The jury finishes a 1st day of deliberations in Trump's hush money case

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

57% : Nine of the checks were signed by Trump, himself.
56% : "In August 2015, two months after Trump announced his 2016 presidential bid, David Pecker, then the publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, met with Trump and Cohen at Trump Tower, according to Pecker's testimony.
53% : In early October 2016, according to the testimony of former Trump communications aide Hope Hicks, the campaign was rocked by the release of the Access Hollywood tape, where Trump could be heard boasting "When you're a star they let you do it.
53% : Cohen said he and Trump discussed the arrangement again, in early February, in the Oval Office.
52% : Cohen testified to a number of conversations with Trump, backed up by phone records, including on the day he wired the payments.
51% : Some of these stories, Pecker said, were sent to Trump and Cohen for approval prior to publication.
51% : But Pecker bought the rights to that story, with the expectation that he would be reimbursed by Trump.
47% : This point, that Trump was making the payment to influence the election by keeping women voters on board, was corroborated by a number of other witnesses.
47% : Cohen said he and Weisselberg met and discussed the agreement with Trump shortly before he left for Washington, on or about Jan. 17, 2020.
44% : But Trump, Cohen said, wanted to delay the payment until after the election, with the idea that after that it wouldn't matter if Daniels was paid.
42% : Hicks, who said Trump, by then in the White House, told her that it was better the story came out in 2018, rather than 2016.
40% : All 12 jurors -- plus six alternates who were asked to stay in case they are needed -- listened to just over four weeks of testimony as the prosecution argued that Trump was involved in a scheme meant to conceal a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to further another crime.
39% : She testified that Trump had dangled a possible role on his TV show Celebrity Apprentice.
38% : In her testimony, Daniels testified that there was a "power imbalance" that made her feel she had to have sex with Trump, when, after leaving the suite's restroom, she found Trump on the hotel bed in his underwear.
37% : In about June 2016, McDougal considered going public with her story of a year-long affair with Trump.
37% : A conviction does not prevent Trump from being the GOP nominee, nor continuing his bid for president.
34% : Trump has pleaded not guilty.
33% : What prosecutors needed to prove was that Trump made them in order to cover up other crimes, such as violating campaign finance law and mischaracterizing the payments for tax purposes.
30% : In this case, he said prosecutors argued Trump aimed to conceal breaking New York election law by falsifying business records.
30% : Prosecutors said, "Trump knew what happened in that hotel room" and didn't want it to come out.
29% : It also provided a motive for Trump to suppress the story.
28% : They will decide if Trump will be convicted or acquitted of 34 felony counts of falsified business records.
28% : Cohen said Trump approved the deal, saying at the end of the meeting that "it was going to be one heck of a ride," in Washington.
26% : If he is acquitted of the charges, Trump cannot be retried for the same charges.
25% : Throughout the trial, Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has lamented his inability to campaign as much as he would like, since, per New York criminal law, he has to attend the trial every day that court is in session.
25% : If Trump is convicted, Merchan would later issue the sentence, which may or may not include prison time; some legal experts believe imprisonment for a former president is unlikely.
24% : But Costello's emails showed that Trump was deciding which of Cohen's lawyers he wanted to pay, and that Costello was concerned about not giving "the appearance that we are following instructions from [Rudy] Giuliani or the president," referring to the former New York City mayor who was Trump's lawyer at the time.
19% : The next day, according to Pecker, Cohen and Davidson, Daniels threatened to go public with accusations she'd had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite during a celebrity golf tournament.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.