Posted on 05/29/2024 5:12:53 AM PDT by Red Badger
KEY POINTS
Closing arguments in the criminal hush money case of former President Donald Trump ended in New York.
Trump, who is headed to a rematch against President Joe Biden in November’s election, is the first former American president to face a criminal trial.
The Republican is charged with falsifying business records related to reimbursements to his former lawyer Michael Cohen for a 2016 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
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The evidence in the criminal hush money case against former president Donald Trump is “literally overwhelming,” a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.
“Focus on the evidence and the logical inferences that can be drawn from that evidence,” Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said at the end of his closing argument for the trial.
“In the interest of justice, and in the name of the people of the state of New York, I ask you to find the defendant guilty,” Steinglass said. “Thank you.”
Steinglass spent nearly five hours methodically reminding jurors of the testimony they had heard and evidence they had been shown.
All of it, the prosecutor argued, painted a picture of Trump directing and benefiting from a scheme to protect his presidential campaign from negative information about him becoming public during the 2016 election.
“Everything Mr. Trump and his cohorts did in this case was cloaked in lies,” Steinglass said.
“The name of the game was concealment, and all roads lead to the man who benefited the most, Donald Trump.”
Judge Juan Merchan told jurors to return to court at 10 a.m. Wednesday to receive about an hour’s worth of instructions on the law in the case.
Unlike most of the days of Trump’s five-week trial, the former president did not stop to speak to reporters Tuesday night.
Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels by his then-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
The 12-member jury then will begin deliberations later Wednesday.
Trump is the first former U.S. president ever to be tried in a criminal case.
If convicted, the statutory maximum sentence he could receive is four years in prison for each felony count.
Trump, who is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, faces three other pending criminal cases, and three civil judgments holding him liable for more than $500 million in damages to the state of New York and the writer E. Jean Carroll.
Prosecution’s closing argument
Steinglass earlier Tuesday argued that the value of a “corrupt bargain” between the publisher of the National Enquirer, Trump and Cohen to suppress negative stories about Trump cannot be overstated, and might have been one of the most valuable political contributions ever.
“This scheme, cooked up by these men … could very well be what got President Trump elected,” Steinglass said in Manhattan Supreme Court.
David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified at trial about his agreement with Trump and Cohen to alert them to possibly damaging stories about the then-Republican presidential nominee, and his publication of negative stories about Trump’s political opponents, among them 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Pecker testified about how his company paid $150,000 to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, to buy her silence before the 2016 election about her alleged sexual affair with Trump.
Pecker’s company also paid a Trump World Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin, $30,000 for his claim that Trump had a child out of wedlock with a housekeeper, a story the National Enquirer never ran.
“This was really catch and kill,” Steinglass said.
“Keep in mind Mr. Pecker has no reason to lie, no bias toward the defendant and thinks Mr. Trump is still a friend and a mentor,” Steinglass said, distinguishing the publisher and Cohen, a former pit bull for Trump who is now his bitter enemy.
The prosecutor also noted the timing of Cohen paying Daniels $130,000, at what Cohen has said was Trump’s direction, shortly before the 2016 election to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual tryst that occurred a full decade earlier.
“It’s no coincidence that the sex happened in 2006, but the payoff happened less than two weeks before the 2016 election,” Steinglass said.
And that, the prosecutor argued, is because Trump’s main concern about Daniels going public with her claim the its potential effect on the election that year, not any effect on his family, as defense lawyers have said.
Earlier Tuesday, Judge Merchan blasted the former president’s defense lawyer Todd Blanche for arguing to jurors that “you cannot send someone to prison based on the words of Michael Cohen.”
Jurors in criminal cases are instructed to consider whether a defendant committed a crime, and not to factor in the potential punishment for that crime, such as prison.
After jurors had left the courtroom at the end of Blanche’s own closing argument, Merchan laid into him.
“I think that statement was outrageous, Mr. Blanche,” Merchan said.
“Someone who has been a prosecutor for as long as you have and a defense attorney as long as you have,” the judge said.
“It’s simply not allowed. Period. It’s hard for me to imagine how that was accidental in any way.”
When jurors were brought back into the courtroom after lunch, Merchan told them that Blanche’s comment “is improper and you must disregard it.”
The judge also said that if jurors convict Trump, Merchan would decide the sentence. The judge noted that a prison term is not mandatory upon conviction of the charges Trump faces.
