Over the past month, jurors have heard about sex, bookkeeping, tabloid journalism, and presidential politics. Their job now is to decide if the prosecutors who have charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records have proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Here’s a look at what the two sides have argued, who has been missing from the case, what to listen for in the final days, and what prosecutors will have to prove to secure a conviction.
The prosecution’s case
The prosecution tried to link Trump to a hush money scheme during the 2016 presidential campaign. They said that he paid off two women and a doorman to keep quiet about stories that could have embarrassed him. They also said that he filed fake business records to hide the payments.
The jurors heard that two women and a doorman were paid tens of thousands of dollars to keep quiet during that campaign about stories that, had they emerged, could have embarrassed Trump. They also heard claims of sex, saw copies of texts, emails, and checks, and listened to a secret recording in which Trump and his then-lawyer can be heard discussing a plan to buy the silence of a Playboy model.
One witness, David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer and a longtime Trump friend, testified that he had agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of the Trump campaign by alerting it to any negative stories about him.
