CNN —
On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump's Manhattan criminal trial reached its closing argument after 20 days of trial, testimony from 22 witnesses and more than 200 pieces of evidence.
It's a lot of territory to traverse, but ultimately the case boils down to three questions that were the focus of lengthy closing statements from defense attorney Todd Blanche and Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass.
Trump faces 34 counts of forgery in an illegal repayment scheme to cover up the history of $130,000 in hush money paid through former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about allegations that she had a sexual relationship with Trump before the 2016 presidential election, which Trump denies.
The initial focus will be on whether the 34 business records at the heart of the case actually contain false information.
Blanche argued to the jury that the prosecution did not meet its burden on this standard issue. He said the records used the words “legal fees,” “fees,” and “services rendered” to describe payments to Daniels, and the evidence showed that they were accurate. If those words accurately described the payments, then no crime exists. If those words are false, then the records containing them are also false, and that element of the crime is established.
Courtesy of Norm Eisen
Norm Eisen
For example, Blanche pointed to testimony and documents that cited Cohen's legal work on matters related to the Trump Foundation, the lawsuit involving Summer Zervos (a former contestant on Trump's TV show “The Apprentice”) and a contract to make a statue of former first lady Melania Trump for Madame Tussauds. She said Cohen lied when he testified that his work in those matters was unpaid or minimal — a common argument heard by the defense on Tuesday.
In his closing argument, Steinglass vigorously refuted the allegations that Cohen lied. He pointed to testimony that the entire legal work took less than 10 hours and equated to a fee of $42,000 per hour. He also disputed Blanche's emphasis on Cohen's much-discussed phone call to Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller on October 24, 2016. Steinglass argued that Cohen was trustworthy, and that the 96-second call provided ample time to discuss both the prank call Cohen was receiving from a teenage girl (Cohen and Schiller had texted about the matter prior to the call) and the Daniels deal. In courtroom theatrical fashion, Steinglass re-enacted the call to substantiate his claim (in less than 50 seconds).
He also countered with perhaps the strongest piece of evidence presented by the prosecution: Exhibit 35, handwritten notes from former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and Cohen detailing “substantial” payments to Daniels. Steinglass argued that these contemporaneous memos prove that hush money paid to prevent Daniels from disclosing damaging information about her alleged affair with Trump during the presidential election constituted illegal campaign contributions and was paid back to Cohen after being multiplied as taxes.
Steinglass argued that it wasn't “legal fees” or “fees” for “services provided” by Cohen, as Blanche had argued. Trump “didn't actually pay his lawyers,” the prosecutor said. “He funneled money through his lawyers to pay the porn stars.”
“Documents don't lie and they don't forget,” Steinglass said, and I think the prosecution had the advantage in this exchange.
Even if the documents were fake, prosecutors would still have to prove that Trump had the intent to defraud under the law — that is, that he knowingly lied in his business books and records. Closing arguments and the second big turning point in the case is whether Trump had the intent to defraud.
Again, Blanche argued that the prosecution had not established proof beyond a reasonable doubt because, discounting Cohen's testimony about Trump's role in the scheme (given Cohen's long history of lying), there was no other evidence to prove Trump's intent. Indeed, Blanche went on to say, Trump had repeatedly disclosed the reimbursements via Twitter, 1099 forms to the IRS, federal financial disclosure forms, etc.
But as Steinglass was quick to point out, these were in fact “repeated admissions” that these were reimbursements, and therefore help prove that Trump knew the business records were false when they listed the payments as income. (Furthermore, many of these disclosures were made after the scandal broke in 2018, which hardly constitutes innocent intent.)
And Steinglass argued that jurors shouldn't have to take Cohen's word alone because every significant point he makes is supported or corroborated by other evidence or common sense.
“It is hard to imagine a more well-supported case than this one,” Judge Steinglass told the jury, pointing to records corroborating Cohen's calls and meetings with Trump, testimony from other witnesses about how closely the former president monitored his own finances, and the crucial fact that nine of the checks bore Trump's own signature.
Intent is a difficult issue for the prosecution; it feels like they had the upper hand. But if there were any jurors who could be made to vote out a verdict (and thus have a mistrial), this would probably be the case they would do so in.
The third and final point is that for the 34 allegedly forged documents to be felonies, they must have been created to cover up another crime. Judge Steinglass made that point to the jury in his summing up after lunch: “At the root of this case is a conspiracy and a cover-up — a conspiracy to rig the 2016 election and a cover-up to hide the payments to Stormy Daniels.”
Branche likely knew this was coming, and spent a good deal of her morning closing arguments on it. She argued that under New York's election conspiracy law, “the conspirators' attempts to influence the election must have been illegal,” and that the district attorney failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. Branche pointed to the testimony of former White House communications director Hope Hicks and former Trump personal assistant Madeleine Westerhout, who said Trump wanted to protect his family from Daniels' allegations that she had had an affair with Trump, which was legal, and that non-disclosure agreements and campaign protections like this one are not uncommon or illegal.
To counter Blanche, Steinglass worked his way through the chronology, spending hours meticulously documenting the details of the alleged conspiracy dating back to August 2015 and the illegal methods allegedly used, including violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) (because the hush money Cohen paid up front was $130,000, while the legal limit for individual contributions to campaigns that year was $2,700), tax violations because the refunds were misclassified as income, concealing what was actually going on, and what he said was Cohen's fabrication of other false documents, including bank and company records, to facilitate the payments.
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While the defense's case was that Cohen lied, the prosecution's case was to support Cohen's testimony, and they heavily emphasized their case by discussing the illegal means by which the alleged conspiracy was carried out, including extensive testimony from other witnesses and reviewing much of the hundreds of pieces of evidence.
Here again, the applicable law helped the prosecution to make arguments in its favor: For example, even if Trump paid Daniels to protect his family, the law could still allow him to be convicted if the purpose of the conspiracy was to support his election campaign.
The prosecution was ahead by points going into closing arguments, and that calculation remained the same on Tuesday. To be sure, off-ramps were left in closing arguments, such as questions about jurors' intent if they wanted to challenge the case, but a disagreement on the verdict is unlikely.
