#Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection w/a #HushMoney payment made to a porn star to influence the 2016 election. The case could be in the jury’s hands as early as Wed.
The prosecution alleges that #Trump was present when his employees hatched a plan to falsify the records, & did not stop them from doing so. The prosecution could even argue that Trump, as the boss, effectively approved the plan & thus caused it.
#Blanche is trying to suggest that the meeting that Trump & #MichaelCohen had in 2015 w/ #Pecker, of The #NationalEnquirer, when prosecutors say they hatched a plan to suppress damaging stories about #Trump & promote negative ones about his rivals, was SOP between a presidential #candidate & the #press. It was not.
Blanche suggests that bc Pecker’s relationship w/Trump, & their #CatchAndKill agreement, was not an #election#conspiracy bc it predated the campaign.
#Blanche claims that #MichaelCohen fully fabricated an encounter that he had w/Pecker in which #Pecker expressed anger that he had not been repaid for 1 of the #HushMoney deals. “Ladies & gentlemen, that lunch did not happen,” Blanche said. “Cohen made it up.”
Blanche doesn’t provide any #evidence Cohen made it up. Instead, Blanche reminds jurors that they should pay close attention to documentary evidence in assessing Cohen’s testimony.
#Blanche is skipping around in his summation, which is making it a little hard to follow.
He now turns back to the recording that #MichaelCohen secretly made of a conversation he had w/ #Trump about the #KarenMcDougal payment.
Blanche suggests there is some kind of dispute over the authenticity of this recording. There isn’t. The recording sounds exactly the same as the one CNN played in 2018.
#Blanche attacks the recording. “This conversation is Mr. Cohen & President Trump literally talking past each other about what is going on,” he says, arguing that his client “has no idea what #MichaelCohen is talking about.”
Blanche comes up with an alternate version of why #Trump asked about “financing” in their taped conversation: that Trump was simply caught off guard & had no idea what was being discussed.
Blanche mocks #MichaelCohen's suggestion that there would have been essentially a duffle bag of cash that was used to make the #HushMoney payment, & says Cohen made it up. Perspective: #Trump was once paid a portion of a lease for a parking garage in gold bricks.
Defense's closing argument has now been going for >2 hrs. Blanche attacks Cohen, but he’s not focused on the docs at issue, or Trump’s role in creating them. Instead, he’s all over the place.
Blanche lays the groundwork for his most important attack on Cohen, saying he is the only witness who testified that Trump knew everything about the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels.
While other witnesses testified about #Trump’s knowledge of the payment — notably #HopeHicks — #MichaelCohen connected Trump to the case like no other witness, including when he testified about the Jan 2017 conversation at Trump Tower, when Trump okayed the arrangements to hide the reimbursements.
“There is no way that you can find that President Trump knew about this payment at the time it was made w/o believing the words of Michael Cohen — period,” Blanche says.
Blanche alternate theory re #StormyDaniels's motive is that Dylan Howard, editor of The #NationalEnquirer, & Gina Rodriguez, Daniels’s manager, seized an opportunity in Oct 2016 to make $ from Daniels’s story.
Problematically, his alt version doesn’t address the falsified documents on which there were weeks of testimony from Pecker, #MichaelCohen & others.
#Blanche argues #StormyDaniels was called to testify in order to inflame the jurors’ emotions & to embarrass #Trump. Prosecutors object, but Justice #Merchan allows it.
Blanche seizes on testimony from #MichaelCohen, who told Daniels's lawyer in a recorded call in Oct 2017 —before Trump turned against him— that he cared about his boss & he wasn’t going to play “penny wise, pound foolish” & betray him. Cohen then says “I’m sitting there & I’m saying to myself, ‘What about me?’”
