Closing arguments started Tuesday within the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, with the previous president’s legal professional attacking prosecutors’ key witness Michael Cohen as “the MVP of liars” and the prosecution urging jurors to “focus on the facts.”
“Michael Cohen is the GLOAT. He’s literally the greatest liar of all time,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche advised jurors against the shut of his summations.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass famous it is not Cohen who’s on trial, however Trump, the person for whom Cohen labored for a decade. “We didn’t choose Michael Cohen. We didn’t pick him up at the witness store. Mr. Trump chose Mr. Cohen for the same qualities his attorneys now urge you to reject,” Steinglass told the jury.
And, he told the panel, “It’s difficult to conceive of a case with more corroboration.” He said the evidence shows Trump, Cohen and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker engaged in a “scheme” to corruptly hide damaging information about Trump, and it “could very well be what got President Trump elected.”
Blanche, who spoke before Steinglass, contended prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had not met their burden of proving Trump guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of falsifying business records related to the hush money payment Cohen paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 presidential election.
Steinglass acknowledged that Cohen, once an unfailing Trump loyalist, now hates his former boss, but said that’s because Trump cut him loose and let him take the fall for the Daniels’ payment with federal prosecutors “whilst the defendant, up till now, has escaped justice.”
Blanche maintained “President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof. Period.” The trial, he said, was “now not a referendum for your perspectives of President Trump,” and “if you focus just on the evidence you heard in this courtroom, this is a very very quick and easy not guilty verdict.”
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Blance said the money that Trump paid his then-lawyer Cohen was indeed for his legal work, as Trump’s company records show, and not for the Daniels payment, as prosecutors and Cohen have maintained. He noted that Trump was president when he signed the monthly checks for Cohen in 2017, and the idea he was in on a “scheme” to conceal payments at the time was “absurd.”
Blanche stated that Cohen testified he’d completed “very minimal” felony paintings for Trump in 2017 however “Cohen lied to you.”
Blanche told the jury that Cohen had worked as a co-lead attorney defending a defamation lawsuit brought by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Trump’s old reality TV show “The Apprentice.”
“The payments were compensation to him. Nothing more,” Blanche stated, including there is no proof — except for Cohen’s testimony — that Trump was once conscious about his $130,000 cost to Daniels earlier than it was once made. “You can not believe his words,” the lawyer stated, including later that he is “repeatedly, repeatedly lied under oath.”
“He’s literally like the MVP of liars,” Blanche stated. “You can not ship somebody to jail in accordance with the phrases of Michael Cohen,” he told the jury later — a remark Judge Juan Merchan told Blanche outside the presence of the jury was “extremely beside the point.” Juries are not allowed to consider the penalty for a crime in their deliberations.
“It’s simply not allowed. Period. It’s hard for me to imagine how that was accidental in any way,” the judge said. When the jurors returned, Merchan told them to disregard Blanche’s comment. He noted that he’d be the one to impose a sentence and that a prison term is not necessarily required if there’s a conviction. Trump faces penalties ranging from a fine to up to four years behind bars.
Cohen had testified that Trump signed off on the payment because his campaign was reeling from the Oct. 2016 release of the so-called “Access Hollywood” tape, where he was caught on a hot mic in 2005 saying he could grope women without their consent. Blanche insisted Trump wasn’t that concerned about the release of the tape, which resulted in top Republicans condemning his remarks and distancing themselves from the then-Republican nominee.
Blanche stated it “was an extremely personal event for President Trump” because “nobody wants their family to be subjected to that sort of thing,” however “it was once now not a doomsday tournament.”
He also said the deal worked out well for Daniels, who he accused of trying to extort the then-presidential candidate. “She wrote a book, and she has a podcast. And a documentary. This started out as an extortion. There’s no doubt about that, and ended very well for Ms. Daniels — financially speaking,” the lawyer said.
He also claimed there was no reason for the DA to have called her as a witness, other than to “check out to embarrass President Trump” and “inflame your feelings.”
Steinglass stated they referred to as her as a witness as a result of “in the simplest terms, Stormy Daniels is the motive.”
Trump has denied her claim that they had a sexual encounter in 2006, making it important for her to tell her story under oath, and her detailed account of that night “ring true,” Steinglass said. He also questioned why Trump’s attorneys spent so much time trying to knock her claims down if her story was irrelevant.
“Her story is messy,” Steinglass stated, “but that’s kind of the point. That’s the display the defendant didn’t want the American voter to see.”
Blanche additionally addressed an August 2015 assembly the place National Enquirer writer David Pecker advised Trump and Cohen he would assist them suppress detrimental tales about Trump whilst publishing articles to tear down his competitors. Prosecutors described it as the start of a conspiracy to affect the 2016 election. “Every campaign is a conspiracy to promote a candidate,” Blanche stated. “There is zero criminal intent in that 2015 meeting.”
After concluding arguments are completed, the pass judgement on will give the directions to the jury. Then, the 12 unusual New Yorkers who sit down at the jury will start deliberations on whether or not or now not the previous president is accountable of the costs towards him. “You and you alone are the judges of the facts in this case,” Merchan told them ahead of the arguments.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records, a low-level felony.
Three of Trump’s children, Don Jr., Eric and Tiffany, were in court for the proceedings.
Blanche’s argument lasted almost 3 hours. Steinglass estimated he would take a little over four hours.
Prosecutors were expected to argue that not only did they prove Trump was responsible for the falsified business records, but that he did so to cover up another crime — a necessary element of the felony charge.
In his opening statement, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said the disguised payment to Cohen was part of a “planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures, to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior, using doctored corporate records and bank forms to conceal those payments along the way.”
“It was election fraud. Pure and simple,” he told the jury.
When summations are done, Merchan will instruct the jury on the relevant laws and the deliberations process, which is expected to take about an hour. The jury will then begin deliberating. Merchan said in court last week that deliberations might not start until Wednesday morning.
The trial — which featured testimony from Cohen, Daniels, ex-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and former White House and Trump Organization staffers — began with jury selection on April 15. Witness testimony, which started on April 22, wrapped up last week. In all, the prosecution called 20 witnesses in the case, while the defense called two. Despite saying before the proceedings began that he would “completely” testify, Trump didn’t take the stand in his personal protection.
