Trump's 'hush money' trial nears its end — here's the key evidence and questions jurors will weigh

Jury deliberations are on the horizon as Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan told both prosecutors and the defense to prepare for closing arguments as soon as Tuesday.

After four weeks of testimony, the 77-year-old ex-president could soon find himself a convicted felon or newly acquitted man.

Here are some of the key pieces of evidence and questions jurors will be considering once they start weighing the case:

Is Michael Cohen credible?

Prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office called 19 witnesses over the last four weeks, but saved arguably the most important one for last — Cohen, who worked for Trump for about a decade.

It'll be up to the jury of seven men and five women to decide if Cohen, a convicted liar, is trustworthy.

Prosecutors quizzed Cohen, 57, over two days last week, painstakingly going over his past fibs and misdeeds — likely in a bid to get ahead of Trump's attorneys trying to eviscerate the ex-con's credibility.

Among them was that he lied on invoices he billed to the Trump Organization to get reimbursed for his payment to porn star Stormy Daniels by labeling the fees as part of his retainer agreement, as well as a guilty plea for lying to Congress about work he'd done on a Trump real estate deal in Russia.

In a bid to sow doubt in jurors' minds, Trump's lawyers did seize on some of those lies as they sought to portray Cohen as a serial fabulist hellbent on seeing his former longtime boss behind bars.

Under intense cross-examination late last week, defense attorney Todd Blanche grilled Cohen, in part, on his admission that lied under oath when he pleaded guilty to federal charges, including tax fraud, in 2018.

"It was a lie? Correct?" Blanche questioned, to which Cohen replied, "Correct."

In another example, Cohen admitted that he sent his lawyer fake legal decisions generated by artificial intelligence as part of his failed bid last year to get off early from supervised release on the guilty pleas to campaign finance and other crimes in Manhattan federal court.

To what extent was Trump involved?

Odds are jurors will be weighing to what extent Cohen's actions were directed by Trump.

During his testimony last week, Cohen matter-of-factly said Trump was intimately involved in all aspects of the alleged scheme to stifle stories about sex that threatened to torpedo his 2016 presidential campaign — including the $130,000 payment to Daniels that is at the heart of the case.

"Everything required Mr. Trump's sign-off," Cohen testified, adding that Trump vowed to reimburse him for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about behind-the-scenes efforts to bury the harmful stories.

"What I was doing, I was doing at the direction and for the benefit of Mr. Trump," he testified elsewhere about his role in a separate $150,000 payout in 2016 to Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, who says she had an affair with Trump for a year while he was married to his wife Melania.

Trump has denied the affairs happened, including Daniels' claim she slept with him once in 2006 — an alleged tryst she told the court about in graphic detail.

His attorneys have also cast doubt over how much he knew about Cohen's dealings, such as arguing Cohen lied about a key phone call he claimed to have made to Trump about the Daniels payment.

Instead, Blanche claimed, Cohen was actually whining to Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller during the one minute, 36-second phone conversation about harassing calls he was getting from an apparent 14-year-old prankster.

Cohen conceded on the stand that at least some of the call involved his complaints about the prank caller.

Do these checks prove Trump paid off Stormy Daniels?

The 12 Manhattanites on the jury could come back to the 34 business records — including checks, invoices and other documents — that Trump is charged with illegally fudging in order to cover up reimbursement to Cohen for the Daniels payoff.

Jeffrey McConney, the former controller at the Trump Org, testified he had a conversation with then-CFO Allen Weisselberg in 2017 about how Cohen needed to be repaid for some money.

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Jurors were shown a bank statement indicating Cohen had sent Daniels' attorney Keith Davidson $130,000, with Weisselberg adding on $50,000 for technical services, doubled to account for taxes, and a $60,000 bonus — for a total of $420,000 to be paid out to Cohen in $35,000 increments.

Longtime Trump Org accounts payable supervisor Deborah Tarasoff testified about cutting the checks, 11 in total, nine of which needed to be sent to Trump at the White House via FedEx in 2017 for him to sign, other witnesses said.

Trump's team, however, has argued from the beginning that the checks were labeled correctly as "legal expenses" because Cohen was working as Trump's lawyer at the time.

Did Trump have the 'intent' to hide damaging scandal from voters?

In order for the 34 counts of falsifying business records to amount to felonies, as the DA claims, Trump would need to have fudged the files with the "intent" to cover up another crime. Prosecutors charge the hush money payment to Daniels was part of an illegal bid to influence the 2016 election by hiding a damaging sex scandal from voters.

The payout — and a broader scheme with the National Enquirer to boost favorable stories to Trump while burying embarrassing ones — breached a New York law making it illegal to "conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means," prosecutors say.

Jurors, however, don't need to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump violated election law. They just need to believe that Trump falsified the records with the "intent" to cover up a crime. His mindset at the time is key, and that's why the verdict could hinge on whether jurors believe Cohen's account of Trump approving the payoff and coverup.

Blanche notched a small win last week when he got Cohen to confirm that Trump was worried in part about the impact on his family, should a story regarding his alleged affair with McDougal get out.

The prosecution's case hangs on proving that the hush-money payments amounted to election fraud because they were intended to quash a story that would hurt him in the election. However, Trump has long maintained he paid the money to protect his marriage and his family.

Hope Hicks — press secretary and then top White House spokesperson for Trump — also told jurors how Trump tried to ensure a Wall Street Journal article from Nov. 4, 2016 detailing the McDougal affair allegations wouldn't be seen by Melania.

"He was concerned about the story. He was concerned how it would be viewed by his wife," Hicks said.

Hicks, 35, became visibly flustered at the end of her questioning by prosecutors about the Daniels payment, testifying she thought Trump felt "it was better to be dealing" with the situation in 2018 when it emerged, than before the 2020 election.

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker — who engaged in "catch and kill" schemes to buy McDougal's story and an earlier one involving a former Trump Tower doorman and then not publish the claims — testified "yes" when asked if the point of the McDougal deal was to "suppress her story so as to prevent it from influencing the election."

Pecker refused to enter into the Daniels agreement, which resulted in Cohen making the payment, prosecutors said.

What about Cohen's secret recording of a conversation with Trump?

Another piece of evidence jurors will likely take into consideration is a secret recording Cohen made of Trump on Sept. 6, 2016 discussing plans to kill McDougal's story with the help of the National Enquirer.

"So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?" Trump could allegedly be heard saying on the nearly three-minute recording played in court.

Cohen said the recording was meant to give assurances to Pecker that Trump would reimburse Pecker the $150,000 he paid to McDougal for the exclusive rights to her story — which he never planned to publish.

"It was so I could show it to David Pecker and that way he would hear the conversation, that he would know … Mr. Trump is going to be paying him back," Cohen said on the stand.

Cohen testified that the call, taped on the Voice Memos app on his iPhone, was the only time he surreptitiously recorded his ex-boss — something that is not illegal in New York.

Pecker's company ultimately decided not to accept payment for the McDougal affair story, and Trump is not accused of falsifying his books in the McDougal case.

Prosecutors have presented the McDougal payoff in an effort to establish a pattern of behavior.