Trump unlikely to testify as his trial nears end

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : In all, Cohen said the reimbursement deal with Trump came to $420,000 -- $130,000 for the money he paid Daniels; another $50,000 he was supposed to pay to Red Finch, a technology firm hired to rig a poll to show Trump was a highly rated businessman; a doubling of those amounts to $360,000 to cover his tax obligations; and a $60,000 year-end bonus for 2016.
51% : Evidence in the trial shows that Trump repaid the money to Cohen in 2017 after he became president, personally signing nine of the checks.
49% : The objective of the payment, he said, was to hide her claim of a one-night sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier to keep it from voters as they headed to the polls.
46% : Cohen alleged that Trump twice approved the arrangement to pay him back, including once at his Trump Tower in New York and a second time in the Oval Office at the White House after he became president.
44% : Blanche never questioned Cohen about the two crucial conversations he claimed to have had with Trump about the reimbursement scheme.
43% : Trump has long said he would testify but apparently was talked out of it by his lawyers.
37% : But Cohen also again testified that the $420,000 he was paid had nothing to do with legal services for Trump, the crux of the criminal charges the former president is facing.
34% : Trump has denied Daniels' claim he had a liaison with her and the entirety of the 34-count indictment against him.
32% : Over years in the public eye, both as a real estate magnate and a politician, Trump has waxed and waned in his views about whether criminal defendants should testify, at times saying they look "guilty as hell" if they don't defend themselves, and at other times saying they should exercise their constitutional right against self-incrimination.
30% : Trump would have faced a tough cross-examination by prosecutors, who have accused him of falsifying business records about his repayment to Cohen for the hush money he paid to Daniels.
30% : If Trump is found guilty, he could be placed on probation or sentenced to up to four years in prison.
27% : The New York criminal trial of Donald Trump, the first ever of a U.S. president, is fast nearing its end, with one of his lawyers signaling Monday that Trump wouldn't take the witness stand to defend himself.
27% : The presiding judge, New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, had already ruled that prosecutors also would have been allowed to ask Trump about two civil cases he lost in the last few months in which he was ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
26% : Cohen also implicated Trump in the deal at the center of the allegations against the former president - a $130,000 hush money payment Cohen said he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels at Trump's behest just before the 2016 election.
24% : He said that Cohen swore to him that Trump was not involved in the hush money payments to Daniels.
22% : Earlier in the day, Cohen, under sharp questioning by Blanche, admitted to stealing $60,000 from the future president's real estate conglomerate as part of the hush money reimbursement because he felt Trump had cheated him on the amount of his year-end bonus in 2016.
20% : The misleading statements were made to shield Trump personally, he said.
19% : Trump is accused of falsifying his business records to claim that the repayment to Cohen was for his legal work.
19% : Even as news of the hush money payment became public in early 2018, Cohen said he continued to lie it about to media outlets, saying that none of it came from the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign and that Trump did not know about it.
11% : "I swear to God, Bob, I don't have anything on Donald Trump," Cohen said, according to Costello."Michael Cohen said numerous times that President Trump knew nothing about those payments.
10% : Since then, he has often assailed Trump and testified last week he wanted Trump convicted.

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