Foreign News
Have Trump prosecutors made their case at hush-money trial?
For nearly four weeks, Donald Trump has sat quietly in a New York courtroom while state prosecutors laid out the first-ever criminal case against a former US president.
Lawyers from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have called on a cast of blockbuster witnesses and produced dozens of surreptitiously recorded conversations and documents to help corroborate their case.
They allege Mr Trump directed a hush-money payment to an adult-film star in 2016 to avoid a sex scandal he feared would derail his presidential campaign – and then authorised an illegal reimbursement scheme to cover it up. Mr Trump denies 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The prosecution’s final witness, Michael Cohen, will face further cross-examination on Monday before Trump’s lawyers get an opportunity to present his defence.
Legal experts say the prosecution has done an efficient job. But even with solid evidence and testimony, they acknowledge that a conviction in the complex felony case is far from guaranteed.
“The pieces are all there. But is it there beyond a reasonable doubt?” said former Brooklyn prosecutor Julie Rendelman. “I don’t know.”
“It only takes one juror,” she added.
Laying out the story
Though Mr Trump’s case centres on a reimbursement he made to Cohen, his former fixer, prosecutors spent the first weeks of the trial walking the court through what led up to the $130,000 (£102,000) hush-money payment Cohen made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels.
They started with David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer.
He described a series of meetings in Trump Tower where he, Cohen and Mr Trump hatched a plan to suppress negative stories about Mr Trump – including alleged sexual encounters – as he ran for president.
His testimony proved influential, said former Manhattan prosecutor Lance Fletcher. “He doesn’t have a reputation that’s been blown apart by this. And he came into it really seeming to be Trump’s friend,” Mr Fletcher said. “So I think he comes off as almost an impartial witness.”
From there, prosecutors called a host of others, including former Trump aide Hope Hicks and Daniels’ former attorney Keith Davidson, to corroborate the story.
“They sort of connected a fascinating novel … about how all of these characters interacted,” said Columbia Law School professor John Coffee. “And that was wise.”
They also interspersed evidence such as meeting logs, recordings and receipts of hush-money payments made to a Trump Tower doorman and Playboy model Karen McDougal to bolster witnesses’ stories.
Star witnesses air secrets
Prosecutors used weeks of storytelling and evidence to build up to the most highly anticipated witnesses, including Ms Daniels.
Mr Trump’s attorneys worked hard to limit Ms Daniels’ testimony.
While prosecutors pledged to tread lightly when quizzing her about the alleged sexual encounter at a hotel suite in Nevada in 2006, she still proved at times an uncontrollable witness, Judge Juan Merchan told the court. Mr Trump has denied having sex with her.
Her explicit testimony led to several unsuccessful mistrial motions from Mr Trump’s legal team and may have opened the door for an appeal, some legal experts said.
But others said that context helped prosecutors show why Mr Trump would be desperate to pay for her silence in order to protect his campaign.
“She got into some salacious details, which I thought went too far,” said Ms Rendelman. “But at the same time, the argument for the prosecution is the more salacious it is, the more Trump would want it to be shut down.”
Ultimately, Ms Daniels could only testify to what led up to the hush-money payment.
For the behind-the-scenes reimbursement, they had to rely on a problematic witness: a convicted felon who recently has made a living off attacking Mr Trump.
A calm and collected Cohen takes the stand
Members of the public held their breath earlier this week as Mr Trump’s former fixer-turned foe, Cohen, was called to the stand. Many anticipated the same character who authored fiery social media posts attacking Mr Trump, for whom he once pledged to take a bullet. But the man speaking in a blue suit and tie took them by surprise. Cohen appeared composed as he detailed his decades with Mr Trump.
“He is measured. He is reflective,” said Diane Kiesel, a former New York Supreme Court Justice and Manhattan prosecutor. “He has not let any bias or animus for Mr Trump show through.”
Cohen told the court of his initial admiration, working as Mr Trump’s personal attorney for 10 years. He acknowledged the lows as well, including lying on Mr Trump’s behalf, leading to regrets.
His composure boosted the prosecutors’ case, and his testimony was bolstered by a weak cross-examination from Mr Trump’s legal team on day one, experts said.
Mr Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, appeared disorganised at first, stumbling sometimes in his questioning, experts told the BBC.
But he appeared to make strides on the second day, Thursday, casting doubt on details of Cohen’s testimony, including an October 2016 phone call Cohen made to Mr Trump’s bodyguard in which he claimed to have to talked to Mr Trump about details of the hush-money payment.
