The jury in New York City’s trial against former President Donald Trump is continuing deliberations on Thursday for a second day after failing to reach a verdict on the first day of deliberations.
Jurors have now, over the course of Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, sent several notes out to Judge Juan Merchan seeking clarity on some elements of testimony they heard over the course of the trial and some of Merchan’s jury instructions that he read to them on Wednesday morning.
To acquit or convict Trump, all 12 jurors would need to reach a unanimous verdict on any of the charges. What’s actually happening in the deliberation room is a mystery, but these notes and other developments over the course of this week may provide clues as to where the jury is headed or not. If all 12 jurors cannot agree, the result could be a hung jury. Jurors are set to continue their deliberations all day Thursday and if no verdict is reached, then again on Friday.
Trump, meanwhile, is forced to stay at the courthouse all day instead of campaigning as the jury deliberates. He is there again right now.
As developments continue on this front throughout the day, follow along here on Breitbart News for live updates on what’s going on in the court.
UPDATE 7:23 p.m. ET:
Outside Trump Tower, where Trump is spending the evening, anti-Biden protesters are gathering to make clear their disgust with the Democrat president:
UPDATE 6:56 p.m. ET:
Top conservative Mike Cernovich compares this travesty of justice to the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and notes people will remember forever where they were when this happened:
UPDATE 6:54 p.m. ET:
Trump announces a press conference on Friday morning at 11 a.m. ET at Trump Tower:
UPDATE 6:48 p.m. ET:
Alvin Bragg has begun his press conference.
UPDATE 6:38 p.m. ET:
The establishment media are having a giant party amongst themselves right now:
UPDATE 6:33 p.m. ET:
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), in pushing back on establishment Republican Larry Hogan–the former Governor of Maryland who’s running for Senate there this year–says he does not respect the verdict and nor should anyone:
Meanwhile, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is telling everyone to donate to Trump:
UPDATE 6:32 p.m. ET:
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) says on Fox News just now that “they just elected Trump president.”
Meanwhile, all seems quiet outside the courthouse per Breitbart News’s Emma-Jo Morris who’s on site for us there:
UPDATE 6:08 p.m. ET:
Alvin Bragg is expected to hold a news conference at 6:30 p.m. ET.
UPDATE 6:02 p.m. ET:
Legal experts are saying without question this verdict will be overturned:
UPDATE 5:58 p.m. ET:
Former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) just announced he just secured an $800,000 donation for Trump in the aftermath of the verdict, something he said was easy given how incredulous Republicans are at this verdict:
UPDATE 5:55 p.m. ET:
The Biden campaign headquarters reportedly cheered at the verdict as it was read:
UPDATE 5:51 p.m. ET:
Even Speaker Mike Johnson is ripping the verdict:
UPDATE 5:48 p.m. ET:
Several U.S. Senators are saying this verdict is a disgrace:
Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) in a statement lambasted the verdict.
“This case was a blatant abuse of our justice system as a political weapon by a radical prosecutor trying to interfere in the election, and the verdict proves that this was just a show trial all along,” Braun said. “Trump is going to win in November because Americans are sick of these political games when the price of everything has doubled in 4 years, and the world is at war because of Joe Biden’s weakness and incompetence.”
UPDATE 5:46 p.m. ET:
Fundraising is exploding for Trump and Republicans right now, so much so that WinRed–the GOP fundraising platform–has crashed due to the overload of traffic to it:
Others are saying they gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect Trump:
UPDATE 5:26 p.m. ET:
Before everyone left the courtroom, Merchan set sentencing for July 11 at 10 a.m. ET. That means Merchan put it right before the Republican National Convention, four days before specifically.
UPDATE 5:24 p.m. ET:
Tucker Carlson predicts that Donald Trump will win the election because of this:
UPDATE 5:22 p.m. ET:
More reactions are coming out:
UPDATE 5:21 p.m. ET:
Trump is speaking now, and he calls it a “rigged, disgraceful trial” and says the “real verdict” will be on election day in November. “I’m a very innocent man,” Trump says, placing the blame for all of this at the feet of Democrat President Joe Biden.
“We will win,” Trump says of the appeals process… “We will fight for our Constitution. This is far from over.”
UPDATE 5:20 p.m. ET:
Reactions are pouring in and they are not good for the left:
UPDATE 5:09 p.m. ET:
The jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts:
UPDATE 5:07 p.m. ET:
The jury is back in the room, and Trump has been found guilty on every count so far.
UPDATE 5:02 p.m. ET:
The judge says the jury is about to come into the courtroom to reveal the verdict.
UPDATE 5:00 p.m. ET:
Merchan is back on the bench in the courtroom:
UPDATE 4:57 p.m. ET:
Alvin Bragg is now in the courtroom:
UPDATE 4:55 p.m. ET:
A source familiar with the matter told Breitbart News that when the judge said there is a verdict members of the press in the courtroom audibly gasped.
UPDATE 4:47 p.m. ET:
Fox News’s Neil Cavuto reports Trump was smiling ahead of the news of a verdict being in, and also the jury has requested 30 more minutes to get all the paperwork filled out. It remains to be seen what the verdict is here, but the fate of the nation hangs in the balance. Shannon Bream from Fox News, meanwhile, reports that a “verdict” could be a deadlocked jury too so it could be something other than an acquittal or conviction possibly.
UPDATE 4:42 p.m. ET:
A very quick turn of events indeed:
UPDATE 4:41 p.m. ET:
The jury has a verdict in the Trump trial:
It’s unclear what it is. This is a quick turn of events from just a few minutes ago.
