By Jack Queen, Andy Sullivan and Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Former U.S. president Donald Trump opted not to testify in his criminal hush money trial on Tuesday, quickly wrapping up his defense and clearing the way for jurors to begin deliberations next week.
Trump had fueled speculation for weeks about whether he would take the stand to defend himself against charges of falsifying company records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star. Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
By testifying, he might have tried to personally convince a panel of twelve jurors and six alternates that his goal was to protect his family from shame, not to bury a story about an alleged sexual encounter that was harmful to his political prospects.
But criminal defendants typically do not testify in their own trials because it exposes them to probing questions from prosecutors.
If he had lied under oath, he was at risk of perjury.
In challenging and extensive testimony in a civil fraud trial last year, Trump was reprimanded by a judge and ultimately ordered to pay $355 million in fines. A similar performance in this case could have alienated jurors.
“He could undermine his entire case with one outburst,” retired New York Judge George Grasso said in an interview last week.
Trump, 77, has pleaded not guilty to 34 charges of falsifying company records. He has denied wrongdoing and said he never had sex with Daniels, who testified in detail about a 2006 relationship she said she had with Trump.
Prosecutors say the altered records covered up violations of election and tax laws — since the money was essentially an unreported contribution to Trump’s campaign — elevating the crimes from felonies to felonies punishable by up to four years in prison.
Outside the courtroom, Trump has criticized the judge overseeing the case as corrupt, saying prosecutors were trying to damage his bid to win back the White House as a Republican from Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election.
Trump’s legal team has called two witnesses on his behalf.
Judge Juan Merchan said jurors would return next Tuesday, after the three-day Memorial Day weekend, to hear closing arguments, with deliberations likely to begin the next day.
Trump’s lawyers had asked Merchan to dismiss the case before it reaches the jury, arguing that it relies on the testimony of a witness, the estranged former Trump fixer. Michael Cohenwho has a well-documented history of lying.
Such dismissal motions are rarely successful, and Merchan indicated Monday that he was inclined to let jurors judge Cohen’s credibility for themselves. Prosecutors say his testimony is supported by other evidence.
Cohen testified that he repeatedly spoke to Trump about the payment to Daniels in the latter part of Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign, when the businessman turned politician was facing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.
Cohen said Trump feared Daniels would damage his appeal to female voters if she made her story public.
(Reporting by Jack Queen and Luc Cohen in New York and Andy Sullivan in Washington; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Howard Goller)
