evidence: The jury must unanimously agree on Trump's guilt of falsifying business records in the first degree (he faces 34 counts of this crime). A first-degree charge of falsification of business records requires a "predicate crime" for which the falsification was plausibly intended to cover up. The jury does not need to agree on the predicate crime for a conviction. On May 29, 2024, the jury in former U.S. President Donald Trump's trial over alleged hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels began their deliberations. Immediately after the publication of Justice Juan Merchan's instructions to the jury, numerous pundits and politicians — including Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — claimed the judge told the jury that "they don't have to unanimously agree on which crime was committed as long as they all at least pick one." [...] Because the jury must be unanimous on each count of the crime Trump is charged with — falsification of business records in the first degree — for a conviction on that count, the claim that the jury was instructed that they need not unanimously convict Trump, or that they could propose their own crime to convict him of, is "False."