A warm welcome to the program. I'm Mark Lobell. We start in the US, where jury deliberations have begun in former US President Donald Trump's Hush Money trial. Mr. Trump, as you may remember, is facing 34 counts of falsifying business records. Prosecutors accuse the former President of an elaborate scheme that violated campaign finance laws to cover up a $130,000 Hush Money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Those business records include entries in business ledgers kept by the Trump organization, checks and check stubs from a Donald J. Trump account and invoices from his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who testified that he paid Daniels on behalf of Trump to suppress her claims of an affair from 2006. Our North America Correspondent, Neda Tawfik, is in New York with the latest.

The jury went home without reaching a verdict on the first day, deliberating for nearly five hours. The judge started off the morning by instructing them, telling them to not let any bias against Donald Trump get in the way and to decide this case on the facts. And he instructed them that they need to find two parts to find Donald Trump guilty. First, that he personally or in concert with others falsified business records, and secondly, that he did that to conceal with intent to conceal another crime. They said that other crime could include a violation of New York or federal election law or even tax violations. And he also told them that they can't convict Donald Trump on Michael Cohen's word alone. He said, Under the law, Michael Cohen is an accomplice, and they must find corroborating evidence to back up his testimony. But here we are, day one of deliberations down, and they will return again to resume those deliberations on what will be a historic decision.

Well, let's speak to Mark Lincuist, former district attorney and Seattle-based lawyer. Mark, we're just listening to Nedda there. Quite a lot of questions that the jury have asked, actually, because of the judge's orders there that they need to listen back to and come into the court today to hear about. So any indication of how long it might now take them to come back with a verdict?

Questions like these are not unusual. Nobody outside of the jury room really can say how long they might deliberate. That said, this is a strange and complicated case that could drag on for days.

Strange and complicated with those terms that the jury has to meet that were outlined by Nedda there. How likely is a hung jury, do you think, in a case like this?

Yeah, I think that's highly likely. In fact, I think a hung jury is probably the most likely result, given the complications, given given the political undertones and given people's generally polarized feelings about Mr. Trump.

So you're saying that you think that the jury themselves might be split because of the different factors involved?

Correct. I think that's highly likely that they cannot reach a verdict.

I mean, if they did reach a guilty verdict, presumably an appeal would follow in any case.

Correct. They would set sentencing out into July. In the meantime, Mr. Trump's lawyers will file an appeal, and I would expect Mr. Trump will stay out of custody pending that appeal.

That's important, is it? What would happen to Mr. Trump, and how long would that whole process take?

That process could drag on for one, two, three years. In other words, Mr. Trump is going to either win an election or lose an election before that appeal is resolved.

Have you ever seen a a case like this?

I have never seen a case like this, fortunately, and I hope to never see a case like this again.

What have you learned from this type of case? What does it say about the justice system in America?

Well, I'm not sure it says something about the justice system, but it certainly has given many people the impression that the prosecution has been politicized. And prosecutions should not be politicized. Prosecutions be based, of course, on the evidence. So I think the aftertaste of this case is a sense of our politics spilling into our justice system, which is not a good thing.

All right, Mark Lindquist, former district attorney and Seattle-based lawyer. Thank you for your comments on the case.

Thank you.