Closing Arguments in Trump’s New York Criminal Case - Top 3 Takeaways – May 29th, 2024
- You cannot convict President Trump of any crime beyond a reasonable doubt on the words of Michael Cohen. Those were the words of Trump attorney Todd Blanche as he began his closing arguments in Donald Trump’s New York state criminal case. In a presentation of closing arguments that seemingly was boiled down by the defense to be as simple as possible, he continued by saying this: This case is about documents. It’s a paper case. This case is not about an encounter with Stormy Daniels 18 years ago. That’s an especially relevant fact for the defense to establish with the jury. It speaks to the prosecution’s effort to complicate the case by introducing matters that never had anything to do with the actual charges brought against the former and perhaps future President of the United States. That includes the entire two-day testimony of Stormy Daniels that was entirely irrelevant to the case. Reinforcing the narrative Blanche said: There’s a reason why in life, usually the simplest answer is the right one. That’s the case here. The story Mr. Cohen told you on the witness stand is not true. Labeling expenses from a lawyer “legal expenses” is not a crime. That point in particular is an especially important one. In having had this case brought up to me conversationally what I’ve found is that most people want to make this about an alleged affair with Stormy Daniels and aren’t aware that what this case is about is the accounting for reimbursement payments to Michael Cohen for NDA payments. And to that end Blanche said to the jury: How do you know there’s no intent to defraud? You saw in evidence that the Trump Organization reported this. There’s a 1099 that reflects the payments from (the) trust and Trump's personal account to Michael Cohen. If there was an intent to defraud why would he do that? How can it be that there was any intent to defraud by President Trump when he discloses it to the IRS, he tweets about it and he submits it on his Office of Government Ethics forms? Blanche also emphasized another point I’d spoken to at the onset of the trial. That in reality, and ironically, Trump appears to be the victim as opposed to a perpetrator in the sequence of events that led to the charges in this case. As Blanche stated: This started out as an extortion. There’s no doubt about that. And it ended very well for Ms. Daniels financially speaking. What is clear from the evidence, now going back to 2016, the agreement that Ms. Daniels entered into, is that there was a separate conspiracy between Ms. Daniels, Gina Rodriguez and Dylan Howard. And their goal was to make as much money as possible off of President Trump. That was the defense’s closing defense in a nutshell. But speaking of nutshells, Blanche summarized the case with...
- 10 reasons they should have reasonable doubt. Those ten reasons were: 1) Michael Cohen created the invoices 2) There’s no evidence Trump knew the invoices were sent 3) There was absolutely no evidence of any intent to defraud 4) There was no attempt to commit or conceal another crime 5) There was absolutely no agreement to influence the 2016 election 6) AMI would have run the doorman’s story no matter what if it was true 7) Karen McDougal did not want her story published 8) Stormy Daniels’ story was already public in 2011 9) There was manipulation of evidence 10) Michael Cohen – He's the human embodiment of reasonable doubt. It was at that point he also summarized Michael Cohen as the GLOAT – The Greatest Liar of All-time. “He’s literally like an MVP of liars”, he said. And with that Blanche spiked the football and walked away from the podium (or something like that)... As was noted by CNN’s legal analyst, Todd Blanche has had a week to prepare for today’s presentation, and it shows. In total the defense’s closing arguments came in at just over two and a half hours. The prosecution’s presentation was much longer. MUCH LONGER. Now the burden of proof is on them, therefore it’s not unusual that they may take a bit longer in summarizing their case. Then again if their case had already been made through the presentation of evidence brevity in summarizing the facts may all that’s needed. Perhaps the greatest evidence of all that the prosecution’s evidence in this case was lacking was that they presented their closing arguments for over four hours! The saying be brief, be brilliant and be gone was clearly never received by Alvin Bragg’s team. The prosecution’s approach was to...
- Beat the jury into submission...or at least into boredom. In the prolonged presentation of closing arguments Tuesday afternoon prosecutor Joshua Steinglass established his need for an expansive presentation early on when he said that “There’s literally a mountain of evidence of corroborating testimony that tends to connect the defendant to this crime. It’s difficult to conceive of a case with more corroboration than this one”. Well, there’s literally not a mountain of evidence in this case. That would be endlessly remarkable if it were literally true. But nevertheless, we understand the point he was seeking to get across. He worked to connect the dots to Trump's intent to commit fraud. Steinglass noted prior to getting into details that: It’s difficult to conceive of a case with more corroboration than this one. And thus, he began to dig in. In what I perceived to be a potentially effective line of attack early on Steinglass didn’t try to necessarily prop up the credibility of the questionable characters that were their key witnesses in this case, but instead he placed the blame for their credibility flaws on Trump when he said: He corrupted those around him and he got them to lie and cover it up. Stay on message or you're out. The defendant chose Michael Cohen as his fixer because he was willing to lie and cheat on his behalf. There’s no way of knowing how this approach was received, however if at this stage in the trial there’s a juror or two who’s on the fence, it’s possible to see how that approach might be effective. It’s effectively what I cited as the prosecution’s approach to this case from the jump when they didn’t even attempt to establish the alleged crime that Trump was committing that required a cover-up. It’s the effectively the approach that Trump’s the Bad Orangeman so he’s surrounded by bad orange-like people who do bad things for the Bad Orangeman. Therefore, you know he’s guilty of something and here’s something that you can say he’s guilty of. The next several hours were spent meticulously going through details of payments and conversations between various parties as part of the not-so-literal mountain of evidence was unfurled. Notably, CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig said: “(there’s an) unavoidable gap that you have to be able to take Michael Cohen at his word if you're going to convict. CNN reporter Elise Hammond referred to that reality this way: Ultimately, the jury will have to take a leap of faith to get to a conviction. Now, I’ve cited CNN’s analysts and CNN’s coverage throughout the course of this trial because I think it’s important to have a source presented that’s clearly not interested in promoting what’s in Donald Trump’s best interests in order to provide analytical coverage of this case. And I think the coverage of their analyst and reporter tell the story. If “ultimately the jury will have to take a leap of faith to get to a conviction”, is that not very definition of there being reasonable doubt? As always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts. What I’ve presented are the facts and today this case goes to the jury. One of the interesting dynamics in play with the jury that due to the length of the prosecution’s closing arguments, Judge Merchan gave the jury the option of coming back for the continuation of closing arguments today or to finish them yesterday. The jury that had already been made to wait for an unprecedented eight days between the end of the presentation of evidence and the ability to deliberate in the case had no interest in waiting longer to finish this case. They elected to stay until it was done. That’s noteworthy as the case is handed to them today following jury instructions – which figure to be important – this morning.