It’s crunch time for Trump – but will he be convicted or walk away as a free man?

The former president is set to learn his fate in the hush money trial this week but, writes Jon Sopel, should he walk free, there is one thing we can be certain of — he will do so with neither humility nor grace

Trump has spent the majority of his time as a criminal defendant sitting nearly motionless, for hours, leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed (Justin Lane/Pool Photo via AP)

This week, 12 New Yorkers will potentially play a major role in determining the outcome of November’s presidential election. For weeks they have had a ringside seat at the circus that has come to town: the Donald Trump hush money trial.

For weeks they have found themselves immersed in the colliding worlds of a sometime playboy, sometime property tycoon and – of course – one time and one term president. It’s been golf tournaments a go-go, bottoms slapped with rolled up magazines, a one night stand (denied by Trump) with Stormy Daniels, and the fixers and sometime friends whose job was to make things go away. Edifying it hasn’t been.

Some of the greatest drama has come at the end with the testimony of Trump’s one time lawyer, Michael Cohen. He has been on a journey from lapdog to attack dog. The person who did all Trump’s bidding as his Mr Fixit to sworn enemy of the president; someone who in the most profane terms possible has described how he wanted to see his former boss put behind bars.

For the prosecution he was the star witness, but a dead risky one. Cohen has been convicted of lying to Congress, served time in prison for his behaviour – and is therefore a witness of questionable reliability. He would need handling with care by the prosecution. Cohen owned his past; he told the court he was a convicted criminal because he had done bad things at the behest of and on behalf of his employer, Donald J Trump.

The Trump defence team ripped into him, accusing him of stealing from the Trump Organisation, something that Cohen admitted to on the stand. Then there was a witness for the defence, Robert Costello – another former attorney to Trump – who decided it would be clever to sneer at the judge, Juan Merchan. He rolled his eyes, and said “jeez” when Merchan upheld a prosecution objection. That arguably brought the most dramatic moment of the trial when the judge ordered the court be cleared so that Costello could be told firmly who was in charge in his courtroom.

So what happens when the 12 men and women who have been treated to – or, perhaps, have had to endure – this spectacle are sent out to consider their verdict?

I’ve been talking to someone this week who probably knows Trump better than most people in New York. He said to me that Trump is such a polarising figure that he thought it was inconceivable there wouldn’t be at least one person on the jury who loathed him so much that he would vote to convict irrespective of the evidence before the court. And conversely, there would inevitably be at least one person who would vote to acquit, regardless.

If his supposition is correct, then it is a hung jury and Trump walks free. The high-minded part of me wants to say this will be a classic case of a lose-lose: this squalid, little case has been demeaning for a former president, who at times has shown his years by dozing off in court. It has revealed the less-than-savoury aspects of his life and the nasty way he operates.

For the prosecution, questions will be raised about why the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, prosecuted (Trump would say persecuted) the former president in the way that he did. Was the misreporting of the $130k paid to Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election really so serious that it was treated as a felony offence, potentially carrying a prison sentence?

But in matters concerning Trump there is no place for high-mindedness. He is a zero sum game kind of guy. If it’s a hung jury, he’s won, and DA Bragg has lost. In fact, not only has the DA lost, but the whole justice system has lost – from “crooked” Joe Biden through to the attorney general, along the corridors of the Justice Department down to the prosecutors in Manhattan and the judge who presided over it. The former president will eviscerate his opponents, the sycophants who surround him will amplify his words. If Trump walks free let me make one prediction: he will do so with neither humility nor grace.

And for the Maga base it will be another reason to mistrust American justice and American democracy. If it weren’t for this sorry saga of a trial, I might have spent more time in this column talking about all those who are not very subtly auditioning for the role of Trump’s vice-presidential pick. The senators going on TV and refusing to answer the seemingly innocuous question “will you commit to accepting the outcome of the 2024 election?” I would have spent more time on Nikki Haley who tormented Trump for being crooked when she was fighting him for the Republican nomination but is now saying she will vote for him in November.

And maybe, I might have mentioned the email that Trump has sent out to his supporters this week alleging that the language – bog standard language, I might add – from an FBI search warrant executed in 2022 as part of the classified documents investigation at Mar-a-Lago showed that President Biden wanted armed agents to shoot him.

Yes, not satisfied with claiming that the justice department is persecuting him, he is claiming that Biden wants him dead. As I say, these 12 men and women have a momentous decision to make.