Trump’s defense
Blanche began his summation Tuesday by telling jurors that Trump “is innocent” of the charges.
Trump “did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period,” Blanche said.
The records at issue in the case described as legal expenses are the reimbursements that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, gave Cohen for paying off Daniels.
Prosecutors said the payment was designed to prevent the adult film actor from damaging Trump’s chances to win the White House in 2016.
Blanche argued that Cohen had believed that Daniels’ efforts to shop her story about Trump to media outlets “was an extortion attempt” against Trump.
“She wrote a book and she has a podcast. And a documentary,” Blanche said of Daniels. “This started out as an extortion, there’s no doubt about that, and ended very well for Ms. Daniels — financially speaking.”
“The story Mr. Cohen told you on that witness stand is not true,” Blanche said. “There is no proof that President Trump knew about the payment before it was made.”
“As I said to you in the opening statement, it doesn’t matter if there was a conspiracy to win the election,” Blanche argued. “Every campaign is a conspiracy to promote a candidate.”
But Steinglass, in his own closing argument, said, “I’m not suggesting [Daniels] wasn’t looking to get paid, but that is a different thing from … extortion.”
“In the end, it doesn’t really matter,” whether Trump was extorted or not, said Steinglass. “You don’t get to commit election fraud or falsify your business records because you think you’ve been victimized.”
If Trump found guilty, time to lock and load.
So wouldn't that make it "circumstantial" evidence, then?
They even have a "slush" fund they use for such payoffs. Un-fricken-real!
The amount of testimony and papers presented was overwhelming, right up to the overwhelmingly long summation, all right. With a pile like that, he hopes the jury will glom onto SOMETHING nefarious enough to convict.
And he's probably right.
Cohen made a legal independent expenditure, and it does not matter why. They have nothing on Trump. If it was arranged for Trump to pay him back, then it’s not a campaign contribution, and if Trump did not order it or know about it, then he is innocent, too. The judge seems to think that keeping private affairs private is a crime unless one reports them to the FEC, which is NOT the law. and they are twisting the definition of what is an “in kind” campaign contribution, which is something taken by the campaign and used by the campaign, eg, office space, limos, charter planes......for legit campaign purposes. The precedent set by the John Edwards decision IS THE LAW. “Silence” might be a thing of vazlue, but it’s not something Cohen could give to Trump or his campaign could take possession of or use.
CNBC is having wet dreams again of lynching President Trump and allowing their illegal alien invaders/illegal banana boater voters to use the body for a piñata.
This judge is sounding more and more like
Tralene from Star Trek.
‘You will hang by the neck until you are dead Dead DEAD!’
“They even have a “slush” fund they use for such payoffs. Un-fricken-real!”
Yes, that’s what I was referring to. That “not so secret any more” slush fund. What still is secret... is who, exactly, has used that slush fund. I’m betting it has been mostly, if not all, Democrats. Funny how they always protect their own, eh?
💯
if “logical inferences” have to be made, then the case is circumstantial, which requires a high bar of evidence to overcome “reasonable doubt” ... there generally must be multiple forensic pieces of evidence, such as cell phone tracking, finger prints, DNA, tire tracks, fiber evidence, etc.
The only thing that is ‘overwhelming’ about this case is the overwhelming rabid, leftist bias and enmity this judge has consistently shown throughout this kangaroo court trial.
It doesn’t matter whether this jury (which has been told they don’t have to think he’s guilty to convict) convicts or not - any appeal outside of leftist government in NYS will succeed. Regardless, I do not care - just don’t care. They want a civil war? They can have one. This time there won’t be any manufacturing advantage.
Merchan made sure the jury heard only testimony unfavorable to trump, including testimony he allowed prosecutors to give.
Don’t believe giving hush money is a crime congress and senate do it all the time.
They even have a slush fund set up for just such a thing...............
What “evidence” they showed was not “evidence” of any crime.
Even though the defense spoke yesterday, do they get a chance to follow up after the prosecution gets done?
Don’t know who gets the last word...................
If the ‘evidence’ is “overwhelming” why the need for ‘logical inferences’??
I wonder how the NDA PAYOFFS for all those congress folks was recorded in government finance reports.
Cohen was his lawyer doing legal work on his own in hopes to be part of Trump admin.
Yes, I have no clue how it should have been recorded.
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