It wasn’t just what witnesses said on the stand at Donald Trump’s hush money trial that helped prosecutors land the historic conviction Thursday. It was the way prosecutors wove the most damning parts of that testimony together — along with mountains of physical evidence — that enabled jurors to return a guilty verdict on all 34 counts after less than two full days of deliberations.
The challenge for prosecutors from the beginning was explaining their complex and largely novel theory of the case in terms that the jury could follow, in a case that tested the country’s legal and political systems and involved a defendant who tried to undermine the process at every turn.
Trump was charged with falsifying business records to both conceal an alleged tryst with adult-film star Stormy Daniels and protect his 2016 presidential campaign. To establish guilt, prosecutors had to show not only that Trump knowingly faked the records but that he did so with the intent to violate election law.
Their solution was to cast Trump’s actions not as mere financial crimes but a coordinated effort to sabotage the 2016 election. It worked.
Here are key moments from the 22-day trial:
Tawdry details of ‘catch and kill’
“I would be your eyes and ears. If I hear anything negative about yourself, or if I hear anything about women selling stories, I would notify Michael Cohen.”
— from David Pecker’s testimony on April 25
The prosecution’s first witness, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, helped engineer the alleged hush money scheme that gave rise to the 34 felony charges on which Trump was convicted.
In a 2015 meeting at Trump Tower, Pecker agreed to sniff out scandalous stories that could derail Trump’s presidential campaign, all while publishing glowing pieces about Trump and negative content on his rivals.
“I would be your eyes and ears,” Pecker said he told Trump. “If I hear anything negative about yourself, or if I hear anything about women selling stories, I would notify Michael Cohen.”
And that’s exactly what Pecker did. After buying the rights to two tawdry stories about Trump’s sex life, Pecker in 2016 alerted Cohen, Trump’s then-lawyer, that Daniels was shopping her account of a tryst with Trump. Soon after, Cohen made her an offer.
What the prosecution was trying to do: Prosecutors portrayed the Trump Tower arrangement as a conspiracy by three powerful men to deprive voters of critical information in an election year. “It was a subversion of democracy,” Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said, “that could very well be what got President Trump elected.”
What the defense was trying to do: The defense insisted that no such scheme existed and that any discussions among Pecker, Trump and Cohen were legal. Secret deals to buy and sell celebrity stories were a routine part of the tabloid business, the defense argued, and not unique to Trump.
By Trump’s side as sex scandals surface
“[I]t would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.”
— from Hope Hicks’s testimony on May 3
Prosecutors called Hope Hicks, a former top Trump adviser, to demonstrate just how badly the Trump camp wanted to keep a lid on negative stories about his interactions with women.
She testified about the panic in the Trump campaign when The Washington Post in fall 2016 published audio of Trump bragging about grabbing women’s genitals on the set of “Access Hollywood.”
She also told jurors how Trump wanted to handle the fallout from the Daniels story when it surfaced in 2018, a year into his presidency. Hicks said Trump told her that “it was better to be dealing with it now, and it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.”
What the prosecution was trying to do: While little if any of what Hicks said was revelatory, prosecutors argued her testimony showed Trump was motivated to suppress scandalous stories. Her remarks, they said, were among a few key “building blocks” that helped establish his guilt.
What the defense was trying to do: The defense downplayed the notion that the salacious allegations sent Trump aides scrambling. If Trump had any motive to suppress such stories, his lawyers said, it was to protect his family from tall tales about his sex life.
First-person account of a troubling tryst
“Then I just thought, ‘oh, my God, what did I misread to get here.’ Because the intention was pretty clear, somebody stripped down in their underwear and posing on the bed, like waiting for you.”
— from Stormy Daniel’s testimony on May 9
To win a conviction, the prosecution didn’t have to prove that Daniels and Trump had sex, as she claimed, at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. And Trump’s team was under no obligation to show that it didn’t happen.
But at trial, her description of the alleged encounter emerged as a centerpiece in the prosecution’s narrative: that Trump had the incentive to hide her story from voters while he was running for president because, in the lead prosecutor’s words, it was so “cringeworthy” and “uncomfortable.”
“Stormy Daniels is the motive,” prosecutor Steinglass said.
On the witness stand, Daniels laid out her version of events in detail, even recalling the brand of shampoo in the hotel bathroom. At times, she seemed to describe nonconsensual sex, prompting Trump’s defense to ask for a mistrial.
She recounted what she said was the moment in the hotel suite when she realized Trump was trying to have sex with her: “Then I just thought, ‘oh, my God, what did I misread to get here.’ Because the intention was pretty clear, somebody stripped down in their underwear and posing on the bed, like waiting for you.”
What the prosecution was trying to do: Prosecutors said the defense had essentially forced their hand in eliciting the lurid details from Daniels, by insisting that the encounter never happened. If she didn’t offer those specifics, the district attorney’s office said, it would give Trump’s defense team more room to undermine her testimony.