UPDATE 4:30 p.m. ET:
Brand new polling from Emerson College shows that Trump is making serious gains on Biden in New York state–and when third-party candidates are included Biden’s lead is cut down to just 6 percent:
UPDATE 4:20 p.m. ET:
The New York Daily News’s reporter at the courthouse reports there will not be a verdict on Thursday:
UPDATE 4:17 p.m. ET:
Trump and Merchan are also in the courtroom. Apparently, the jury–without a verdict–will be dismissed at 4:30 p.m. ET.
This probably means a verdict is unlikely on Thursday, but still possible.
UPDATE 4:17 p.m. ET:
Unclear why, but prosecutors reportedly just entered the courtroom:
UPDATE 4:06 p.m. ET:
Incredible moment captured outside the courthouse:
UPDATE 2:52 p.m. ET:
Judge Merchan says deliberations will go until 6 p.m. today:
UPDATE 1:52 p.m. ET:
Some signs from reporters in the courtroom about how jurors reacted to Merchan today as he re-read instructions:
It’s also worth noting that the New York government is so incompetent and decrepit the courthouse WiFi is not working, so it’s hard for reporters to send out live updates:
UPDATE 1:44 p.m. ET:
The jury has now been deliberating for more than 9 hours with no verdict.
UPDATE 1:41 p.m. ET:
It’s worth noting that the jury does NOT have a written copy of the 55 pages of instructions from Merchan, even though those instructions are public:
The big question is why Merchan is not moving to give the jurors the written copy of the very confusing instructions:
UPDATE 1:29 p.m. ET:
The waiting game is in full effect now, as jurors have been deliberating for more than eight hours across two days still without reaching a verdict. Little is known about where they stand or what’s happening in that room, but some tea leaves are emerging based off various questions jurors asked back to the judge in written notes about what testimony they wanted to hear again and what instructions they wanted to hear again. The nation is watching and waiting for any signs of a possible verdict or news from the deliberations, and jurors are expected to continue deliberating until at least 6 p.m. eastern today if they do not reach a verdict by then.
UPDATE 1:20 p.m. ET:
The Trump campaign released a memo from pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Travis Tunis to top Trump advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita revealing that internal polling data shows the trial will not affect the election in any meaningful way across the battleground states. Some key findings from the memo:
We have been routinely surveying thousands of voters in the seven target states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on a weekly basis. We have similar data going back nearly two months since before the New York trial began. In that entire time period, changes to how voters feel about the trial have been negligible at best.
While a total of 60% of target state voters claim to be following the trial, only 21% are following it “very” closely. Furthermore, those following the trial most closely are significantly more partisan and less likely to be persuadable voters. Democrats (66%) and Biden voters (72%), in particular drive awareness of the trial. Conversely, key target groups like Independents (55%), Undecideds (36%), and our key target Persuadables (38%) are much less likely to be following the trial, with almost none following it “very” closely.
A 53% majority believe the New York trial is politically motivated, exactly the same number we saw two months ago before the trial began and a number that has not significantly changed during the entire period. Further among the key groups who will untimately decided this election like Independents, 54% say the trial is politically motivated as do 55% of our target Persuadables. Even as many as one in five Democrats have said the trial is politically motivated.
Furthermore, a plurality of voters feel that the prosecution has failed to prove their case against President Trump by a 42% – 34% margin. Republicans overwhelmingly feel this way, but even Independents say they have failed to prove their case by an 11-point margin. Only Democrats are driving the belief that the New York prosecution has proved that the President committed a crime.
Most importantly, when we asked voters how they would vote given a conviction or an acquittal, the changes were insignificant. President Trump’s lead fell by two net points among those asked how they would vote if he was convicted. His lead increased by one net point among those asked how they would vote if he was not convicted. Both of these shifts are statistically insignificant, meaning that by mathematical standards, no real change in the race.
The full memo is available on the Trump campaign website here at this link.
UPDATE 1:00 p.m. ET:
The courthouse in Manhattan is closed for lunch now, but jury deliberations are continuing over lunch in the jury room. No news has come out since the deliberations continued a couple hours ago.
UPDATE 12:05 p.m. ET:
ABC News reports that Trump’s legal team wants “chaos” and “evidence of strong disagreements” among the jurors in hoping for a hung jury here:
Quoting anonymous sources familiar with the defense’s view of the notes the jury sent out to the judge on Wednesday and Thursday, ABC News notes that the Trump team sees it as a “mixed bag” at this point and it’s too early to tell which way it will break.
UPDATE 11:24 a.m. ET:
The read-back of the testimony for the jury is complete and the jury is continuing deliberations now. Trump is also back out of the courtroom. The second day of deliberations is under way.
UPDATE 11:08 a.m. ET: So this apparently just happened in the courtroom:
UPDATE 10:53 a.m. ET: As everyone looks for clues about what’s happening in the jury deliberation room, here is an interesting graphic the New York Times released a while back in late April when the jury was selected that details where the 12 jurors get their news from:
Notably, juror number 2 said when selected that their news sources were Truth Social–Trump’s social media company–and X, the platform run by Elon Musk and formerly known as Twitter. Juror number 1 said they read the U.K. Daily Mail, a conservative-leaning tabloid, and watched the right-leaning Fox News and the left-leaning MSNBC but also read the New York Times. In addition to juror 1, jurors 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12 all said they read the New York Times. Juror number 4, interestingly, said they did not get news from anywhere–perhaps another interesting person.
UPDATE 10:46 a.m. ET: The pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. just released this video showing how much of a sham this whole thing is:
UPDATE 10:45 a.m. ET: This morning, the jury asked Merchan to re-read part of his instructions:
Court reporters are also re-reading parts of testimony transcript to the jury:
It’s unclear when the jurors will return to the deliberation room to continue discussions. The jury is made up of seven men and five women.
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