Longtime adviser dan scavino could post from his social media account. Today, his campaign was blaming a nameless staff member for posting a video referring to the creation of a unified reich and its far from the first time hes invoked rhetoric echoing hitlers germany. We begin tonight with the next phase of the historic first criminal trial of a former u. S. President. That is because the defense in Donald Trumps Hush Money Election Interference Trial rested its case today. And counter to trumps many claims, they rested without Hearing A Word from him on the Witness Stand. Closing arguments are scheduled to begin one week from today, and before the jury begins its deliberations the judge will provide the jury with their instructions. That outline what Verdict Jurors should deliver based on what they determine to be true through the evidence that was presented. Each word in those Jury Instructions is critical to whether trump is found guilty or not guilty by the jury. This afternoon, j
versus donald j. trump. we re getting live updates from inside of the courtroom. we re going to do our best to watch them together and bring out and interrupt our conversations and bring you any and all significant moments as they re happening. over the last few hours the prosecutor has been going through the claims made by trump s lawyers in their closing argument this morning. steinglass, the prosecutor, pushed back against trump s lawyers claim from this morning that porn star stormy daniels was extorting donald trump. prosecutors saying this, quote, extortion is not a defense to falsifying business records. and if you have any questions about that, you can ask the judge. after putting on the stand, just two witnesses, one of whose credibility completely crumbled during cross-examination, donald trump s defense team today closed by arguing essentially that there was never any criminal conspiracy to conceal the hush money payments. trump s attorney todd blanche also went af
chose to stay past the time they normally would have gone home. they stayed for an extra hour at 6:30 p.m., the judge dismissing the jury for a day. they ve been in deliberations for about 20 minutes this morning. it is an indication they do seem to be close to a verdict. we ll see whether or not we get one today. if there s no verdict today, the jury will be off tomorrow and back on friday morning. one of the things they may be discussing that third defendant, william roddie bryan, his attorney going out of the way on monday in defense closings to separate his client out saying he was in the backup pickup truck, only had a cell phone. never got out of the truck, making a plea for the jury to treat him differently than the other two defendants. i want to bring in msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos and civil rights attorney charles coleman. danny let s start with you, if closing arguments are any indication, the jury is likely focusing on the whole idea of whether or not this was a ci
citizen s arrest. they never said we re making an arrest. we never said we saw you commit a crime so where did the citizen s arrest come from because it didn t come from the defendants on february 23rd, 2020. where did it come from? you don t have to consider citizen s arrest, they were the aggressors and they were committing felonies against mr. arbery and, therefore, they don t get to claim self-defense. elie, remind us how these laws work in georgia. who has to prove what? yeah. ana, i thought that was an interesting strategy by the prosecutor there. when you re rebutting in a case as a prosecutor, your job is to bring it back, bring it back to the jurors because they have sat through three hours yesterday of defense closings, and the prosecutor really focussed in hard on this idea of citizen s arrest. the prosecutor bears the burden of proving her case beyond a reasonable doubt and disproving the defense beyond a reasonable doubt. however, as the prosecutor i think argued reall
jury 45 minutes or so in. if you have to go longer, fine, but want to keep it succinct, and i think what the prosecutor is doing she knows she will have to clean up after three different defense closings so i hi she s leaving herself enough room to address in more detail what we ll hear from the three defense attorneys. areva, given all the racial underattorney generals the prosecutor mentioned raise only directly once in her closing argument. what do you make that have? i think it was smart. i think you re in new york, i m in los angeles. this case is in brunswick, georgia. there are 11 white people on this jury. there s only one person of color, so to make this case solely about race i think would have been a mistake for this prosecutor as much as most of us who do this for a living, a civil right lawyer, know it s all about ration, but i think in terms of trying to keep the jury focused on the facts of this case, that was smart on her