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What it’s like to watch Trump’s “hush money” trial from inside the courtroom
Everyone but the judge and jurors are seated before Donald Trump and his team enter the courtroom each day in his New York criminal trial.
Reporters, other members of the public, prosecutors and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg himself, must all pass through security screening and be in place, and quiet, as Trump approaches the room.
The group is sometimes settled in before Trump’s motorcade has even pulled up to the 17-story Art Deco-style building. The court officers’ radios suddenly crackle, echoing off the high, 83-year-old ceilings, announcing the arrival of a former president.
Curtis Means-Pool / Getty Images
Reporters are reminded that they will be removed from the room if a court officer sees their phones. They continue to clatter away on their laptops, a glowing sea of screens showing notes, Gmail, Slack and Twitter.
Sometimes, Trump can be heard before he enters the room. A ring announcer ready to rumble in his own prize fight. He’s addressing cameras and a few reporters stationed in a small pen about 50 feet from the courtroom. The unmistakable voice of one of the world’s most famous people, muffled through two sets of doors, reverberates.
Outside the room, Trump rages about Bragg, Judge Juan Merchan and the case. The former president is being tried on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to an alleged “hush money” payment before the 2016 presidential election. He denies the allegations and has entered a not guilty plea.
Once Trump walks through the thick wooden double doors — sometimes setting a brisk pace, sometimes lumbering, always stone-faced — his demeanor changes. He’s accompanied by a team of lawyers, usually campaign staff, too, and of course Secret Service agents, who move to the perimeter after Trump takes a seat at the defense table.
Inside the room, he’s reserved, quiet. Sometimes he appears to briefly nod off. He occasionally whispers with attorneys Todd Blanche, Susan Necheles and Emil Bove.
He stands at attention when Merchan enters the room, and like everyone else, sits only when told he may.
During jury selection, he sometimes craned his neck to the right to watch New Yorkers in the jury pool as they were questioned about their social media habits and their feelings about Trump. He afforded Blanche the same attention during his opening statement Tuesday.
Mostly, Trump stares straight ahead. At what, exactly? The computer monitor he shares with the attorney next to him? Certainly, sometimes. But mostly he seems to be looking above that, beyond it, past the bustling judge’s clerk, whose desk gives him a front row seat second only to Merchan’s. Is he staring at the wall? The bottom third of the wall is wood-paneled, the rest painted solid white. Also, mounted on the wall across from Trump is a flat-screen television, one of four in the room. At all times, it shows Merchan, the lawyers, and Trump himself.
This has been Trump’s posture through most of the proceedings — not just the first six trial days, but also pretrial hearings dating back to his arraignment on April 4, 2023. He’s been warned once, last week, about juror intimidation, after gesturing and shaking his head amid questioning of one former potential juror, but has otherwise been stoic.
Contrast Trump’s behavior in this courtroom with his visible and audible displays of disgust that interrupted proceedings in two recent trials.
After repeated outbursts during a January defamation trial in the civil case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, a federal judge threatened to kick Trump out of the courtroom.
In that case, Trump could be heard from the gallery groaning at times during testimony, and an opposing lawyer said he frequently made comments such as, “It is a witch hunt,” and, “it really is a con job.”
The judge said: “Mr. Trump has a right to be present here. That right can be forfeited if he is disruptive and if he disregards court orders.”
During another recent civil trial, a New York case in which he and others from his company were found liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent profits, Trump often seemed uncontrollable. Lawyers in the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James accused him of witness intimidation one day as his whispers during a real estate executive’s testimony turned toward loud rasps — his head bobbing from side to side, shaking in apparent disparagement.
The circumstances of those civil trials were different. Trump was not required to be present, and could come and go as he pleased — occasionally standing and leaving without warning, his Secret Service entourage scrambling to keep up. The judge in the defamation trial interrupted Carroll’s closing argument to note that Trump had gotten up and walked out. He returned for his lawyer’s closing, and then later exited the courthouse for good about 30 minutes before the jury announced its $83.3 million judgment against him.
Now, Trump is a criminal defendant. He’s required to attend the whole trial, and to sit quietly unless expressly granted permission to do otherwise.
He sought permission to spend Thursday morning in Washington, D.C., watching arguments before the Supreme Court in a matter related to another of his criminal cases. Merchan denied that request.
He asked to adjourn the trial for one day in May to attend his son’s graduation. One of his lawyers made a similar request for a day in June. Merchan said maybe, tacitly hitting at the many attempts Trump’s team has made to delay the trial.
