NEW YORK — With Donald Trump’s personal freedom at risk and his political fortunes in the balance, lawyers on both sides of his criminal trial mounted a final flurry of arguments on Tuesday to sway the 12 New Yorkers who will soon decide his legal fate.
Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, went first. And he came out swinging at the prosecution’s case, which centers on the accusation that Trump falsified records to cover up a sex scandal involving a porn actor. The case, the first criminal prosecution of an American president, is “absurd” and “preposterous,” and it “makes no sense,” Blanche argued.
Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor who delivered the state’s closing argument after Blanche finished, fired back at the defense’s attacks on “our integrity.” He argued that Trump’s lawyers, not the prosecution, had played games with the evidence. And Trump, he said, “not only corrupted those around him, but he got them to lie to cover it up” — including faking the records that underpin the case.
Blanche, across a sprawling and sometimes disjointed closing argument, aimed attacks at the prosecution’s bedrock contention that the records were false, and that Trump was responsible for creating them. But Blanche saved his harshest criticism for the prosecution’s star witness, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer. It was he who paid off the porn actor, Stormy Daniels, in a hush-money deal in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Portraying Cohen as a greedy liar bent on revenge, Blanche assailed his credibility and claimed that the defense had caught him testifying falsely about Trump’s knowledge of the deal.
“It was a lie,” yelled Blanche, adding that it was “per-jur-y,” emphasizing each syllable. He accused the prosecution of being “perfectly happy to have” their star witness lie to jurors.
After the prosecution successfully objected, Blanche pivoted to a medley of sports-themed insults, calling Cohen “literally like the MVP of liars” and “the GLOAT,” or the “greatest liar of all time.”
In a blistering rebuttal, Steinglass accused Trump of “chutzpah,” noting that Cohen had told many of his lies to protect the former president. He also said that many other witnesses for the prosecution — the defense called only two — remained loyal to Trump, including his longtime friend, David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer. Pecker, Steinglass argued, had “absolutely no reason to lie here,” and yet, “his testimony is utterly devastating.”
The prosecutor also defended Cohen, who years ago pleaded guilty to federal charges for his role in the hush-money arrangement, observing that he “is understandably angry that, to date, he’s the only one who’s paid the price for his role in this conspiracy.” But, he told jurors, “I’m not asking you to feel bad for Michael Cohen — he made his bed.”
Even before Steinglass stepped to the lectern, Blanche’s argument had emphasized Cohen’s importance to Trump even as he impugned his character. And when Blanche pleaded with the jury not to send Trump to prison based on Cohen’s word — even though prison is not required — the judge rebuked him stingingly.
“Making a comment like that is highly inappropriate,” the judge, Juan M. Merchan, scolded. “It is simply not allowed,” he added, noting that Blanche was a former prosecutor, and should know better. “It’s hard for me to imagine how that was accidental.”
As soon as Wednesday, Merchan will instruct jurors on the relevant law before they begin deliberations. The jury could take anywhere from a few hours to weeks to reach a verdict while Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, campaigns to reclaim the White House.
The closing arguments represented each side’s last opportunity to pitch their case to the jury — and frame the facts to their advantage.
To persuade jurors, the prosecution and defense outlined dueling versions of the same underlying story: Trump’s fixer, Cohen, struck a hush-money deal with a porn actor in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. He did so to silence her story of a sexual encounter with Trump.
Nearly everything else is in dispute.
Steinglass argued that Trump had directed the hush-money deal, reimbursed Cohen and then falsified records to cover up the whole thing. Blanche countered that Cohen was a rogue actor who struck the deal on his own and was repaid for unrelated legitimate legal expenses. He argued that the records in question were accurate, and that Trump did not have sex with Daniels, whom he cast as an extortionist.
Steinglass scoffed at that claim, while noting, “extortion is not a defense for falsifying business records.”
Trump, who faces probation or as long as four years in prison, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, one for each purportedly bogus document: 11 invoices from Cohen, 11 checks to him and 12 entries in Trump’s ledger.
The records portrayed the payments to Cohen — $420,000 spread out throughout 2017 — as ordinary legal expenses that arose from a retainer agreement.
But Steinglass was expected to argue that there was no such retainer or legal expense. And the $420,000, he said, included repayment for the hush money, an overdue bonus and another debt Trump owed Cohen.
Ultimately, Steinglass argued, the case comes down to “a conspiracy and a cover-up,” a plot that began in summer 2015, when Trump summoned Cohen and Pecker, the tabloid publisher, to Trump Tower. They met, Steinglass said, to hatch a scheme to suppress negative stories about Trump.
The stories focused on Trump’s sex life, not with his wife, but with a former Playboy model and with the porn actor, Daniels.
Calling The National Enquirer “a covert arm” of the 2016 Trump campaign, Steinglass noted that the supermarket tabloid had bought and buried the model’s story of an affair with Trump. And although Pecker did not pay Daniels to keep quiet, he notified Cohen that she was shopping her story in the final stretch of the campaign.
“This scheme, cooked up by these men, at this time, could very well be what got President Trump elected,” Steinglass said.
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