What the defense was trying to do: The defense portrayed Daniels as a shakedown artist seeking a quick payday — a liar who sought to extort Trump at a time when he was most vulnerable to bad publicity.
Putting Trump inside the room
“[E]verything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off.”
— from Michael Cohen’s testimony on May 13
It’s difficult to overstate the role Michael Cohen played in this trial for both the prosecution and defense.
As a witness, he brought a great deal of baggage — a convicted liar and tax cheat, he had a history of spreading falsehoods. However, Cohen was the only witness who offered testimony about Trump directly agreeing to the scheme to reimburse him for paying hush money to Daniels.
Cohen described key conversations with Trump and Trump’s then-chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg in which the repayment plan was hammered out in early 2017.
How the reimbursement process worked each month
Each month, Cohen filed what he said were phony
invoices seeking payment for legal services.
The prosecution alleges these invoices were then
recorded incorrectly as legal expenses.
Finally, Cohen was paid via check — nine of which
carried Trump’s distinctive signature.
Each month, Cohen filed what he said were phony invoices seeking payment for legal
services.
The prosecution alleges these invoices were then recorded incorrectly as legal expenses.
Finally, Cohen was paid via check — nine of which carried Trump’s distinctive signature.
Each month, Cohen filed what he said were
phony invoices seeking payment for legal
services.
The prosecution alleges these invoices were
then recorded incorrectly as legal expenses.
Finally, Cohen was paid via check — nine of
which carried Trump’s distinctive signature.
“He expressed to me: ‘Just do it. Go meet up with Allen Weisselberg and figure this whole thing out,’” Cohen testified.
“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” Cohen said at another point in his marathon testimony.
What the prosecution was trying to do: By calling Cohen last, prosecutors hoped to build a structure of hard facts around Cohen’s account that the jurors could trust. Checks, invoices and corroborating testimony from other Trump Organization employees were spread out before the jury to show that Cohen’s account was the most logical explanation for what happened.
What the defense was trying to do: The defense strategy was twofold: argue that Trump did not know about the scheme, and that no one, let alone a former U.S. president, should be convicted of a crime on the word of someone like Cohen. Trump’s lawyers tried hard to use Cohen’s weaknesses to create reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds, but the speed with which the verdict came back suggests that strategy failed completely.
Attacking the legal system — and the case
Trump had railed against the case continuously since it was in the investigation stage, falsely claiming it was evidence of a rigged justice system and a political machination to keep him from returning to the White House. At trial, he went into overdrive, blasting the judge, prosecutors, witnesses and at one point, even prospective jurors in belligerent Truth Social posts and impromptu news conferences in the courthouse hallway.
He also differed from most defendants in that he made little apparent effort to show respect to the judge or the jury. He often closed his eyes or appeared to nod off during testimony he didn’t like. While Daniels was on the stand, Justice Juan Merchan summoned Trump’s lawyers to tell them to keep their client from reacting to her testimony in an audible and visible way.
Trump was under a gag order limiting what he could say about people involved in the case, and by the third week of trial, Merchan ruled he had violated that order 10 times. He fined Trump $10,000 and threatened Trump with jail time if he didn’t change his behavior. It did little to temper Trump’s rhetoric.
As the trial progressed, Trump took to reading from stacks of printed-out news articles featuring legal commentators who tried to discredit the case. He also rallied some of his staunchest allies to his side.
His sons made frequent appearances. Right-wing influencers buzzed in and out of the overflow courtroom and live-streamed in the park outside, echoing Trump’s attacks on the judicial process. A rotating cast of congressional Republicans showed up in court in solidarity with their standard-bearer, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).
The verdict: Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty …
The two days during which the jurors deliberated dragged on slowly. News of the verdict, however, came very fast.
Around 3 p.m. Wednesday, the jury of seven men and five women sent out a request for parts of Pecker and Cohen’s testimony, and asked the judge to go over his instructions again. Thursday’s proceedings began with a partial rereading from the judge, followed by a readback of the requested sections of the trial transcript by two court staffers.
Deliberations continued through the afternoon. Around 4:30 p.m., just as the judge was preparing to adjourn for the day, the jurors sent the judge a note: They’d reached a verdict.
At 5:05 p.m., the foreman read the unanimous decision: guilty on all 34 counts. As the foreman got to the fourth and fifth “guilty,” the defendant shook his head. When the verdict was finished, the jurors walked single file past a glowering Trump one last time. He stared past them from the defense table, the first former U.S. president convicted of a crime.
Editing by Debbi Wilgoren and Sarah Frostenson. Design by Tyler Remmel. Photo editing by Max Becherer. Design editing by Madison Walls. Graphics by Nick Mourtoupalas. Copy editing by Dorine Bethea.
