Trump’s defense lawyer calls for immediate acquittal for the former president

The final arguments of criminal secret money trial against Donald Trump in New York unfolded on Tuesday, when his defense attorney told a 12-member jury that it should decide on “a very quick and easy not guilty verdict” to clear the former US president of accusations that he illegally tried to influence the outcome of the 2016 elections, which allowed him to reach the White House.

“President Trump is innocent,” declared defense attorney Todd Blanche. “He committed no crime and the district attorney failed to meet the evidence against him, period.”

Blanche, via a three-hour closing argumentrepeatedly attacked the credibility of the prosecution’s key witness, one-time Trump political fixer Michael Cohen, calling him “literally the biggest liar of all time.”

“He lied to them repeatedly. He lied many, many times before they even met him,” Blanche told the seven men and five women on the jury. “He is biased and motivated to tell you a story that is not true.”

Cohen testified during the six-week trial that Trump told him to “just do it,” meaning he would pay $130,000 to keep Trump quiet days before the election. porn star Stormy Daniels and thus silence her claim that she had a one-night tryst with Trump in 2006. Blanche, however, suggested that Cohen made the hush payment on his own and that Trump had no knowledge of it.

“It made a lot of sense for Mr. Cohen in 2016 to make the payment without telling President Trump,” so he could get a high-level position in the White House if Trump won, and a better internal job at the Trump Organization if Trump lost, he said. Blanche.

“What President Trump knew in 2016 you only know from one source, and I’ve said it several times, but it matters, and that’s Michael Cohen,” Blanche said.

Trump has denied the relationship with Daniels and the entire 34-count allegation he faces that he falsified business records at his real estate conglomerate Trump Organization to conceal the repayment of hush money to Cohen in 2017, after becoming the number one president. 45 in the country, claiming it was because of the legal work Cohen did for him.

Blanche acknowledged, as prosecutors have maintained, that Cohen did not have a written contract to do legal work for Trump, but said they had a verbal agreement and that Cohen was Trump’s personal lawyer after he became president in 2017.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass was ready to present the government’s closing argument against Trump after a lunch break, a statement to the jury that he said could last up to four and a half hours. New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchán will then read legal instructions to jurors Wednesday morning before handing the case over to them for closed-door deliberations.

Under the US legal system, jurors will have to unanimously decide whether to acquit Trump, 77, or find him guilty. If they can’t reach an agreement, which would result in a hung jury, prosecutors would decide whether to retry the case.

While Blanche called for Trump’s acquittal, in reality the defense attorney only needed to convince one of the 12 jurors that there was reasonable doubt about Trump’s guilt to achieve a mistrial with a hung jury. For a guilty verdict, American juries have to decide that the evidence presented by prosecutors proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty.

“We have no burden to prove anything,” Blanche told the jury. “The burden always falls on the government.”

For Trump, the result has consequences, not only for his personal freedom but also for his political destiny. He is the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee and will run again in the November election against President Joe Biden, the Democrat who defeated him in 2020.

National polls show Biden and Trump locked in a tight race, but some opinion polls indicate Trump supporters could switch their votes to Biden or not vote at all if the former president is convicted.

If convicted, Trump could be released on probation or sentenced to up to four years in prison, although he will surely appeal and could continue running for president.

Trump faces three other indictments, including two accusing him of illegally trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. But all three cases are mired in legal disputes between his lawyers and prosecutors. As a result, the New York case that is nearing conclusion may be the only one decided before the November elections.

Trump had said many times that he wanted to testify in his own defense at the trial, which was his right, but in the end he did not do so.

Cohen testified that Trump twice approved the 2017 repayment plan to return money he sent to Daniels’ lawyer a few days earlier to maintain his silence before the 2016 election, including once at the White House less than three weeks after his inauguration.

Trump signed nine of the 11 paychecks to Cohen in 2017, but Blanche suggested that by then Trump was so busy as president that he may not have known what the checks would be for.

“He was running the country,” Blanche said.

Trump urged several Republican lawmakers to appear in the courtroom during the trial in seats behind the defense table as a show of support. Lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, often stood for an hour or two testifying and then, not subject to the gag order prohibiting Trump from attacking witnesses and jurors, walked out of the courtroom. and held press conferences to criticize witnesses against Trump, especially Cohen and Daniels.

Some of Trump’s adult children occasionally attended the trial, but not his wife, former first lady Melania Trump. His two oldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric, were there Tuesday, as was his second daughter, Tiffany Trump.

The question for jurors centers on Cohen’s credibility and whether the case documents overcome any doubts they may have about his checkered history.

Cohen acknowledged during hours of testimony that over the years he has been a serial liar on behalf of Trump and to protect his own wife from tax evasion charges. He said that, as part of the hush money repayment scheme, he stole $60,000 from Trump’s company because he felt Trump had not given him his 2016 year-end bonus.

Cohen testified that with Trump’s consent, Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s then-chief financial officer, “increased” the total refund to $420,000, in part to cover Cohen’s tax liability, and that the refund was paid in monthly increments. of $35,000 in 2017.

Despite his pivotal role in the repayment, Weisselberg, now serving a five-month prison sentence for lying under oath in an earlier civil business fraud case involving Trump, was not called as a witness by the prosecution, which Blanche noted immediately at the beginning of his closing argument.

Early trial witnesses portrayed Cohen as impetuous, profane and volatile. However, on the witness stand, the 57-year-old disbarred lawyer was reserved and did not explode during hours of withering cross-examination by Blanche.

For years, Cohen was loyal to Trump, his lawyer and political fixer who catered to the former president’s every whim during his years as a New York real estate mogul and during his 2016 run for president. When news of Daniels’ claim of a relationship with Trump and the repayment of money to Cohen became public in 2018, the relationship between the then president and Cohen broke down after federal agents raided his then-New York residence, a hotel room.

Cohen ultimately pleaded guilty to perjury in connection with lying to a congressional panel about a Trump Tower construction project in Moscow that never materialized, tax fraud and a violation of campaign finance law related to the payment of money to Daniels to maintain his silence. He served 13 and a half months in federal prison and another year and a half in house arrest.

Since then, he has become a persistent critic of Trump and succinctly laid out his hope for that Trump be convicted.

One month before the November 2016 elections, Washington Post unearthed a 2005 outtake from the celebrity-driven show “Access Hollywood” in which Trump boasted that he could grope women at will because he was a star.

The appearance of the tape led directly to the payment of money to Daniels to maintain his silence, prosecutors say. The Trump campaign was concerned that the Access Hollywood images could offend female voters and that one more sex-related Trump story would be worse. Daniels, at the same time, was either touting his Trump story or wanting money to stay silent.

Cohen said he created a shell company, transferred money to it from his home equity line of credit and wired Daniels’ lawyer the money to keep quiet. Cohen said he would not have made the payment on his behalf without Trump’s consent.

In one week, Trump narrowly defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton, former first lady and US secretary of state, to win a four-year term in the White House.

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