good day. i'm chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters in new york city, and i'm just back from spending the morning in court with the jurors. you must set aside any personal opinions or bias. with those words, judge juan merchan sent a jury of 12 citizens to make one of the biggest decisions of their lives and determine the legal fate of former president donald trump. we will dig into the enormous task now before them with our team of legal experts and analysts. defendant trump proclaiming his innocence and comparing himself to a saint. the former president, real estate mogul and tv star now confined to a bleak waiting room. so what happens if he actually got convicted? and miles away from that room where donald trump is right now, president biden and vice president harris are hitting the campaign trail together today. we begin inside that had new york city courthouse where the moment of truth for donald trump could be either hours or day away. the jury in the hush money trial has now been deliberating behind closed doors for more than an hour and 20 minutes. my view from inside the courtroom today with those jurors, it showed 12 men and women who were intently focused on the monumental task in front of them, most of them taking copious notes and that was particularly intense when the judge went into the specifics of the law. the law that will guide them toward reaching a verdict. before those jurors right now is whether donald trump committed 34 felony acts of falsifying business records beyond a reasonable doubt. their decision will not only go into the history books but could have an extraordinary impact with voters around the country. the 2024 election is count them, 160 days away. nbc's vaughn hillyard is reporting from outside the courthouse in new york city. also with us, paul butler, former federal prosecutor, professor at georgetown school of law and an msnbc legal analyst. jessica roth, former federal prosecutor for the southern district of new york and a professor at cardoza law school, and duncan levin criminal defense attorney, former manhattan prosecutor and a former federal prosecutor. great to have all of you here. it was fascinating to be inside that courtroom. as many people have reported before, when they came in, they didn't seem to make eye contact with donald trump. i had a perfect view. i was on the right side of the courtroom. i could see both rows very, very clearly. i could see where they were writing very, very clearly. i could see any reaction. there was none except the pen to paper, and so let me start with that, if i can. i got to tell you, several points there were when the majority of them were taking notes. and perhaps no more busy than when the judge guided them on the law, the offense is falsifying business records in the first degree, 34 counts. the definition of the law. he gave that to them. they seemed actually almost to be trying to write it down verbatim, and duncan, i took away from that this is a jury that is incredibly serious and understanding of the task that they're about to undertake and now undertaking. >> most jurors are, and i think people are surprised by that. you hear all these stories about people trying to get out of jury duty and people not taking it seriously. i've tried a lot of cases in front of juries as a prosecutor and defense attorney, jurors take it seriously. in this particular case, they're taking it extra seriously. they know the eyes of the world are on them right now. these are 12 ordinary people who are for the first time in history judging the fate of a president. the fate of the president in the hands of 12 ordinary people, an engineer, you know, lawyers, some people in finance, a salesman. they're all being watched. i think they're taking it seriously. one interesting thing about new york law is that they don't get to take those jury instructions back into the jury deliberation room with them. so they can ask questions -- >> that's a very -- >> but they don't get to have them. >> a very important point. another point at which, jessica, they were taking copious note, and he had said to them right off the top, you will not receive copies of this jury instruction, but you can request a readback. if you need to send me a note, send me a note, but man, they wrote that down, and then they were writing down some more of the specifics. one interesting point where a lot of pens were flying, they were talking about michael cohen as an accomplice, when the judge said even if what he says is believable, you must find it corroborated. >> this is a feature of new york state law that's different from federal law and it provides that if somebody who's testified is an accomplice in the offense to which the defendant is charged, that that person's testimony in and of itself is not sufficient to convict, that the jury has to find that it is corroborated by other evidence that tends to link the defendant to the crime. and so that's going to be an important instruction for the jury to bear in mind, as it sifts through the evidence that corroborates michael cohen's testimony. the summation by the prosecutor in a sense was a response to that instruction that the prosecutor knew was coming, and so they walked the jury through all the corroborating testimony of other witnesses and the documentary evidence including phone records and other records including weisselberg's handwritten notes about the payments to michael cohen and how they were essentially the same amount as the payment to stormy daniels grossed up and broken out over 12 months to corroborate exactly the narrative that michael cohen gave. >> so paul butler, let me talk to you about another area where they seemed particularly intent and particularly engaged. now, look, we can't extrapolate negative for sure, right? all i can tell you is that there were periods of time when it got maybe a little less compelling when they were taking no notes at all, and then at other times, again, as i said, the pens were literally flying across the paper. at one point after the jury had left, and they only had the alternates in, the judge had said how one particular juror, he noted had gone through three sets of notebooks. when you come in -- when they came in to sit, their notebooks are waiting for them, and they carried them into the deliberation room. but the other thing that really struck them is when juan merchan said you can find he committed a crime personally or in concert with another or both. and i wonder what you make of the fact that they found that something compelling enough that so many of them, of the main jury pool, of the pool deliberating, probably three quarters of them were writing during that? >> first, chris, i'm jealous that you got to be in the courtroom today. you get a different feel for the trial when you're present there, which is one reason these important proceedings needed to be televised. there have been so many questions about outside influences. when you're in the courtroom, you see that the focus is on the defendant and the facts as it should be and so, yes, i'm not surprised that jurors had questions about other people who acted in concert with the former president and how responsible they might be for some of his actions as opposed to his own individual responsibility. with jury instructions, the prosecution won some, and the defense won some. so for example, the judge said that the jurors have to find that trump used some unlawful means to advance the conspiracy that you're referring, but those unlawful means could be violating campaign law or tax law, but it was a win for the prosecution when the judge said the jury does not have to agree on what those unlawful means were. they just have to be unanimous that there was at least one unlawful means. but then the defense got the judge to rule that the unlawful means test was a criminal act, not a civil violation. so again, the prosecution won some, defense won some in the jury instructions, but that's frequently how it goes. as we said, that's how judges get reversed with jury instructions explaining complicated law to ordinary people. you saw it up close and personal, chris. >> so we're going to see exactly ultimately what conclusion they come to, but in the meantime, it's very, very opaque, vaughn hillyard, what happens inside that jury room, although the judge at least outlined some of the things that the jurors can expect. for example, right now, do we know are they having lunch? >> we have found out that they are, in fact, having lunch. they will every day that they are deliberating have a lunch break of an hour, but what is abnormal about this is that they are going to be having launch -- lunch brought to them. it is not clear whether they are able to continue deliberation during this lunch break, whether they are having their meal together engaged in great conversation about this trial or whether they are on pause. we do know that judge merchan said that no notes will be able to be sent by the jurors to the courtroom during this hour. so there won't be any major updates until 2:00 p.m. eastern, and during that period of time, our other friends in the press, many of our dearest nbc colleagues are now right here within earshot of me having their own lunch. they were asked to leave the courtroom, we will expect no verdict to come here within the next 45 minutes or so, but deliberations are continuing to take place we know while their lunch is being delivered to them, chris. >> duncan, the question everybody wants to know is where are they going to focus. obviously if what they were taking notes about is any guide, michael cohen, it wouldn't be a surprise that they would have a conversation about him. he did talk about credibility. he did talk about how they can weigh somebody who has had a criminal record and how they process that information in their deliberations, but what do you expect is going on in there right now? >> well, i think they likely are just starting by polling each other and getting a sense of where everybody is because they have been instructed that throughout this case not to talk to each other about the case, and so this is the first time these people who have been sitting together for weeks on end who probably have exchanged pleasantries about baseball and how their days are going get to actually talk about the facts at hand and where they are. my guess is they start by going into the room and maybe even taking a vote, an informal vote, and maybe it will come out that everyone around the table agrees, and maybe it will come out that everyone disagrees. i think that's probably going to be the starting point. those closing arguments from the parties are meant to help them in their conversations, to get a sense of where the conversation should go. so the prosecution and the defense both saying here's what you should think about when you go in the room, and that's really the purpose of closing arguments is to say when you go back there, i'm not going to be back there with you. i won't be able to answer your questions. here is what you should think about. both sides made that pitch. that's probably the starting point for the conversations. there may be someone who takes a lead. one of the issues with having a lawyer on the jury is maybe you're ceding a lot of authority to them. these are very smart jurors. they're very well-educated by and large, and they're probably have an in-depth conversation about what the elements are. your guess is as good as mine, i think the closing arguments from the parties are probably the starting point of their conversations. >> that was one of the things that i thought about as i was watching them walk in. you know, they've been sitting there for, what, 21 days. they have heard all of this testimony, and probably, you know, have some inkling of maybe where they feel this case is, how they might vote. what i have been told in the past by- i'm thinking about one particular lawyer who i thought gave one of the greatest closings i ever have heard and i think anybody may ever have heard in their lifetime, and he lost the case, and he said to me, chris, they go into that jury room and they're serious about it, and minds do get changed because of the conversation. and what you are not party to is that conversation. so do you think that a lot of minds get changed in jury rooms? >> well, i think that there's certainly the possibility that minds will be changed. i mean, the jurors, i think take very seriously the judge's instructions about the fact that they should engage with one another and be open to the arguments presented by their fellow jurors. it does happen that people go in with one view initially and come around to another view. one thing that is interesting is that the jurors have taken a laptop back with them that have all of the exhibits, so they won't be sending out notes asking to see certain exhibits. that means we won't have clues as to what they're focusing on. i was anticipaing we would get jury notes asking to have some part of the testimony to read back and get certain exhibits. now they're going to ask for testimony if they want that, but they don't have to send out a note if they want to look at a particular exhibit. in a sense, it will be even more of a black box than