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Donald Trump has become the first former US president to be criminally convicted.

A New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records in order to commit election fraud.

Trump was at the centre of a “hush money” scheme to buy the silence of a porn star in the days before the 2016 election.

Here are seven factors that helped convict the man who – in six months – could be president again.

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Trump with his lawyer Todd Blanche. Pic: Reuters
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Donald Trump pictured with his lawyer Todd Blanche. Pic: Reuters

1. The secret recording

“So, what do we got to pay for this? 150?” Donald Trump is heard to say in a conversation with his lawyer Michael Cohen, which he did not know was being recorded.

He was referring to the $150,000 (£117,000) hush money paid to Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed she had a 10-month affair with Trump – which he denied.

The payment, and Trump’s discussion of it, helped establish the hush money scheme and Trump’s involvement.

2. The president and the porn star

Stormy Daniels‘ detailed evidence – at times excruciating – demonstrated to the jury why Donald Trump would have wanted to silence her story.

They met at a 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and had a photo taken together. He invited her to his hotel suite where they had sex, although Trump denies it.

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Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels
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Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels

Stormy Daniels (pictured in 2018) said she had sex with Trump in Nevada. Pic: Reuters
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Stormy Daniels (pictured in 2018) said she had sex with Trump in Nevada. Pic: Reuters

She spanked him “on the butt” with a rolled-up magazine and they had sex after she came out of the bathroom to find him stripped to his boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

When they parted, he said to her: “It was great. Let’s get together again, honey bunch.”

3. David Pecker

The former publisher of the National Enquirer magazine spoke of the “catch and kill” scheme he operated to buy negative stories about Donald Trump and bury them.

David Pecker said he would stop negative stories about Trump being published. Pic: Reuters
Image:
David Pecker said he would stop negative stories about Trump. Pic: Reuters

He told Trump in a 2015 meeting that he would be his “eyes and ears” and he put his money where his mouth was, buying McDougal’s silence for $150,000.

Mr Pecker’s testimony spoke to Trump’s direct knowledge of, and involvement in, a hush money scheme.

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4. ‘Just Do It’ and ‘Push it out past the election’

Michael Cohen testified that Donald Trump told him to “just do it” when it came to paying Stormy Daniels’ hush money.

In late October 2016, she had grown frustrated by a delay in the payment and threatened to take her story to a newspaper.

Cohen said that Trump told him: “There’s no reason to keep this thing out there. Just do it.” It reinforced evidence of Trump’s direction of the hush money scheme.

He said Trump told him of the Stormy Daniels story. “Push it out past the election, because if I win, it has no relevance and if I lose I don’t really care.”

It was a killer line that demonstrated the intent to commit election fraud and, so, elevated the crime to a felony.

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5. The ‘smoking gun’ bank statement

Handwritten notes from Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s chief financial officer, show the sums adding up Michael Cohen’s reimbursement.

It was the $130,000 hush money plus add-ons, all multiplied by two to cover tax liability as Cohen was in the 50% tax bracket.

It showed $420,000 (£328,000) to be paid in multiple cheques of $35,000 each.

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Weisselberg’s handwritten note
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Weisselberg’s handwritten note

Michael Cohen (right) leaves his apartment building in New York on Tuesday. Pic: AP
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Michael Cohen (right) was Trump’s lawyer and ‘fixer’. Pic: AP

The figures are written on Cohen’s First Republic bank statement, the very one that showed his $130,000 wire transfer to Stormy Daniels’ attorney.

Cohen testified that he saw Mr Weisselberg write on the document and that Trump approved the reimbursement plan.

6. The ‘body man’ photo

The defence pounced on a phone call on 24 October 2016, in which Michael Cohen said he had discussed the Stormy Daniels hush money with Donald Trump.

They pointed out the call was to the phone of Trump’s aide, Keith Schiller, after Cohen had been texting him about harassment phone calls and that his claim to have spoken to Trump in a 96-second phone call was “a lie”.

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Schiller Trump pic
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The trial shown a video grab of Trump with Schiller around the exact time of the call

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However, the prosecution found a photograph of Schiller and Trump together, around the exact time of the call.

It undermined what the defence clearly saw as a ‘gotcha’ moment in their bid to discredit Cohen.

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7. The trusted aide

Hope Hicks was campaign press secretary to Donald Trump in 2016.

She testified that he told her Michael Cohen had paid off Stormy Daniels to “protect him [Trump] from a false allegation” out of the “kindness of his own heart”.

Pic: AP
Image:
Hope Hicks was Trump’s press secretary. Pic: AP

Ms Hicks told the court she thought that would have been out of character for Cohen.

“I didn’t know Michael to be an especially charitable person or selfless person,” she said.

From a trusted aide, her cutting assessment of Cohen challenged the word of her former boss and weakened Trump’s defence.

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Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney apologises to Donald Trump over anti-tariff advert featuring Ronald Reagan

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Canada's prime minister Mark Carney apologises to Donald Trump over anti-tariff advert featuring Ronald Reagan

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has apologised to Donald Trump over an anti-tariff advert featuring a clip of Ronald Reagan.

Speaking at the Asia-Pacific summit in South Korea, he also said he had reviewed the commercial and told Ontario Premier Doug Ford not to air it.

“I did apologise to the president,” Mr Carney said on Saturday, confirming earlier comments made by the US president on Friday.

“I told [Doug] Ford I did not want to go forward with the ad,” he added.

