to issue a decision. Otherwise, the result may be a hung jury, and the process of the trial could restart all over again.
