Jurors in Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial will begin deliberations on Wednesday after hearing hours of closing arguments that portrayed the case in stark and irreconcilable terms.
It could take hours, days or even weeks for the 12 New Yorkers to reach a verdict in the first criminal trial of an American president. And before they begin deliberating, the jurors will receive instructions from the judge on the relevant law.
This last stage of the weekslong case comes a day after the jurors watched both sides deliver their final flurry of arguments.
A prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, meticulously described a scheme on the eve of the 2016 election to muzzle a porn star’s account of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. The woman, Stormy Daniels, kept quiet after Mr. Trump’s onetime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, bought her silence with a $130,000 hush-money deal.
The machinations crossed a legal line, prosecutors say, when Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the hush money and falsified records to cover the whole thing up.
“All roads lead to the man who benefited the most, Donald Trump,” Mr. Steinglass said, adding that it was done to “hoodwink the American voter.”
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