Ex-Trump attorney predicts Trump verdict and how long it will take – NJ.com
Former President Donald Trump attends his trial at Manhattan Criminal Court, Tuesday, May 28, 2024, in New York. (Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP, Pool)AP
The hits keep coming from Donald Trump’s former White House lawyer Ty Cobb, who led the the former president’s legal response to the Russian election interference investigation before he blasted Trump as a “deeply wounded narcissist.”
Cobb told Semafor Tuesday he expects a guilty verdict of his former client in the criminal hush money trial. And he doesn’t think it’ll take jurors long to deliberate, either.
“I expect a ‘GUILTY’ verdict, but only because the jury instructions as urged by the DA and adopted by the judge, over strenuous and well founded defense objections, virtually require conviction,” Cobb told the news outlet.
“I reach this legal conclusion because of my long experience as a federal prosecutor and white collar defense lawyer, my reverence for the rule of law, and despite my view that Trump remains the greatest threat to Democracy in our nation’s history,” he said.
Cobb predicted a verdict could come back but the end of the week.
That would be a quick turnaround considering closing arguments in the trial began Tuesday.
Today in @semafor Principals "one good text" with Ty Cobb on Trump trial pic.twitter.com/GjjwLSUoyN
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged effort to keep salacious — and, he says, bogus — stories about his sex life from emerging during his 2016 campaign. On Monday, Trump called the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg a “scam” and “witch hunt.”
The charges center on $130,000 in payments that Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the sexual encounter ever happened.
Prosecutors say the payments to Cohen were falsely logged as legal fees. Prosecutors have described it as part of a scheme to bury damaging stories Trump feared could help his opponent in the 2016 race, particularly as Trump’s reputation was suffering at the time from comments he had made about women.
Trump has acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for the payment and that it was designed to stop Daniels from going public about the alleged encounter. But Trump has previously said it had nothing to do with the campaign.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.
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