Jury deliberations scheduled to get underway
The jury in Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial is scheduled to begin deliberating the outcome of the case this morning after lengthy closing arguments yesterday.
Judge Juan Merchan will begin the proceedings at 10 a.m. ET when he instructs the jury about the law in the case -- a vital process that Merchan estimates will take approximately an hour.
Once the jury is charged, they can begin deliberating whether prosecutors met their burden by proving that Trump falsified 34 business records to further a criminal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.
The jury heard nearly eight hours of summations yesterday when defense lawyer Todd Blanche and prosecutor Joshua Steinglass delivered marathon closing arguments.
Blanche told jurors that prosecutors failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt due in part to their reliance on the testimony of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who he described as the "human embodiment of reasonable doubt."
Steinglass argued that Trump's alleged falsification of records ahead of the election amounted to a "subversion of democracy" by hiding critical information from voters.