It was a reminder of what experts said was one of prosecutors’ largest problems: Cohen’s credibility. The defence hammered home the point that Cohen is a convicted criminal, who spent time in prison after being convicted on several charges including lying to Congress.
Cohen was able to testify to a key part of prosecutors’ case – Mr Trump’s direct knowledge of the hush-money payment reimbursement scheme.
Cohen said former Trump Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg – currently serving a perjury sentence at Rikers Island prison – decided to classify reimbursements from Mr Trump’s account as legal expenses. Cohen testified that he heard Weisselberg get the OK from Mr Trump himself.
As Cohen spoke, prosecutors also displayed the dozens of cheques, ledgers and invoices at the heart of the 34-count indictment.
But Cohen’s story may not sway all jurors.
“You are relying on a witness who in many respects … comes with a larger load of baggage than others,” Ms Rendelman said. “It makes it a bit more difficult to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Connecting the dots
Other challenges remain for the prosecution.
In a relatively novel approach, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office elevated falsifying business records charges to a felony by claiming Mr Trump did so with the goal of concealing another crime.
To prove their case, prosecutors must show intent – that Mr Trump illegally classified records for the purpose of aiding his campaign. Several witnesses seemed to corroborate this.
“He wasn’t thinking at all about [his wife] Melania,” Cohen told the court. “This was all about the campaign.”
But prosecutors must make this connection clear to the jury.
“Essentially they have to connect these payments to a motive that links them to a campaign,” said Ms Kiesel. “This requires a summation of a lifetime, because you really have to connect these dots.”
Mr Fletcher said prosecutors succeeded in doing so, with witnesses arguing the hush-money payment and reimbursement was not made to protect Mr Trump’s family.
“This was all about the election,” Mr Fletcher said. “If I was going to bet, I would bet on a conviction. But I don’t think it’s a slam dunk.”
In the end, the verdict could come down to jury selection, experts said.
The 12 members and six alternates were picked from hundreds who expressed a range of political views and familiarity with Mr Trump and this case.
Jury members are often unpredictable, Ms Kiesel said. “It only takes one person to decide that the people have not met their burden,” she said. “The people have 12 jurors to convince.”
(BBC)
Australian teen Bianca Jones has become the fourth tourist to have died in a suspected mass poisoning in Laos.
The 19-year-old’s family confirmed her death to the media on Thursday. Hours earlier, the US State Department told the media that an American man died in the tourist town of Vang Vieng.
Two Danish women, aged 19 and 20, also died last week in Laos, Danish authorities confirmed, declining to share more due to confidentiality concerns.
The deaths remain under police investigation, but news reports and testimonies online from other tourists suggest they may have consumed drinks laced with methanol, a deadly substance often found in bootleg alcohol.
Jones’s friend Holly Bowles is in hospital on life support, while a British woman is also reportedly in hospital.
New Zealand’s foreign ministry told local media on Thursday that one of its citizens was also unwell from suspected methanol poisoning. It is unclear how many more people have fallen ill.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the department of foreign affairs had confirmed Jones’s death.
“Our first thoughts in this moment are with her family and friends who are grieving a terrible and cruel loss,” Albanese said on Thursday afternoon.
“This is every parent’s very worst fear and a nightmare that no one should have to endure.”
He said he hoped Ms Bowles, who is currently at Bangkok Hospital, would recover well.
The US State Department said it was “closely monitoring” the situation with regards to the American victim, adding that it was up to local authorities to determine the cause of death.
Australian, New Zealand and UK authorities have each warned their citizens to be careful of methanol poisoning when consuming alcohol in Laos.
Nana Backpacker Hostel, where the two Australian women stayed in Vang Vieng, told the BBC that it was closed for police investigation.
The hostel’s manager told the Associated Press that the two women were among more than 100 guests who received free shots of Lao vodka from the hostel. The pair then headed out for the night, he said, adding that no other guests reported health issues.
The manager said he hoped the investigation would clear the hostel’s name, but said they have stopped giving free shots for now.
In a statement to Australian newspaper the Herald Sun, Jones’s family expressed their “deepest gratitude for the overwhelming support, love, and prayers we’ve received from across Australia”.
“We kindly ask for privacy as we navigate through our grief and begin to heal,” the statement said.
Unlike ethanol, the key component of alcoholic beverages, methanol is toxic to humans. Bootleg liquor producers sometimes add it to their drinks, however, as a cheap way to increase alcohol content.
Earlier this year, at least 57 people in India died after consuming methanol-laced liquor. Similar cases of mass poisoning have also been reported across the world, from the Philippines to Peru.
