PBP: P01135809 Trump Espionage, Coup, Conspiracy, Racketeering, Fraud & Obstruction Trial Thread

Closing arguments are likely to complete today. The jury has agreed to stay late.

 

Donald Trump’s legal defense has made explicit in its closing argument a line of attack it hinted at during testimony — that Trump was a victim, not a perpetrator, of criminal conduct surrounding the hush money paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.​

Where have I heard that before?

 

Stormy Daniels had no relevant evidence to offer about Donald Trump’s alleged falsification of business records, and she was called by prosecutors just to scandalize and embarrass him, Trump defense lawyer Todd Blanche said.

“Why did they call her as a witness in this trial?” Blanche asked rhetorically, noting that she has no firsthand knowledge of allegedly false records about payment and reimbursements.

“They did it to try to inflame your emotions, they did it to try to embarrass President Trump,” Blanche said.​

This completely ignores that Trump actually did have a sexual encounter with Daniels and wanted to suppress it. But, I guess, as with everything else about Trump, his supporters just want to normalize his behavior.

 

In the final stretch of his closing argument, defense lawyer Todd Blanche tried to downplay the reaction in Donald Trump’s camp to the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Donald Trump bragged about grabbing women’s genitalia.

Prosecutors say the tape, which The Washington Post reported on in October 2016, sent the campaign into a panic and ratcheted up pressure to contain other potentially damaging stories about Trump’s interactions with women.

Blanche countered that it was merely “one of many stressful stories” that surfaced during the campaign. While Trump worried about how it would affect his family, Blanche said, he simply responded to it and moved on.

The prosecution, Blanche told jurors, portrayed the tape as “so catastrophic to the campaign that it provided the motive for President Trump to do something criminal. But there’s no evidence of that.”​

Hope Hicks kind of smashed that.

 

Defense lawyer Todd Blanche railed against prosecutors for eliciting what he said was false testimony from a key Oct. 24, 2016, phone call.

Michael Cohen had claimed under oath that he had a phone call that day with Donald Trump to talk about the hush money payment.

Text messages show Cohen was actually talking to Trump’s bodyguard about harassing phone calls from a teenager, Blanche insisted.

“That is Per-Ju-Ry!” Blanche declared loudly.
​

Man, Blanche hates Cohen. And there was probably some direction from Trump, here, as well.

Blanche derided prosecutors for using Cohen as a witness and trying to defend that testimony by suggesting that Cohen spoke to both Keith Schiller about the teenager and Trump about the payoff in a phone call that lasted a minute and a half.​

Both Weissmann and Team Lawfare said that, on redirect, Cohen cleaned this up.

 

Anna Bower tweets.

You know how people say Tom Brady is the GOAT? Blanche asks the jurors.

Well, Michael Cohen is the GLOAT: Greatest Liar of All Time.

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) May 28, 2024

You know how people say Tom Brady is the GOAT? Blanche asks the jurors.

Well, Michael Cohen is the GLOAT: Greatest Liar of All Time.

hahaha

Blanche said that the jurors will have to decide whether to send Trump to prison. Not allowed to say that kind of thing.

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) May 28, 2024

Blanche said that the jurors will have to decide whether to send Trump to prison. Not allowed to say that kind of thing.

JUSTICE MERCHAN: I think that comment was outrageous, Mr. Blanche. You know as someone who has been a prosecutor that it's simply not allowed, period. It's hard to see how that was an accident.

I'm going to give the curative instruction.

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) May 28, 2024

JUSTICE MERCHAN: I think that comment was outrageous, Mr. Blanche. You know as someone who has been a prosecutor that it's simply not allowed, period. It's hard to see how that was an accident.

I'm going to give the curative instruction.

----

Merchan is fed up with the defense.

 

In one of his toughest jabs at the prosecution, defense lawyer Todd Blanche told the jury that they should be skeptical in part because of “manipulation of evidence” by prosecutors.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass, indignant, objected to the accusation, but was overruled by New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.

Blanche seized on three areas where he said the prosecution case was based on flawed analysis or explanation — text messages that Michael Cohen exchanged with former Donald Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller, text messages involving Melania Trump, and a “wipe” of Cohen’s phone before a key recording he secretly made of Trump.​

Wittes has been saying all trial that Merchan has been giving the defense a fair bit of rope, more so than the prosecution. This is another example. But Wittes and Parloff have said that the reason is likely to minimize possible overturning of verdict on appeal.

 

Donald Trump’s lawyer wrapped up his three-hour summation Tuesday by calling key witness Michael Cohen a masterful truth-twister whose history of hawking falsehoods is enough to doubt anything he says.

The former Trump attorney who is now one of his most vocal critics is “literally the greatest liar of all time,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche added.​

hahahahaha Trump is far, far worse.

“He’s the human embodiment of reasonable doubt, literally,” Blanche argued. “He lied to you repeatedly, he lied many, many times before you even met him.”

Blanche argued that Cohen’s motive to lie is clear, because he profits off his Trump-related books, podcasts and merchandise.​

Again, ignoring testimony from Cohen, who said he would make more money if Trump was acquitted.

 

Blanche has wrapped up, and seemed to spend ALL of his time on Cohen. The defense will crush him for that.

 

While I agree, it really seems that the defense's strategy was dictated by Trump: go after Cohen. Trump is such a narcissistic and petty guy, and it seems Blanche is in that same car, that I don't think he understands how bad it looks.

 

The second sentence was me editorializing, but I am looking at defense closing from the eyes of the jury. To ONLY go after Cohen is a bad look.