#Blanche moves on to #MichaelCohen’s relationship w/ #RobertCostello, a lawyer who Cohen testified had been part of a pressure campaign to keep him from flipping on #Trump in 2018 (& whose testimony was insane)
Blanche argues there is “no doubt” that Costello, who is 1 of only 2 witnesses the defense called, served as Cohen’s atty —the trial presented plenty of doubt about the nature of Cohen & Costello’s relationship.
#Blanche mocks #MichaelCohen’s testimony about the evening of 24 Oct, 2016. The testimony on which the defense lawyers felt they had scored a key point, because they presented #evidence that Cohen had talked to #KeithSchiller, #Trump's bodyguard, about a 14-yr-old pranking him. Cohen clarified on redirect that he had talked to both Schiller & Trump during the call & prosecution entered into evidence photos of Trump & Schiller next to each other mins before the call.
But the defense clearly thinks it has a winning argument here. “It was a lie,” #Blanche yells of #MichaelCohen’s testimony. He calls it “perjury,” emphasizing each syllable in the word.
Blanche reminds jurors that there is an oath to tell the truth & says that it “matters to most.” 🤣🤣
#Blanche lists the people who he says #MichaelCohen has lied to, which includes his wife, his children, his banker, the #FEC & “every single reporter he talked to for about a year.”
Blanche tries what sounds like an attempt at a punchline: “He’s literally like the MVP of liars.”
#Blanche again argues that #Trump was in the #WhiteHouse when he signed 9 of the checks. Implying Trump was distracted when he signed them, & that his signature does not suggest his knowledge of the scheme.
‼️Using a slide labeled “manipulation of evidence,” Blanche now argues (again) that #MichaelCohen somehow tampered w/the digital evidence from his phones, including recordings. (Objection to just the label FFS!)
#Blanche says #jurors cannot trust those recordings, & they cannot rely on #MichaelCohen himself — which, the defense has said many times, is a reason not to #convict#Trump.
Blanche then listed 10 reasons that he believed the jury should have #ReasonableDoubt as to Trump’s #guilt. But the list was hard to follow. He misstated the 4th point, which he then broke into 3 parts. He gave them all equal weight & barely mentioned some of them in the rest of his summation.
#Blanche calls Cohen: “The human embodiment of reasonable doubt, literally.” (Umm, no not literally)
Blanche introduces the acronym G.O.A.T., commonly used to stand for “greatest of all time.” He then applies the acronym to Michael Cohen. “Michael Cohen is the G.L.O.A.T.,” Blanche says. The “greatest liar of all time.”
#Steinglass says that the defense seemed to question the prosecution’s integrity when referring to certain documentary #evidence.
“There’s nothing sinister here, no manipulation,” Steinglass says, explaining that all relevant calls are in evidence. Then he argues that in a defense exhibit showing calls between #MichaelCohen & another lawyer, #RobertCostello, the defense “double counted half the calls.” (prosecution got the witness to admit it on the stand)
“If her testimony was so irrelevant, why did they work so hard to try to discredit her?” #Steinglass asks, adding, “#StormyDaniels is the motive.”
Steinglass reminds the jury of the many ways defense worked to discredit Daniels.
Steinglass moves on to #MichaelCohen. He agrees that Cohen wants #Trump convicted, but says that Cohen is “understandably angry that to date, he’s the only one who’s paid the price for his role in this #conspiracy.”
#Steinglass tells jurors #Trump would not have paid a lot of money to #StormyDaniels just because someone had a photo of them on a golf course.
Steinglass says anyone in #MichaelCohen’s shoes would want the defendant to be held accountable”
“Mr. Trump decided, like he often does, 'I’m not going to pay this bill,'” Steinglass said, of the payment to the tech firm for which Cohen was eventually overpaid when he was reimbursed in 2017.
#Steinglass notes that the defense accused #MichaelCohen of stealing for overstating the amount he was owed for paying the technology firm. Steinglass acknowledges that Cohen was wrong to steal. But, he says, “it’s not a defense to a false business records charge that one of the conspirators is also guilty for stealing from another.”