- [Shelby] Donald Trump was found guilty of felony charges
for his role in covering up a hush money payment
to porn star Stormy Daniels.
- Mother Teresa could not beat these charges.
These charges are rigged. The whole thing is rigged.
- WSJ's courts reporter Corinne Ramey
watched it all unfold inside the courtroom.
She walks us through key moments from the trial
and explains what the verdict means for Trump.
At the center of the charges against Trump
were dozens of documents, including 11 checks, 11 invoices,
and 12 entries in Trump's general ledger.
This was ultimately not a trial about an affair.
It was a trial about business documents
and a coverup, right?
- Absolutely.
Trump was charged with 34 counts
of falsifying business records.
Falsifying business records
in New York is a misdemeanor, but here it's a felony
because prosecutors had to show that Trump was seeking
to commit or conceal a second crime.
- [Shelby] Prosecutors argued that the reason
Trump falsified business records was
to cover up a conspiracy to illegally promote his election
to the presidency.
A conspiracy, they said, that involved Trump,
his fixer, Michael Cohen, and the publisher
of the National Inquirer, David Pecker,
who worked together to catch and kill stories damaging
to Trump's campaign, like the story about an alleged affair
with porn star Stormy Daniels,
who Cohen paid $130,000 to silence
in the final days of the 2016 campaign.
Trump has denied the affair.
The prosecution kicked things off by calling Pecker
to the stand to outline the conspiracy.
- They establish, not only is there a conspiracy,
but there's a specific moment when this supposedly begins.
So they have this meeting,
then here, we have Pecker talking about
how he is Trump's eyes and ears.
Then here, we have sort of him defining
the catch and kill scheme.
He says, "I'd notify Michael Cohen,
"and then he would be able to have them kill
"in another magazine or have them not be published
"or somebody would have to purchase them."
- [Shelby] Pecker also testified that he helped buy
and kill two stories that could be damaging
to Trump in order to help Trump's campaign.
After establishing the conspiracy,
prosecutors called Hope Hicks,
Trump's former communications director,
and they took jurors back to the weeks
before the 2016 election.
- Hope Hicks was important because she talked about
how the campaign was in crisis mode
in responding to the excess Hollywood tape.
- [Trump] I don't even wait.
And when you're a star, they let you do it.
You can do anything.
- [Man] Whatever you want.
- [Trump] Grab them by the pussy.
- She explained to the jury
why the hush money payment was really responding
to this crisis within the campaign
and was not made for purposes of Melania or Trump's family.
- Then the prosecution
called porn star Stormy Daniels.
Were you expecting Stormy Daniels to take the stand?
- This was a real unknown going into the trial.
We didn't know if Stormy would take the stand.
In some ways, she's tangential to the case.
Her testimony absolutely mattered.
What didn't matter was whether
that 2006 alleged sexual encounter happened.
Like, it doesn't matter if Trump and Stormy had sex.
What matters is that Stormy was trying to sell her story,
and I think, when she was on the stand,
jurors saw what that story looked like.
- [Shelby] Throughout the trial,
the jury also heard about Trump
as a businessman from former staffers
and also from books he wrote.
- [Corinne] He writes, "As I said before,
"I always sign my checks, so I know where my money's going."
- That helped establish a pattern to show
that Trump was a micromanager of his business dealings.
Finally, the prosecution called its star witness.
Michael Cohen is an extremely flawed witness.
How did the prosecution set him up
so that he was ultimately believable to the jury?
- Well, before Michael Cohen even walked in that room,
I think those jurors felt
like they already had met Michael Cohen,
and they had established, before he even got on the stand,
why all of what Cohen said made sense,
corroborated much of it with other witnesses,
that the jurors essentially didn't need
to take any kind of leap of faith to believe Cohen,
or in the instances when nobody else could speak
to what Cohen could speak to,
they were set up to believe him.
- So let's look at what some of Cohen
actually said in court.
First, he said Trump directed the hush money payment
to begin with, right?
- He did, and he said Trump said to him, "Just do it."
- And then there's testimony about Cohen
trying to get his money back.
- Yes, and Trump's sitting right there
and the prosecutor says, "What did Trump do?"
Or something to that effect. And Cohen says he approved it.
And that's really important because it goes to the heart
of Trump having a role in the creation
of those false documents.
- [Shelby] Ultimately, the jury found
that Trump falsified business documents to pay Cohen back
for his $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels,
disguising the reimbursement payments
as money for a legal retainer.
Why didn't Trump testify?
- Defense attorneys typically
advise their clients not to testify.
It's really, really risky.
It's a little bit of a Hail Mary move.
And if Trump had gotten on that stand,
prosecutors could have asked him about all kinds of things.
- The verdict made Trump the first former US President
ever convicted of a crime.
Next, Trump will be sentenced by Justice Juan Merchan.
What are the possibilities when it comes to sentencing?
- It's got a full menu of possibilities. Probation.
He could give him a jail sentence.
He could give him essentially no sentence at all
as long as he doesn't commit another crime.
- [Shelby] Trump, who faces three other criminal indictments
in separate cases, has denied wrongdoing
and has painted the trial as a politically motivated sham.
- Trump has plenty of legal issues to grapple with
as he campaigns.
How all of this plays out is really up in the air
if he becomes president
'cause it's unprecedented.
(whimsical music)