Already and this this is the Daily This is the Daily OS.
Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday, the thirty first of May.
I'm Zara, I'm Sam.
It's been a big couple of weeks for Donald Trump, whose first criminal case has just wrapped up after a five week trial. The trial centered on Trump's alleged cover up of a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the run up to the twenty sixteen election. In today's part that we are going to cover off on the trial itself, how it came to be, and what it means for the presidential hopeful. But first, Sam, what's making headlines.
A parliamentary committee has recommended the federal government establish Australia's first ever Human Rights Act. Committee chair Labour MP Josh Burns said it would require Parliament to expressly consider human rights when making laws. The Australian Human Rights Commission welcomes the recommendations, saying people's rights and well being should be
front of mind when laws are formulated. The President of the AHRC described Australia's current framework as quote outdated, ineffective and in desperate need of reform.
Fourteen pro democracy advocates in Hong Kong have been found guilty of what's called subversion, which is risking national security under a China imposed security law. There is an Australian dual citizen who is among those who was found guilty. Sentencing is expected to come at a later date, where those found guilty could face between three years and a lifetime in prison. The guilty rulings come after forty seven people were arrested in Hong Kong in twenty twenty one
due to the security law imposed by China. Two people have been cleared of charges, but local authorities are expected to appeal that decision.
Victoria police have arrested four men for allegedly recruiting children as young as twelve to steal more than two million dollars in cash and cigarettes from service stations. More than twenty children were allegedly involved in over one hundred and forty cigarette thefts and armed robberies across the eastern suburbs
of Melbourne. Police also seized over two hundred cannabis plants, nearly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash, luxury items and weapons enacting inspector said, quote concerningly, a significant proportion of these children were already known to Victoria Police.
In today's good news, Vahine Fierro has become the first Tahitian woman to win a famous surfing competition in Tahiti. She was awarded the title of twenty twenty four Tahiti Pro. The World Surf League said that this will quote go down as one of the most culturally important days in competitive surfing history. The twenty four year old will compete at the Paris Olympics, where as surfing events will be
held on the French island. Donald Trump has been found guilty by a jury after a crimminal trial that lasted five weeks. Hearings in former US president Donald Trump's first criminal trial have finally wrapped up after five weeks in a US court.
Let's get into it now.
The trial did center on Trump's alleged cover up of a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, and that was in the lead up to the twenty sixteen presidential election. Now, over the course of the trial, we heard from more than twenty witnesses, or rather the jury had from more than twenty witnesses, and this is the first criminal trial, as I said, that the former president has faced, so it's a fairly big one.
But he does have a couple of cases on the go here, and it can get a bit confusing to remember which one is which and in which jurisdiction he's facing what charges. This one is really significant because of that criminal element. Run me through the basics of the case.
Yeah, So, during his twenty sixteen presidential election campaign, Donald Trump arranged for an one hundred and thirty thousand US dollar payment to be made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, that's about two hundred K, who claims to have had sex with him a decade earlier. Now, Trump instructed his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, and we'll speak about him a bit later, to facilitate the payment to Daniels in exchange
for her silence. It's then alleged that Trump falsified multiple business records to hide that payment, and that is a criminal offense in the US state of New York. He pleaded not guilty to thirty four charges in New York's Supreme Court. Here's how the former president saw the case himself.
This is all.
Election hunting, elected interfering.
It's going after Joe Biden's political opponent because he can't do it himself, and they're helping out. And we have a jog who's highly conflicted. He happens to be corrupt. Ye stars confliction. It st worst than anybody's seen. Nobody don't have seen anything like it.
Okay, So unsurprisingly, Donald Trump has quite a clear and strong sense of how he feels about this case. Talk me through what actually happens though through the trial.
Well, I mean, as with any trial, there are ups and downs, there are witnesses, but very rarely in a trial do we hear about one of the key people actually being fined. So during this trial, Trump violated a court order the banned him from making public statements about jurors and witnesses outside of court. So the court found Trump also posted about the trial on his social media platform truth Social, which he also wasn't allowed to do, and this led him being found in contempt of court twice.