The private conversation with Mr Trump happened at a dinner hosted by South Korea’s president on Wednesday.

The commercial, commissioned by Mr Ford, included a quote from Republican former president Ronald Reagan saying that tariffs cause trade wars and economic disaster.

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Mr Trump said the advert was misleading and, in response, announced that he was increasing tariffs on goods from Canada and halting trade talks with Canada.

In a post on Truth Social, he wrote: “Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.”

It prompted the Ontario premier to pull the ad.

On Friday, the US president expressed his irritation at the advert but also told reporters he had accepted Mr Carney’s apology.

“I like him [Carney] a lot but what they did was wrong,” he said.

“He apologised for what they did with the commercial because it was a false commercial.”

But, critically, he added that the US and Canada will not restart trade talks.

Mr Ford has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s tariffs and trade policies, which are hurting Ontario’s carmakers and steel industry.

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The ad by the Ontario government has a voiceover of Ronald Reagan criticising tariffs on foreign goods while saying they cause job losses and trade wars.

The video uses five complete sentences from a five-minute weekly address recorded in 1987, but edited together out of order.

The ad does not mention that the former US president was explaining that tariffs imposed on Japan by his administration should be seen as a sadly unavoidable exception to his basic belief in free trade as the key to prosperity.

Meanwhile, Mr Carney said his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday were a turning point in relations after years of tensions.

He also met Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on the sidelines of the summit.

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Donald Trump calls Nigeria ‘country of particular concern’ due to ‘slaughter’ of Christians

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Donald Trump calls Nigeria 'country of particular concern' due to 'slaughter' of Christians

Donald Trump has said he is designating Nigeria a “country of particular concern” as “thousands of Christians” are being killed there.

Posting on Truth Social, he said radical Islamists are committing “mass slaughter” and Christianity is “facing an existential threat” in the West African nation.

The US president said he was asking officials to “immediately look into this matter, and report back to me”.

Mr Trump quoted figures suggesting 3,100 Christians had been killed in Nigeria, but did not state any source for the numbers or timeframe.

He stated: “We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!”

Nigeria now joins North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and China on a list of countries “of particular concern” due to violations of religious freedom.

The move is one step before possible sanctions – which could mean a ban on all non-humanitarian aid.

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The Nigerian government has vehemently rejected the claims. Analysts have said that, while Christians are among those targeted, the majority of victims of armed groups are Muslims in the country’s Muslim-majority north, where the most attacks take place.

Mr Trump’s move follows efforts by Republican senator Ted Cruz to get fellow evangelical Christians to lobby Congress over claims of “Christian mass murder” in Nigeria.

Boko Haram – which kidnapped more than 270 schoolgirls in 2014 – is the main group cited in previous warnings by US and international governments.

The group has committed “egregious violations of religious freedom”, according to a 2021 report by the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom.

It said more than 37,000 people had been killed by Islamist groups in Nigeria since 2011.

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Churches and Christian neighbourhoods have been targeted in the past, but experts say Muslims are the most common victims of Boko Haram attacks, which routinely target the police, military and government.

Other groups operating said to be operating in the country include Boko Haram offshoot Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).

About half of Nigeria’s population is estimated to be Muslim, who mostly live in the north, with roughly the other half following Christianity.

US travellers are currently urged to “reconsider” travel to Nigeria due to a threat of terrorism, crime, kidnapping and armed gangs. The UK advises its citizens along similar lines.

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Donald Trump announces dramatic drop in US refugee intake, with most of them white South Africans

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Donald Trump announces dramatic drop in US refugee intake, with most of them white South Africans

The US is drastically cutting the number of refugees it will allow into the country to 7,500, and giving priority to white South Africans.

The new figure, announced on Thursday in a memo in the Federal Registry, the official journal of the US administration, is a dramatic reduction from last year’s 125,000, set by former president Joe Biden.

No reason was given for the decrease, but the note said the admission of the 7,500 refugees during the 2026 fiscal year was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest”.

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The notice posted to the register’s website said the 7,500 admissions would “primarily” be allocated to Afrikaner South Africans and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands”.

It is half the 15,000 total set for 2021 during Donald Trump’s first term in office at the height of the COVID pandemic, which reports said was the previous lowest refugee admissions cap.

Refugee rights groups were quick to condemn the proposal, with International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) president Sharif Aly, saying that by “privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicising a humanitarian programme”.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of Global Refuge, said: “Concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the programme’s purpose as well as its credibility.”

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Human Rights First president, Uzra Zeya, called it a “new low point” in US foreign policy, which will “further destabilise front-line states that host over two-thirds of the world’s nearly 43 million refugees, undermining US national security in tandem”.

US President Donald Trump showed South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa printed-out articles in the Oval Office. Pic: AP
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US President Donald Trump showed South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa printed-out articles in the Oval Office. Pic: AP

In May, Mr Trump confronted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House, claiming white farmers in his nation were being killed and “persecuted”.

A video purporting to show burial sites for murdered white farmers was played but was later shown to be scenes from a 2020 protest in which the crosses represented farmers killed over multiple years.

The South African government has vehemently denied that Afrikaners and other white South Africans are being persecuted.

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In January, the US president suspended the US Refugee Admissions Programme (USRAP) to, in his words, allow US authorities to prioritise national security and public safety.

During the Oval Office meeting, Mr Ramaphosa said only that he hoped that Trump officials would listen to South Africans about the issue, and later said he believed there is “doubt and disbelief about all this in [Mr Trump’s] head”.

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