“If everything is going according to schedule without unnecessary delays, then I am sure we will be able to adjourn for one or both of those days, but if we are running behind schedule, we will not be able to,” Merchan said.
Trump complained to reporters outside the courtroom when it was cold on April 18. Inside, Blanche had to lodge the complaint for him.
Merchan’s response included an observation that court staff, lawyers, reporters and others who’ve spent much time in Room 1530 have long acknowledged: The room has two temperatures, cold and hot.
“I would rather be real cold than sweating,” Merchan said.
Trump must rise when Merchan or the jury enters and exits, like thousands of other defendants who have sat in the same seat.
Once, as proceedings were wrapping up on Friday, April 19, Trump rose just a bit too early.
“Sir, can you please have a seat,” Merchan told him. The judge decides when the defendant can leave his courtroom.
But if Merchan is top dog in his courtroom, there’s no mistaking who’s next in the hierarchy. Trump gets up and walks out with his crew in tow. He hands his phone to an aide. The heavy wooden doors close again. He’s back in the hallway defending himself in front of the waiting cameras.
Everyone inside the room waits for the radio crackles, this time to signal that the area is clear. Until then, no one is allowed to stand up. Reporters are admonished to not speak loudly.
As the minutes dragged on Monday, during and after Trump’s hallway speech, Bragg and his team of prosecutors tried to escape through a side door typically used by courtroom staff. They returned a minute later, appearing frustrated and annoyed, unable to depart.
Finally, the radio chorus. Bragg, his head down, quickly heads out through that same side door. The rest of the room is then allowed to file out.
Trump has left the building.
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Malaysia agrees to launch new search for MH370 plane, which vanished a decade ago with 239 people on board
Malaysia announced on Friday it has agreed to launch a new search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared 10 years ago in one of aviation’s greatest enduring mysteries.
The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Despite the largest search in aviation history, the plane has never been found. Malaysia’s prime minister said 17 days after the plane disappeared that, based on the satellite data, his government had concluded that the plane crashed down in a remote corner of the Indian Ocean, and that there were no survivors.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke said Malaysia had agreed to a new search operation by maritime exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which also carried out an unsuccessful hunt in 2018.
The company’s first efforts followed a massive Australia-led search for the aircraft that lasted three years before it was suspended in January 2017.
Loke said a new 5,800 square mile area of the southern Indian Ocean would be scoured by Ocean Infinity, which is based in the United Kingdom and United States.
“The new search area proposed by Ocean Infinity is based on the latest information and data analysis conducted by experts and researchers,” Loke said.
“The proposal for a search operation by Ocean Infinity is a solid one and deserves to be considered,” he told reporters.
The government said it agreed to Ocean Infinity’s proposal “in principle” on December 13, with the transport ministry expected to finalize terms by early 2025.
The new search will resume “as soon as the contract is finalized and signed by both parties”, Loke said.
“They have informed us that the ideal time for the search in the designated waters is between January and April. We are working to finalise the agreement as quickly as possible,” he added.
“I truly hope there will be an end to the loss of MH370. May all questions be answered,” Malaysian Rosila Abu Samah, 60, the stepmother of one of the passengers, told AFP.
Supian Ahmad/NurPhoto/Getty
Malaysian Shim Kok Chau, 49, whose wife was a flight attendant on the ill-fated flight, said he had come to accept her fate but hopes to know what happened to the plane, “why it happened and who did it.”
Among the other victims was a celebrated group of 24 Chinese calligraphy artists coming from an exhibition of their work. Two young Iranian men on the plane, 18-year-old Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad and 29-year-old Delavar Seyed Mohammadreza, were traveling on stolen passports to seek better lives in Europe.
Two of the U.S. citizens on the plane were young children, Nicole Meng, 4, and 2-year-old Yan Zhang.
Philip Wood was the only American adult on the flight. The IBM executive had been living in Beijing and was planning to relocate to the Malaysian capital with his girlfriend, Sarah Bajc.
“No find, no fee”
The new search will be on the same “no find, no fee” principle as Ocean Infinity’s previous search, with the government only paying out if they find the aircraft.
The contract is for 18 months and Malaysia will pay $70 million to the company if the plane is found, Loke said.
He said the decision to agree to a fresh search “reflects the Malaysian government’s commitment to continuing the search operation and providing closure to the families of the MH370 victims.”
The original Australia-led search covered 120,000 square kilometers in the Indian Ocean but found hardly any trace of the plane, with only some pieces of debris picked up.