So he was find a total of ten thousand US dollars and that was not even related to the case itself, that was what was just happening in the court. So a fairly expensive experience for Donald Trump when we haven't even considered the charges at hand here.
And I want to turn nowt to who we heard from during the trial, and one of those people was Stormy Daniels herself. She's at the center of this story, right.
She is so. Stormy Daniels herself appeared in the witness box where she detailed an alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump at a US resort back in two thousand and six. It is important to note here that Trump denies ever having had sex with Daniels after Daniels's testimony, and I'm
not really going to go into it. It's fairly sallacious, and you've told me things that I want to unhear fair enough, but the justice in the case said that some of the evidence that she gave would have probably been quote better left unsaid, which is a fairly remarkable thing to say about evidence, and that was in response to Trump's lawyers trying to get the case itself thrown out as a mistrial.
I'm looking forward to the Netflix series about this case. Who else did we hear from, though.
Well, the other star witness was Trump's ex lawyer Michael Cohen, who I mentioned earlier, who admitted to organizing the payments to Stormy Daniels on Donald Trump's behalf. He also admitted to suppressing negative stories about Trump to avoid them being reported on in the media. He also claimed that Trump reimbursed him for the payment, but attempted to disguise the funds as legitimate legal expenses.
So it seems like Michael Cohen is another one of those kind of Trump insiders who was a strong ally of the former president and is now a key witness against him. But it feels like every day with this case, there was just more salacious detail. When the two sides had to bring everything together, how did they summarize and close their arguments?
Yeah, well, Trump, who in this case is the defendant, didn't give evidence during the trial.
He didn't have to, right, No.
So his lawyers called just two witnesses to the stand throughout the whole trial. The prosecutions lawyers, on the other hand, they summoned more than twenty witnesses that included, as I said, Daniels and Michael Cohen. In closing arguments from the defense, Trump's lawyers tried to discredit Michael Cohen. They called him the gloat which is the greatest.
Liar of all time, might borrow that one honestly love it, might use it.
The prosecution's closing argument lasted over five hours and saw me Daniels's lawyers accused Trump of overseeing a conspiracy and a cover up to help him win the twenty sixteen presidential election.
And I'm keen to talk about the impact of all of this on the upcoming presidential election, where Trump is likely the Republican candidate. Before that, I saw heaps of videos online of Robert de Niro. The aptor outside court was he wasn't involved directly with the case, right, No, So.
This is one of those interesting things where we're trying to make sense of a news story and you might have seen this. I mean, I know it was all over my TikTok for example. So Robert de Niro and members of Joe Biden's reelection campaign made an appearance outside the courthouse at the end of the trial. De Niro, fair to say, doesn't think very highly of Donald Trump, called him a tyrant and a danger to the lives
of Americans. He said, and I quote here, if Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss your freedoms goodbye. He got into a bit of a tussle with some of the Trump supporters who tried to interrupt his press conference. I would play a bit of it here, but there is a fair bit of bleeping on both sides.
Theresider is still a family show.
They don't see Ada Ei though, that is for sure. And yeah, that's why Robert de Niro is somehow involved with this story.
Okay, so that's the case. And now obviously overnight we've received this guilty verdict. What happens now, Well.
I mean, I think the most important thing to say from the outset is that this does not hamper Donald Trump's ability to run for president.
Even though he's been found guilty in the criminal trial.
Correct, legally, nothing has changed logistically. If he then is imprisoned, if that is what the sentence is, that will be difficult for him. You know, he would much prefer to be out on the campaign trail then to be in prison. But it doesn't actually legally impact his right to run for president.
This remarkable story of the US twin twenty four presidential election continues for now with the same two main characters seemingly in front. Zara Will have to kind of track this one day by day because I think there's going to be a few twists and turns we will.
I will not be the person tracking that day by day because I am off for a couple of weeks on my honeymoon. So I will be back on the pod in July, but until then, thank you for supporting the Daily Ods each and every day, and Billy and Sam will be back next week.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Kalguton woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily os acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.