False Reports About Jury Instructions Fuel Threats

“False reports about the jury instructions in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial have been spreading across right-wing media, leading to threats against the judge overseeing the case,” NBC News reports.

“Several conservative news personalities, including some affiliated with Fox News, falsely claimed that Judge Juan Merchan, as one Fox News anchor put it in a viral post on X, ‘told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict’ Trump.”

“That’s not true. Merchan instructed the jury on Wednesday that they ‘must conclude unanimously that a defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means,’ adding that they ‘need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were.'”