thehill.com
The jury in former President Trump’s New York trial completed its first day of deliberations Wednesday without reaching a verdict.
If that indecision continues for several days, it will open up one of the more politically intriguing scenarios. A hung jury, and a declaration of a mistrial, would become a real possibility.
The political contours are fairly clear if Trump is either convicted or acquitted. The former verdict would hand President Biden a powerful piece of ammunition in this year’s election, and the latter would put new wind into Trump’s sails.
The electoral ramifications of a hung jury are harder to game out.
Republican and Democratic observers agree that Trump would claim victory in the event of the jury being unable to come to a verdict.
GOP strategist Alex Conant argued that a hung jury would, politically speaking, have much the same impact as an acquittal.
Either scenario would amount to Trump “escaping a guilty verdict” and would “energize” the former president’s base, Conant said.
“From the Republicans’ perspective, it would mean that the liberals tried everything they could to put Trump in jail and he beat them.”
For Democrats, there is widespread skepticism that a hung jury would have much political impact at all.
They are keenly aware of how little the election-related opinion polls have shifted during the trial, and they tend to see even the more lurid allegations regarding Trump and adult film actor Stormy Daniels as having little new impact on voters.
“Views of the former president are pretty baked in,” said Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky. “If you think that he is a crook who has broken laws, there are plenty of other court cases to prove that point. If you think he is being unfairly prosecuted — or ‘persecuted’ as [Trump’s] supporters would see it — there are plenty of cases you can point to there too.”
The one person whose life would be significantly complicated by a hung jury would be Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D). A mistrial would mean that he would then have to decide whether to mount a second trial.
Bragg faced some second-guessing, even from Trump critics, when in April 2023 he became the first prosecutor to indict the former president. The New York case is widely seen as the least serious of the four Trump faces — and as the one where the prosecution has the weakest argument.
Even if Bragg decided a second trial was worthwhile in the event of a hung jury, such a showdown would likely not happen before the 2024 election.
Prosecutors decided against pursuing a second trial in an old political case that has some parallels with the Trump-Daniels matter…
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