In July 2015, an airplane fragment later confirmed to be a flaperon from MH370 was found washed ashore on the western Indian Ocean island of Reunion. It was the first hard evidence that the plane had gone down in the area. More debris was later found washed up on the coast of eastern Africa.
YANNICK PITOU/AFP/Getty Images
The plane’s disappearance has long been the subject of theories — including that veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah had gone rogue.
A final report into the tragedy released in 2018 pointed to failings by air traffic control and said the course of the plane was changed manually.
Asked if he was confident the plane will be found during the new search, Loke said: “At this point, no one can provide guarantees.
“It has been over 10 years, and it would be unfair to expect a concrete commitment. However, under the terms and conditions, any discovery must be credible. It cannot just be a few fragments; there are specific criteria outlined in the contract.”
A Utah mother who police believe was shot and killed by her husband along with three of their children was a refugee who fled violence in Myanmar and dreamed of thriving with her family in the U.S., relatives said Thursday.
Police believe the husband killed his family before shooting himself, and a teenage son was badly wounded.
The bodies of Bu Meh, 38, along with her daughters Kristina Ree, 8, and Nyay Meh, 2, and son Boe Reh, 11, were found in their home in West Valley City, a Salt Lake City suburb, on Tuesday. A handgun was found under the father Dae Reh, 42, leading police to believe this was a murder-suicide, but no evidence of a motive has been released.
One child, 17-year-old Sha Reh, survived being shot in the head and is hospitalized with a severe brain injury, police said.
Bu Meh, a member of Myanmar’s Karenni ethnic minority, fled what her relatives described as ethnic cleansing in the Southeast Asian nation about 10 years ago. She and her small family lived for a time in a refugee camp in Thailand, then came to the United States “with little more than the clothing on their backs,” the family said in a statement.
She taught herself English, learned new skills and worked hard to support her growing family, achieving a way of life “far beyond the nightmare of her former country or the refugee camp,” the family said.
“For reasons that we cannot comprehend, her husband robbed her and their children of that security and their very lives,” her family said.
Police believe the shooting happened over the weekend.
Police initially went to the home Monday night after a relative asked them to check on the family but did not find any sign of an emergency that would allow them to enter the home. The relative went to the home Tuesday, saw Sha Reh wounded in the garage and called police, who found the bodies inside the home.
In their statement, relatives called Sha Reh their hero and said he faces a “long and complex road to recovery.” An online fundraiser is collecting donations to pay for his care and to help him go to college.
“After moving into their own home and finally enjoying a level of prosperity far beyond the nightmare of their former country or the refugee camp in Thailand in which they lived for a season, and for reasons that we cannot comprehend,” the family wrote, “her husband robbed her and their children of that security and their very lives.”
Neighbors hadn’t reported any gunshots in the area over the weekend, police spokesperson Roxeanne Vainuku said at a news conference Wednesday. The family had no previous reports of domestic violence or other disturbances.
One neighbor spoke to CBS affiliate KUTV about the shock they felt.
“How can a father shoot his children?” neighbor Mike Webster told the station. “I just can’t grasp for that concept at all. I can just see that poor little two-year-old looking at her daddy.”
This Utah case is the 38th mass killing in the United States this year. At least 165 people have died this year in U.S. mass killings, which are defined by the FBI as cases in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer.
Mark Barden, whose child was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, urged Utah lawmakers to pass Red Flag laws after the incident in Utah, KUTV reported.
“When it is recognized that an individual is in crisis, measures to safely and temporarily remove firearms from their possession are proven to save lives,” Barden said.
A journalists’ association says two journalists working for Kurdish media outlets were killed in northern Syria while covering fighting between Turkish-backed fighters and Syrian Kurdish militia.
The Turkey-based Dicle-Firat Journalists Association said Friday that Nazim Dastan and Cihan Bilgin were killed Thursday when their vehicle was reportedly targeted by a Turkish drone on a road near the Tishrin Dam.
Tishrin Dam, located some 56 miles east of Aleppo, has been the scene of clashes between the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, and the Turkey-backed opposition forces.
There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials.
Bianet, a news website dedicated to human rights issues, said Bilgin was a reporter for the Kurdish Hawar News Agency, while Dastan worked as a freelance journalist for the Firat News Agency, which is associated with the militant group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkey considers the SDF a terrorist organization because its main component is a group aligned to the PKK.
The group has been engaged in an armed struggle against the Turkish state since the 1980s in pursuit of its objective of securing autonomy for Kurds in the country.