Trump trial live updates: Jury to deliberate verdict after prosecution reveals ‘smoking guns’ hush money evidence

I mean, obviously we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves here but it is kind of an irresistable thought isn’t it?

Here’s James Liddell to paint us a picture.

Our very own Alex Woodward has sat through every single day of Trump’s trial since it began on Monday 15 April, getting up very early indeed to battle long queues, Judge Merchan’s rickety air-con and the defendant’s snores to bring us the very latest updates on a highly complex case.

Frankly, the man deserves a medal.

For now, here are his closing thoughts on it all, from Trump himself to the very human tragedy that took place just outside at the end of Week One.

Alex Woodward at the courthouse tells us that Judge Juan Merchan will be kicking things off slightly later on Wednesday, starting at 10am ET rather than 9.30am, as has been the custom.

His instructions to the jury are expected to take about an hour.

Court is then likely to break for lunch shortly after that, giving the jury the rest of the day for its deliberations (the justice mentioned trying to finish at a more reasonable time after yesterday’s mammoth session).

Trump’s youngest daughter made a rare appearance at her old man’s trial yesterday, joining half-siblings Don Jr and Eric and the latter’s wife Lara Trump at the courthouse.

The took their seats directly behind the defendant alongside is legal adviser Alina Habba.

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Gustaf Kilander has the story.

Judge Aileen Cannon has blocked Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s request to bar Trump from making statements that could pose a threat to law enforcement in the classified documents case she is overseeing.

Judge Cannon wrote that Smith’s Friday motion was “wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy” as it didn’t give Trump’s defense team enough time to respond.

The special counsel had put in the request in response to Trump’s outrageous false claims last week that the FBI agents who raided Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 in search of the boxes of top secret files he had refused to return to the National Archives were “authorized to shoot me”, an irresponsible lie quickly refuted by the bureau and US attorney general Merrick Garland.

New York Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik, one of several prominent GOP figures currently jostling to be Trump’s running mate, has filed a misconduct complaint against Judge Juan Merchan, alleging that his appointment to Mr Trump’s ongoing Manhattan hush money trial was “not random at all”.

The House Republican Conference chairwoman wrote to Kay-Ann Porter Campbell, inspector-general of the New York State Unified Court System, calling for an investigation “to determine whether the required random selection process was in fact followed” when Judge Merchan was handed the case brought against Trump by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg last spring.

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If this doesn’t get her the veep gig, nothing will.

Stepping away from court just momentarily, here’s a chilling story.

Trump reportedly suggested during a recent fundraising event that he would have bombed Moscow in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and attacked Beijing if China had invaded Taiwan on his watch.

The comments surprised some of the donors at the event, as you might well imagine.

Gustaf Kilander has the story.

For the prosecution, Trump’s “catch-and-kill” scheme to buy up stories about his alleged sex scandals launched a conspiracy to corruptly influence the 2016 presidential election, a strategy they characterised as an attempt to “hoodwink” voters with a fraudulent scheme to keep politically crushing stories away from the public.

“It was the subversion of democracy,” according to Manhattan district attorney Joshua Steinglass, who delivered an epic closing statement to jurors on Tuesday.

Trump sought to rob voters of the truth, “to manipulate and defraud the voters, to pull the wool over their eyes in a coordinated fashion,” according to Steinglass.

Over five hours, the attorney traced the timeline of Trump’s campaign to suppress damaging information by threading the dozens of pieces of evidence and witness testimony presented to jurors over the last five weeks into a damning narrative of his alleged fraud.

Here’s Alex Woodward again.

Let’s recap yesterday’s closing arguments, shall we?

First up, here’s Alex Woodward’s account of Todd Blanche’s two-hour summation, in which he called Michael Cohen “the Tom Brady of lying” and listed 10 reasons for the jurors to entertain reasonable doubt about the prosecution’s case against his client.

The Hollywood legend turned up outside Trump’s hush money trial yesterday along with members of Joe Biden’s campaign team and January 6 police officers Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone and got into a heated row with members of the public who had turned out to support the defendant.

Trump, of course, couldn’t resist deriding a celebrity whose support he might otherwise warmly welcome, accusing the great man of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and saying his “movies, artistry, and brand have gone WAY DOWN IN VALUE since he entered the political arena at the request of Crooked Joe Biden”.

Killers of the Flower Moon aside, he may actually have a point there – and certainly sounds like someone who’s just come out of a screening of the extended director’s cut of Dirty Grandpa.

Here’s Gustaf Kilander on Bobby D.