it normally is. >> what are our clues going to be, paul? how are we going to speculate randomly about what might be going on in that jury room, if they're not going to send out notes at least again on about 200 pieces of evidence? >> again, just more random speculation. the only way we'll have any inkling is by notes, and there's no rule that they have to send notes, although i wouldn't be surprised in a case with 34 felony counts and a fairly complicated law. not too difficult for the jury to understand, but again, i wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple of questions. i just want to emphasize what we've heard about how deliberative a process is. there's been some concern that only one juror or two jurors could cause a hung jury, and legally that's true, but what the research demonstrates is if it's just one or two people who are holding out out of 12, during the process of deliberation, the other ten people are usually able to persuade those outliers. and again, that goes to the idea that it is, in fact, a conversation, it's deliberative. people listen to each other and with an open mind, they sometimes change where they come out from where they were when they went into the room to deliberate. >> so what's this all mean, vaughn, for donald trump? i understand he's in another room. is it another courtroom? is it just a holding room? the only thing i know is it's been described by numerous people as bleak. i did not myself see it. >> reporter: right. that's what we're trying to get a better understanding of transparently here is that there's been a holding room where he is held throughout the course of this trial during breaks and before he actually enters the courtroom, so we're looking for some clarification, if that is that room in itself, we do know that he has his phone back because he has been posting on his social media account incessantly over the the last hour, and one of those that i just want to read to you real fast. when we talk about donald trump in the public opinion of this trial, i think it is a prudent conversation for all to have. he says in part, quote, i don't even know what the charges are in this rave case. he said just a few minutes ago in his social media post, and as you were in the courtroom, chris, and as everybody now has this big copy of the complex case and complex jury instructions that were delivered in that courtroom to the extent to which the former president was awake and paying attention, he would have heard judge merchan explicitly read aloud each of the laws, the new york state law that he is currently been charged with and that the jury is deliberating his guilt or innocence over. so you know, to the extent that donald trump is controlling the opinions of individuals outside of that jury room, he is going to do that to the extent that he can, a close ally of his, marco rubio who's up for vp consideration put out his own tweet here in the last hour saying that it is not clear what he has been charged with and that it is up to the jury to decide which crime he violated, which of course is a misrepresentation of the actual charges levied against him in the jury instructions that came for judge merchan. it was the extent to which unlawful means meant multiple violations that the jury is able to consider, not by and large the actual felony counts at the top tier that are being considered. that is part of the what happens in the courtroom versus what happens outside, and donald trump is currently going to do what he can clearly to control the narrative outside of that jury deliberation room. >> i want to bring in msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. she has been in the overflow room all morning, and then we did a very fine, i think, relay race. i handed you my pass. did you have a chance to go into the courtroom? i'm very curious about your observations today for a lot of people, jury instructions may seem, you know, boring, pro forma. they're anything but, jurors take that information into a deliberation room, and they use them as their guide. they are critical in the verdict that they ultimately come to. >> well, the word, chris, take is a really interesting word. they will take the jury instructions as imported into their heads by judge merchan. what they can't take is what i have in my hand right now which are the printed out jury instructions. that is in part why judge merchan did something this afternoon that i personally have never seen before. the jury instructions here that are pertinent to the charged crime, that is falsification of business records in the first degree, he not only read once, he read twice in its totality. i had never seen that done before. i know at least one other lawyer affiliated with our network had never seen that done before either, and that's likely because in its repetition, he is hoping that they get what they cannot get in the jury room, which is the consultation to these words. the jury instructions largely went the way that you would expect that they would go having watched the charging conference, which i did, and there are some wins in here for the prosecution. there are also some wins in here for the defense, and if i can, i want to outline one of them for you that i think could make a difference here, and it has to do with what it means to falsify or cause to falsify business records. the prosecution here wanted a very expansive definition of falsification that would include causing somebody to falsify business records if you set into -- you set into motion a chain of events that makes it reasonably foreseeable to you that somebody else would falsify business records. that's enough to impose criminal liability according to the prosecution's theory of the case. that's not the instruction that judge merchan gave, however. what he did was give an instruction on what's called exsorable liability. one person can be criminally liable for the acts of another but it's not as broad as the reasonable foreseeability that the prosecution wants. when one person engages in conduct which constitutes an offense, another is criminally liable for such conduct when acting with the state of mind required for the commission of that offense, he or she solicits, requests, commands, opportunes or intentionally aids such person. so in other words, chris, i would have to ask you or direct you to falsify a business record. it wouldn't be enough on the other hand that i took steps that would make it likely that i could see down the line that you were going to do that. and that might make a difference to these jurors in terms 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