Judgment day looms for Donald Trump in New York

CNN - Donald Trump, who built a mystique as the brash epitome of power, has never been more powerless to dictate his own fate.

His reputation, future, and even perhaps the White House’s destiny, will on Wednesday be placed in the hands of 12 citizens of his native New York City, proving that not even once-and-possibly future commanders in chief are above the law. Seven men and five women jurors will retire for deliberations on Trump’s six-week hush money trial after Judge Juan Merchan instructs them on the law and their duties. No jury in American history has faced such a task — deciding whether a former president and presumptive major party nominee will be convicted of a crime. And while the jury, which can deliberate for as long as it needs, is bound to decide its verdict on 34 felony charges on the testimony and evidence in the case alone, its decision will reverberate across the nation and the world at a critical moment of the 2024 presidential election.