NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s lawyers and Manhattan prosecutors made their final pitches Tuesday to jurors who will decide whether the Republican will become the first former U.S. president convicted of a crime, questioning the strength of the evidence and the credibility of the case’s star witness. accusation as his hush money. the trial was coming to an end.
After hearing more than four weeks of testimony, the panel of New Yorkers watched intently a marathon of closing arguments – nearly three hours from the defense and about five from the prosecution – that stretched from morning until dinnertime.
The jury could begin deliberating as early as Wednesday to decide whether Trump is guilty of falsifying business records to cover up secret payments during the 2016 presidential campaign to a pornographic actor who claimed to have had sex with him. Trump says Stormy Daniels’ story is a lie and that he is innocent of the charges. The judge is expected to give jurors instructions on Wednesday before they begin deliberating.
Here are some takeaways from the closing arguments:
Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, had a clear message for jurors: The prosecution’s case is based on the testimony of Trump-turned-enemy Michael Cohen, and he cannot be believed. Cohen is a crucial witness because he made the secret $130,000 payment to Daniels and the reimbursements to Cohen are what prosecutors say were falsely recorded as legal expenses.
As the defense has done throughout the case, Blanche attacked Cohen as a liar with a personal vendetta against his former boss. As Blanche tried to undermine Cohen’s credibility, the defense showed jurors a PowerPoint slide that said, “The case revolves around Cohen.”
Blanche repeatedly reminded jurors of Cohen’s past lies, including his 2018 guilty plea to lying to Congress. And the defense played for jurors clips from Cohen’s podcast in which the now-disbarred lawyer said that seeing the former president booked on criminal charges “fills me with joy.”
The case against Trump is built around the testimony of “a witness who openly hates the defendant, wants him in prison and is actively making money off that hate,” Blanche said.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass acknowledged that Cohen is a challenging witness. But prosecutors didn’t choose him, it was Trump, Steinglass said.
“The defendant chose Michael Cohen to be his go-between because he was willing to lie and cheat on the defendant’s behalf,” Steinglass said. Furthermore, he said, there is “a mountain” of corroborating evidence and testimony connecting Trump to the crime.
“It’s not about you liking Michael Cohen. It’s not about wanting to go into business with Michael Cohen. It’s whether he has useful and reliable information to give you about what happened in this case, and the truth is he was in the best position to know,” the prosecutor said.
The prosecutor used his closing argument to bring jurors back to what District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office alleges was the heart of the case: a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by preventing Daniels’ story from coming to light. The case “at its core is about a conspiracy and a cover-up,” Steinglass said.
The goal of the effort, Steinglass argued, was “to manipulate and defraud voters, to fool their eyes in a coordinated way.” It’s impossible to know whether Trump’s effort to “deceive voters” made any difference in the 2016 election, Steinglass said, but that’s not something prosecutors have to prove.
Steinglass resisted the defense’s claim that the former president was trying to protect his reputation and his family — not his campaign — by shielding them from embarrassing stories about his personal life. It’s “no coincidence” that Daniel’s alleged sexual encounter with Trump took place in 2006, but she was only paid for her silence shortly before the 2016 election, Steinglass said.
The defense, however, told jurors that “every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people working together to help someone win.” Trump’s alleged efforts to suppress negative stories were no different, Blanche said.
“The government wants you to believe that President Trump did these things with his records to hide efforts to promote his successful candidacy in 2016, the year before,” Blanche said. “Even if you find that to be true, that’s not enough… it doesn’t matter if there’s a conspiracy to win an election.”
Outside the court, there were dueling press conferences from the Trump and Biden campaigns, which sought to capitalize on the gathering of reporters and cameras to attack their respective opponents and score political points.
As the defense presented its closing argument, Biden’s campaign unfolded outside the courtroom, actor Robert De Niro and two police officers who defended the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. It was a sharp turnaround for the defense team. Biden, who has largely ignored the trial since it began six weeks ago.
De Niro and the officials did not directly reference Trump’s criminal case, but they considered the former president a threat to the country. De Niro told reporters that if Trump returns to the White House, Americans will be able to “say goodbye to these freedoms that we all take for granted.”
Trump campaign officials followed with their own news conference at the same location. Jason Miller, Trump’s senior campaign adviser, told reporters that the Biden campaign’s press event shows the trial is political.
“After months of saying politics had nothing to do with this trial, they showed up and turned President Trump’s daylong trial into a campaign event in lower Manhattan,” Miller said. Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s press secretary, said the event was “a complete concession that this trial is a witch hunt from above.”
The defense repeatedly referred to the prosecution as “the government.” The prosecution invoked the phrase “big lie.” Both sides’ closing arguments were peppered with words and phrases that became politicized.
Blanche called the prosecution “the government” — a term typically used for federal prosecutors, not the state team prosecuting Trump’s case. In New York, state attorneys are typically referred to in court as “the people,” short for “the people of the State of New York.”
Trump’s two lead lawyers are former federal prosecutors accustomed to arguing in federal court. But Trump has also tried to portray the case — and separate federal cases brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith — as a politically motivated effort by President Joe Biden’s administration to harm Trump’s campaign.
The silence case was brought by local prosecutors in Manhattan who do not work for the Justice Department, and the Justice Department has said the White House had no involvement in the two Trump cases brought by Smith.
But by referring to the prosecution as the “government,” the defense is conjuring up images of the “deep state” conspiracies that Trump claims are aimed at putting him behind bars and preventing him from retaking the White House.
Steinglass, in his closing argument, used the phrase “big lie” to describe the defense’s characterization of phone and text message records between Cohen and Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller. Democrats used that phrase to describe Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election, which helped spur his supporters’ riot at the U.S. Capitol.
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Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Michelle L. Price in New York and Colleen Long and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed.