Vang Vieng is a small riverside town in central Laos, and a hub for backpackers in Southeast Asia.
[BBC]
The humanitarian medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has suspended its operations in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, following a violent attack on its staff and the alleged killing of two patients they were treating by Haitian police officers.
The incident took place last week as violence continued to worsen in the country.
An estimated 25 people were killed in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday alone in what police say was a foiled attempt at a gang invasion of a wealthy neighbourhood.
Politically, the situation also remains critical with interim Prime Minister Garry Conille fired this month by the country’s ruling council – less than six months after he took office.
MSF says that on 11 November one of its ambulances carrying three young men with gunshot wounds was stopped by Haitian law enforcement officers.
Apparently supported by a paramilitary self-defence group, the men attacked the vehicle, removed two of the patients, took them outside hospital grounds and executed them.
The humanitarian group denounced the violence in a strongly worded statement last week, saying their personnel had been tear-gassed and held against their will for several hours.
While that incident appears to have been the final straw for MSF in Port-au-Prince, at least for the time being, it was not the only recent example of extreme aggression against their staff.
The announcement comes amid a worsening climate of violence in Haiti with some 25 suspected gang members killed in the capital on Tuesday.
The police say that residents helped officers to fight off an attempted attack on the upscale suburb of Pétion-Ville.
The neighbourhood was cordoned off after residents barricaded streets, some armed with machetes and makeshift weapons, in an apparent effort to prevent a gang invasion.
[BBC]
Winter has come to Delhi and with it, a familiar sense of gloom. The sky here is grey and there is a thick, visible blanket of smog.
If you stay outdoors for more than a few minutes, you can almost taste ash. You will feel breathless within minutes if you try to run or even walk at a brisk pace in the smog.
Newspapers are back to using words like toxic, deadly and poisonous in their main headlines.
Most schools have been shut and people have been advised to stay indoors – though those whose livelihoods depend on working outdoors can’t afford to do so.
Delhi’s air quality score was somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 on Monday and Tuesday, according to different monitoring agencies. The acceptable limit is less than 100.
These scores measure the levels of particulate matter – called PM 2.5 and PM10 – in the air. These tiny particles can enter the lungs and cause a host of diseases.
On social media, people have been expressing shock, disappointment and anguish that it’s all happening again.
Along with the gloom, there is a strong sense of déjà vu – like we have seen this all many times before in the past 15 years.
Covering this story feels like watching (and being in) the same dystopian film every year – following the same characters, plot and script. The outcome is always the same – nothing changes.
The parks are empty again – people, particularly children and the elderly, have been told to stay indoors.
Those who must work – daily-wage labourers, rickshaw pullers, delivery riders – are coughing but still going out.
Hospitals are seeing an increasing number of people coming in with respiratory problems.
And amid all this, we are back to the same question again – why does nothing change?
The simple answer is that solving Delhi’s air problem requires monumental efforts and coordination.
The sources of the problem are many. One of them is the practice of farmers burning crop remains to clear their fields quickly to sow seeds for the next yield.
This mostly happens in the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The smoke from the farm fires engulfs Delhi every winter and hangs low in the atmosphere as wind speeds reduce during winter months.
But farmers can’t be entirely blamed for this because this is the cheapest way of clearing fields.
Different governments have talked about providing machines and financial incentives to stop crop burning, but very little has happened on the ground.
Delhi itself produces a huge chunk of the pollution – emission from vehicles, construction and factories.
Every year, in the winter months, people get angry, journalists write and produce reports, politicians blame each other and courts fume – until we do it all over again the next year.
A public health emergency like this would spark mass protests in most democracies. But the anger in Delhi is mostly limited to social media.
Activists say the reason is that pollution doesn’t cause immediate problems for most people. Ingesting high levels of PM2.5 deteriorates health slowly. A Lancet study found that pollution led to more than 2.3 million premature deaths in India in 2019.
And then there is the class divide. People who can afford to temporarily leave the city do that, those who can buy air purifiers do that, and those who can vent on social media do that.
The rest, who don’t have these options, just go about their lives.
The collective angst has so far not resulted in a massive protest and, as the Supreme Court once observed, politicians just “pass the buck” and wait for the season to get over.
Experts say governments at the federal level and in different states need to leave their party politics behind and work together to solve this problem. They need to focus on long-term solutions.
And citizens need to hold politicians accountable and courts have to pass decisive orders months before the pollution worsens.
This year, we are again in the thick of the season and temporary measures have been announced, like banning construction work.
But can these bring Delhi’s elusive blue skies back? The evidence from the past few years doesn’t give much hope.
[BBC]
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