Jury sends first note to judge in Trump trial as verdict nears

The jury in Donald Trump’s hush money trial asked to rehear testimony Wednesday less than four hours after beginning deliberations in the first criminal case against a former American president.

The four requests included testimony related to a 2015 meeting at Trump Tower where a tabloid publisher agreed to identify negative stories about Trump so that they could be squelched during his presidential run. Jurors wanted to hear accounts of that meeting from two participants — Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, and David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer.