CNN’s Maggie Haberman relayed the unprecedented scene that unfolded inside a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday, where former President Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts.
Trump falsified business records to conceal hush money payments to cover up extramarital affairs. He arranged the payments to prevent them from becoming issues in the 2016 presidential campaign.
“It’s very hard to describe how intense a moment it was,” Haberman told Anderson Cooper a couple of hours after the verdict was read. She noted that Judge Juan Merchan left those in attendance with the impression that the jury would be sent home for the day.
“Trump walked back into the courtroom in anticipation of that moment in a great mood – one of the best moods we’ve seen him come in since this trial began,” Haberman continued. “And Merchan was taking a while to come back. He said he was gonna step off the bench. He was gonna figure out what the jury wanted. It was taken so long, it was clear something was up. And when he came back, he said that the jurors had said they had reached a verdict.”
Haberman then described the scene as the jury foreperson said “guilty” 34 times:
Trump was basically quiet. I’ve covered a lot of high-profile verdicts in the past, or some high-profile verdicts. And usually, there’s a reaction and they were cautioned not to
react. But normally, people can’t help it. There was just silence. I think that everybody was stunned around Trump, including Trump himself.
She later added, “I think it was pretty clear to the defense team as soon as the judge said the jury had a verdict, that it was probably not good news for them. They had felt pretty good about the fact that it had gone as long as it did. They felt like every day – and this is just common sense – if it’s taking the jurors longer, it’s better for the defense.”
Watch above via CNN.