For practically three hours on Tuesday, Donald J. Trump’s lawyer did his degree greatest to steer the jury to acquit his shopper, wielding a scalpel to assault practically each strand of the prison case towards the previous president.
Then it was a prosecutor’s flip. Fairly than utilizing a positive blade, he swung a sledgehammer.
All through a marathon closing argument that almost outlasted daylight, the prosecutor delivered a sweeping rebuke of the previous president, in search of to steer the jury of 12 New Yorkers that Mr. Trump had falsified information to cowl up a intercourse scandal involving a porn star. The prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, wove collectively witness testimony and paperwork to drive house the important thing factors of the weekslong case, the primary prison trial of an American president.
Dealing with the decide’s 8 p.m. deadline, Mr. Steinglass raced to the wire, stopping solely to take a gulp of water because the sky darkened outdoors the towering courtroom home windows.
“Every little thing Mr. Trump and his cohorts did on this case was cloaked in lies,” Mr. Steinglass mentioned because the jurors, who had been glued to most of his presentation, started to fidget of their seats.
By the point the prosecutor completed, the courthouse had closed to different enterprise and the visitors on Decrease Manhattan streets had slowed. Greater than 10 hours after Mr. Trump’s lawyer started the day by calling the case “absurd” and “preposterous,” Mr. Steinglass lastly had the ultimate phrase.
The disparate methods — Mr. Steinglass’s closing was greater than twice so long as the protection’s — mirrored their separate duties. The protection wanted solely to ascertain affordable doubt, whereas the prosecution wanted to steer the jury to simply accept a story that, Mr. Steinglass argued, may result in just one ending: responsible on all counts.
The closing arguments had been both sides’s final likelihood to pitch their case to the jury — and body the details to their benefit — as they drew from a deep properly of proof: testimony from 22 witnesses, reams of emails and a surreptitious recording of Mr. Trump coordinating a secret payoff.
Beginning Wednesday, the facility will shift from the legal professionals on the lectern to the jurors within the deliberation room. The jury may take anyplace from just a few hours to weeks to succeed in a verdict whereas Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, campaigns to reclaim the White Home.
Tuesday started with Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, commanding the highlight.
He aimed assaults on the prosecution’s bedrock rivalry that the information had been false, and that Mr. Trump was accountable for creating them. However Mr. Blanche saved his harshest criticism for the prosecution’s star witness, Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer. It was he who paid off the porn star, Stormy Daniels, in a hush-money deal within the last days of the 2016 presidential marketing campaign.
Portraying Mr. Cohen as a grasping liar bent on revenge, Mr. Blanche assailed his credibility and claimed that the protection had caught him testifying falsely about Mr. Trump’s data of the deal.
“It was a lie,” yelled Mr. Blanche, including that it was “per-jur-y,” emphasizing every syllable. He accused the prosecution of being “completely pleased” to have their star witness misinform jurors.
After the prosecution efficiently objected, Mr. Blanche pivoted to a medley of sports-themed insults, calling Mr. Cohen “actually just like the M.V.P. of liars” and “the G.L.O.A.T.,” or the “best liar of all time.”
In a blistering rebuttal, Mr. Steinglass accused Mr. Trump of “chutzpah,” noting that Mr. Cohen had instructed a lot of his lies to guard the previous president. He additionally mentioned that many different witnesses for the prosecution — the protection known as solely two — remained loyal to Mr. Trump, together with his longtime buddy, David Pecker, the previous writer of The Nationwide Enquirer. Mr. Pecker, Mr. Steinglass argued, had “completely no motive to lie right here,” and but, “his testimony is totally devastating.”
The prosecutor additionally defended Mr. Cohen, who years in the past pleaded responsible to federal fees for his position within the hush-money association, observing that he “is understandably offended that, so far, he’s the one one who’s paid the worth for his position on this conspiracy.” However, he instructed jurors, “I’m not asking you to really feel dangerous for Michael Cohen — he made his mattress.”
Earlier than Mr. Steinglass stepped to the lectern, Mr. Blanche’s argument had emphasised Mr. Cohen’s significance to Mr. Trump whilst he impugned Mr. Cohen’s character. And when Mr. Blanche pleaded with the jury to not ship Mr. Trump to jail primarily based on Mr. Cohen’s phrase — although a jail sentence wouldn’t be obligatory — the decide admonished him stingingly.
“Making a remark like that’s extremely inappropriate,” the decide, Juan M. Merchan, scolded. “It’s merely not allowed,” he added, noting that Mr. Blanche was a former prosecutor, and will know higher. “It’s exhausting for me to think about how that was unintentional.”
To steer jurors, the prosecution and protection outlined dueling variations of the identical underlying story: Mr. Trump’s fixer, Mr. Cohen, struck a hush-money cope with a porn star within the waning days of the 2016 presidential marketing campaign. He did so to silence her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.
Almost every thing else is in dispute.
Mr. Steinglass argued that Mr. Trump had directed the hush-money deal, reimbursed Mr. Cohen after which falsified information to cowl up the entire thing. Mr. Blanche countered that Mr. Cohen was a rogue actor who struck the deal on his personal and was repaid for unrelated legit authorized bills. He argued that the information in query had been correct, and that Mr. Trump didn’t have intercourse with Ms. Daniels, whom he forged as an extortionist.
Mr. Steinglass scoffed at that, whereas noting, “extortion just isn’t a protection for falsifying enterprise information.”
