The question looming over the Trump trial jury: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, senior national politics reporter looks at how the burden of reasonable doubt hangs over jurors in Donald Trump's New York hush money trial. Plus, senior politics editor Scott Bland explores how congressional primaries have grown more competitive in recent years.

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Trump trial jury must now decide if prosecutors left any room for doubt in ‘mountain’ of evidence

By Jonathan Allen

It’s easy to watch former President Donald Trump’s trial and conclude that he probably did exactly what prosecutors allege: protect his 2016 campaign by paying off a porn star and then cover it up with phony payment records.

Michael Cohen, the former president’s onetime fixer, testified that he was the tool Trump used.

But “probably” isn’t the bar for jurors. They are charged with evaluating whether there’s any reasonable doubt. Just one of them can hang the jury if he or she believes the state failed to meet that burden.

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The question then, as they began to consider the evidence over 4.5 hours Wednesday, is whether the witnesses and documents presented by the prosecution leave any room to doubt Trump’s criminal culpability.

Like any veteran prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass told the jury Tuesday that they had seen a “mountain” of evidence of the 34 alleged crimes.

Trump himself tweeted in 2018 that he had reimbursed Cohen for the hush money payment. It’s a contention that Cohen bolstered by testifying that a year’s