Yes and no. There are 34 counts, 3 of which are not directly Trump, himself. Those will be to be unanimous. But there are also the unindicted (not the correct term) charges which will elevate this to felony. Of those, non of them have to be unanimous, but all 12 do have to select one of them.

With that said, the commentators said during jury selection that it seemed a fair pick. Weissmann and McCord, who have experience in this type of thing, noted a couple of things:
1 - A rogue element could be present, but from their experience in selecting juries, it does not seem to be present.
2 - There has already been one jury in NY that convicted Trump (Trump Org) fairly, which suggests that another jury will likely do the same (come back with a fair verdict).

All of this is to say, your pessimism won't get me down.

 

In a show of...something, several Biden surrogates were outside the court making speeches. Apparently De Niro, among them, went ham on some of the Trump supporters.

 

Prosecution is up...

 

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass’s summation is underway. At the start, Steinglass tried to swat away claims by the defense from earlier today, including that the records at issue in the case were not false, and that payments were issued to Michael Cohen as part of an informal retainer agreement for his work as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. “There were in fact false business records in this case. The false business records were intended to cover up the conspiracy,” Steinglass said.​

While Blanche was clearing going after Cohen, it seems that Steinglass is going after the "false business records." IOW, to the defense, it's personal, to the prosecution, it's business.

 

I'll probably be putting in a few Bower tweets as I go along. Such as this:

Blanche told you Daniels' testimony didn't matter. But if her testimony was so irrelevant, why did they work so hard to discredit her?

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) May 28, 2024

Blanche told you Daniels' testimony didn't matter. But if her testimony was so irrelevant, why did they work so hard to discredit her?

 

Donald Trump leaned over and whispered to his lawyers Todd Blanche and Emile Bove while prosecutor Joshua Steinglass recounted Stormy Daniels’s detailed testimony about her alleged sexual encounter with the former president.​

 

Keep in mind that David Pecker has no reason to lie here. Yet his testimony is utterly damning.

Same for others. Hope Hicks, Deb Tarasoff, Jeff McConney...If anything, they have reason to skew their testimony to help the defendant. Yet they each provide a piece of the puzzle.

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) May 28, 2024

Keep in mind that David Pecker has no reason to lie here. Yet his testimony is utterly damning. Same for others. Hope Hicks, Deb Tarasoff, Jeff McConney...If anything, they have reason to skew their testimony to help the defendant. Yet they each provide a piece of the puzzle.

In the end, Steinglass continues, it doesn't matter. Because you don't get to falsify business records just because you feel like you've been victimized.

In other words: Extortion is not a defense to falsifying business records.

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) May 28, 2024

In the end, Steinglass continues, it doesn't matter. Because you don't get to falsify business records just because you feel like you've been victimized. In other words: Extortion is not a defense to falsifying business records.

---

Already, Steinglass has bring in evidence of the crime in a way that Blanche never did. Man, this is really going to get ugly for Trump.

 

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors that Michael Cohen, the key witness in the prosecution, has baggage, but that doesn’t mean they can’t trust him.

“Cohen is biased,” Steinglass said, before defending the witness as “understandably angry that he’s the only one who’s paid a price for his role in this conspiracy.”

Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, paid $130,000 to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016, and prosecutors say Trump orchestrated a criminal scheme to reimburse him the following year.

“Anyone in Cohen’s shoes would want the defendant to be held accountable,” the prosecutor said.

Steinglass said jurors have plenty of evidence pointing to a conspiracy to influence the election and “you don’t need Michael Cohen to prove that one bit.”​

Yup. It's not about the witness, it's about the (mountain) of evidence.

 

The defense tells you you should reject Cohen's testimony because of his lies in federal court related to his plea deal. And it's true Cohen has had some difficulty accepting responsibility for SOME of those crimes he pleaded to...but not the campaign finance crimes.

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) May 28, 2024

The defense tells you you should reject Cohen's testimony because of his lies in federal court related to his plea deal. And it's true Cohen has had some difficulty accepting responsibility for SOME of those crimes he pleaded to...but not the campaign finance crimes.

 

Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass pushed back on the defense’s attempts to undermine the testimony of Stormy Daniels, saying her disturbing account of an alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump was critical for understanding Trump’s mind-set.

In testimony earlier this month, Daniels recalled specific details about the hotel suite where she said the alleged tryst happened in 2006. At times, she seemed to be describing nonconsensual sex. Trump denies they had sex, and his defense team repeatedly disputed her account in court.

Steinglass said Daniels’s testimony was “cringeworthy” and “uncomfortable,” but insisted that it was relevant.

“Those are the kind of details, I submit to you, that kind of ring true,” he told the jury. “If she didn’t testify about those details, it would undoubtedly give the defense more ammunition to call her a liar.”

Steinglass said there was no need to prove that sex too place, but argued that Trump knew what unfolded in the room that night.

“It only reinforces his incentive to buy her silence,” Steinglass said of the $130,000 hush money payment Daniels received from his former lawyer, Michael Cohen.

“That’s the display that the defendant didn’t want the American voter to see,” Steinglass said. “Stormy Daniels is the motive.” ​

 

Speaking to reporters outside his father’s trial, Donald Trump Jr. sought to delegitimize a potential guilty verdict by saying jurors might feel social pressure or fear for their safety. “They wouldn’t be able to show up to their children’s schools if they acquitted Trump,” he said.​

"Deligitmize"? That is a ********ing threat!