Mr. Trump, who faces probation or so long as 4 years in jail, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise information, one for every purportedly bogus doc: 11 invoices from Mr. Cohen, 11 checks to him and 12 entries in Mr. Trump’s ledger.
The information portrayed the funds to Mr. Cohen — $420,000 unfold all through 2017 — as peculiar authorized bills that arose from a retainer settlement.
However Mr. Steinglass argued that there was no such retainer or authorized expense. And the $420,000, he mentioned, included reimbursement for the hush cash, an overdue bonus and one other debt Mr. Trump owed Mr. Cohen. To high it off, Mr. Trump lined Mr. Cohen’s tax invoice on the inflow of money.
It was some huge cash, Mr. Steinglass acknowledged, however to the president-elect, “It was value it to cover the reality about what this cash was actually for.”
Mr. Blanche tried to undercut that argument, articulating a novel interpretation of the proof: that the paperwork weren’t false. Telling the jury that Mr. Cohen was Mr. Trump’s private lawyer and in reality carried out authorized work for Mr. Trump in 2017 whereas being paid, he mentioned that “there have been nonetheless excellent issues they had been coping with.”
Mr. Blanche additionally claimed that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen truly had a retainer — simply not a written one.
“The information weren’t false, and there was no intent to defraud,” Mr. Blanche contended.
Mr. Steinglass forged that argument as absurd. Not solely was there no written retainer settlement, he famous, however the payouts to Mr. Cohen clearly included reimbursement for the hush cash. Citing one of the crucial damning items of proof, Mr. Steinglass mentioned that Mr. Trump’s chief monetary officer had jotted notes concerning the association on a replica of Mr. Cohen’s financial institution assertion — the very one displaying that Mr. Cohen had paid off Ms. Daniels.
Mr. Steinglass referred to those handwritten notes as “the smoking weapons” of the prosecution’s case, saying they “fully blow out of the water the declare the cash paid to Cohen” was for authorized companies.
Even Mr. Trump has admitted he repaid Mr. Cohen for the hush cash, Mr. Steinglass famous, citing earlier disclosures that appeared to contradict the previous president’s personal authorized protection.
Maybe anticipating this argument, Mr. Blanche provided the jury an alternate: Blame Mr. Trump’s workers.
“The invoices had been all submitted by Michael Cohen,” he famous, whereas different Trump Group workers dealt with the ledger entries.
The entries, he mentioned, had been logical and rote, explaining that the corporate’s software program offered a drop-down menu the place one of many few choices is “authorized expense.” And since Mr. Cohen was a lawyer, he mentioned, this was the plain selection.
However Mr. Blanche strained to clarify the checks, that are significantly problematic for Mr. Trump. Whereas president, he personally signed 9 of them, every referring to the retainer.
Mr. Blanche argued that Mr. Trump had signed the checks with out paying them a lot thoughts — “he was operating the nation,” Mr. Blanche reminded the jury — and claimed that there was “not a shred of proof” proving that Mr. Trump was concerned within the trivialities of paying Mr. Cohen and drafting the information.
But all through the trial, the prosecution has portrayed Mr. Trump as a penny-pinching micromanager, a picture he has burnished in his personal books. The truth is, Mr. Trump titled one chapter “Learn how to Pinch Pennies.” In one other, he wrote, “all the time query invoices.”
Mr. Steinglass known as it “loopy” to suppose that Mr. Trump would afford his workers broad authority over his cash and his information.
He additionally referred to a vital assembly wherein, Mr. Cohen mentioned, Mr. Trump had blessed the plan to falsify the information.
Mr. Cohen testified that it had occurred in Trump Tower in January 2017, simply days earlier than Mr. Trump was sworn in as president. Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen instructed the jury, authorised of the association and knew that the information had been false.
Finally, Mr. Steinglass argued, the case comes right down to “a conspiracy and a coverup,” a plot that started in summer time 2015, when Mr. Trump had summoned Mr. Cohen and Mr. Pecker, the tabloid writer, to Trump Tower. They met, Mr. Steinglass mentioned, to hatch a scheme to suppress adverse tales about Mr. Trump.
The tales targeted on Mr. Trump’s intercourse life, not along with his spouse, however with a former Playboy mannequin and with the porn star, Ms. Daniels.
Calling The Nationwide Enquirer “a covert arm” of the 2016 Trump marketing campaign, Mr. Steinglass famous that the grocery store tabloid had purchased and buried the mannequin’s story of an affair with Mr. Trump. When it was time to settle up with Mr. Pecker, Mr. Cohen spoke to Mr. Trump concerning the reimbursement and made a secret recording of their dialogue. Mr. Steinglass performed the tape for the jury, wherein Mr. Trump instructed his fixer to “pay in money.”
Attacking the protection’s claims that the recording was by some means doctored, Mr. Steinglass argued that Mr. Trump’s legal professionals had been “determined” to undercut the recording, as a result of it was “nothing wanting jaw-dropping.”
And though Mr. Pecker later refused to pay Ms. Daniels to maintain quiet, he notified Mr. Cohen that she was buying her story within the last stretch of the marketing campaign.
“This scheme, cooked up by these males, presently, may very properly be what obtained President Trump elected,” Mr. Steinglass mentioned.
Reporting was contributed by Kate Christobek, Jesse McKinley, Michael Gold, Wesley Parnell and Susanne Craig.
