It happened very quickly.
The jury filed into the courtroom and climbed into the jury box. The jurors confirmed that they had reached a verdict. And then the foreman, who had sat silent all trial until today, stood up, took a microphone and was asked what he and 11 other New Yorkers had determined about the first criminal charge against Donald J. Trump.
“Guilty,” the foreman said. The former president shut his eyes, then slowly shook his head.
According to Jane Rosenberg, a courtroom sketch artist who had a clear view of Mr. Trump in the moment, the former president looked over at the foreman as he began to stand up, but then immediately closed his eyes as the verdict came rolling in.
“He shook his head ‘no’,” Ms. Rosenberg said.
The foreman continued to answer the remaining 33 questions pertaining to the 33 charges of falsifying business records, and responded to all of them with the same word: guilty. The recitation took less than two minutes.
The decision had come at what seemed to be a routine moment in the jury’s deliberations. Around 4:15 p.m., the judge, Juan M. Merchan, had told the prosecution and Mr. Trump that he was planning to dismiss the jury within the next 15 minutes.
But then, the judge disappeared from the courtroom. When he returned, more than 20 minutes later, he told the courtroom that the jury had reached its verdict.
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