Prosecution Blows Trump Out Of the Water In Closing Argument

This did take over three hours. But it was worth the wait. Joshua Steinglass made the People’s case and he did not disappoint. He outlined the basic elements of the offense in three parts: 1. the falsification of business records, 2. done using an unlawful means and with the intent to influence the election and 3. the falsification was directed by Trump, who intentionally caused others to do the falsification. You may remember from this morning’s post that Todd Blanche was muddying the waters, making it sound like Trump might not have seen the invoice, signed the check without knowing what it was for, etc. Ron Filipkowski at Meidas Touch did a fine summary:

Steinglass started by noting that they were not able to show documentary evidence of every phone call or conversation between the people involved because that doesn’t exist for many of them. Some of the conversations were encrypted and could not be recovered and some were in person. This was to address the defense argument that they were “hiding” certain things.

He then reminded the jury that Stormy Daniels testified that, in addition to wanting money for her story, she also wanted it documented on record to protect herself and her family from threats. He then said that the jury may not like the way that it played out from a moral standpoint, and may not like the way it was handled by her lawyer Keith Davidson, but legally that isn’t the issue. He said that even if they believe the defense argument that they were trying to “extort” Trump, that doesn’t matter because that isn’t a legal defense.

Steinglass then noted that many of the witnesses who testified still love Trump, so they have a bias in his favor. However, they still incriminated him with their testimony even though they don’t want to hurt him. He said that the defense tried to “demonize” and “shame” Stormy to discredit her. He said her story was sordid and included unsavory details, but that was exactly the reason why Trump wanted to suppress it so bad right before the election.

Then Steinglass addressed the big question, which was Michael Cohen’s credibility. He agreed that Cohen is biased and has admitted to lying in the past. He also points out that the $30,000 that he skimmed from Donald Trump would not have been known about, had Cohen not admitted it. He also pointed out that Cohen’s stealing had nothing to do with the case. I can’t wait to see an actual transcript of this, because this is going through this story with a fine tooth comb and derailing issues that people saw as problematic. Last week Cohen’s credibility was going to be the noose that hung him. This week it seems to have gone away.

Just in case the jury may believe Cohen has gotten off lightly while Trump is being held accountable, he told them that Cohen is a convicted felon, has been to prison, lost his law license, lost his taxi medallion business, and is still on probation. He said that Cohen shouldn’t be blamed for making money writing books about the only thing he has left – his intimate knowledge of the corruption inside of Trump Org and Trump’s campaigns.

Steinglass noted that even if Cohen was disappointed about not getting a senior job in the White House, he couldn’t have been that devastated because he continued the cover-up for Trump for an additional 15 months before the FBI knocked on his door. He then pointed out the many instances where Cohen could have easily lied to make the case stronger for the prosecution and worse for Trump. He said Cohen testified that when he asked Trump if he had sex with McDougal, that Trump responded, “she’s a beautiful woman,” and Cohen could have easily said Trump said yes to that question if he wanted to just lie.

He said if Cohen wanted to lie he also could’ve said Trump was directly involved in his meeting with Weisselberg where they discussed the details of the repayment scheme, but he also didn’t say that. He concluded this series of points about Cohen’s credibility by stating that Cohen never really acted like a normal attorney for Trump. He never had a retainer agreement, he wasn’t part of the legal department, and he reported directly to Trump and nobody else. He was a “fixer” for Trump, not a lawyer for Trump.

That’s another important distinction. Then it got good. Steinglass said that the jury didn’t need to believe everything Cohen said, that Cohen was a “tour guide” and whatever Cohen said was corroborated by other witnesses, documents, call logs, and recordings. That is the essence of this case, right there. It has never hinged on Cohen’s credibility so much as it has depended upon the voluminous amount of corroboration by other parties. Again, so much for Cohen’s credibility being the linchpin. Steinglass is stating that the mountain of evidence is what should be considered here not Cohen’s testimony.

He described the initial meeting in 2015 between Trump and Pecker as “three rich and powerful men seeking to become more powerful by controlling the flow of information to voters.” It was in this meeting where the catch and kill scheme was born, where positive stories about Trump would be hyped and negative stories would be suppressed. Trump formed a conspiracy with the publisher of influential publications to time negative stories for maximum impact.

Steinglass noted that there was nothing criminal about that kind of a plan – it may have been unethical but not criminal. But once money started exchanging hands and business records were falsified, that is when it became a crime. He said that what made this unique from other stories the Enquirer bought and didn’t run is that Trump’s situation was the only one where they bought stories specifically to keep other media outlets from being able to run them as well. Instead of paying for “exclusives,” they were paying to exclude the story from the voters.

That is a key point right there. This was not your typical catch and kill by a long shot. Steinglass then said that the purpose of the meeting was to defraud and manipulate voters and that once Steinglass bought the story in coordination with the Trump campaign and to benefit the Trump campaign, then it became a campaign contribution.  He characterized it as “the most valuable campaign contribution anyone has ever made to Donald Trump.” And he pointed out that the suppression of this story, right after the Access Hollywood imbroglio, may have determined the outcome of the 2016 election.

The prosecutor continued with one great line after another, saying that this isn’t just a seedly hush-money case with a porn star, this is a case where there was a voter misinformation conspiracy to subvert our democracy. He said when AMI paid people to suppress the story permanently from ever being published solely to benefit Trump’s campaign, they were committing election fraud with an illegal campaign contribution.

Again, this will be a great transcript to read and so far the summary is great to read. Steinglass continued that Cohen continually asked for updates from Keith Davidson, Stormy’s lawyer, because Trump wanted to know what was going on and this was verified by the timeline of the text messages. So much for Trump being innocent and out in the woods.

Then there’s this revelation:

He then argued that the payment made by AMI for the doorman “love child” story and the McDougal story clearly was being done for Trump because it didn’t benefit AMI’s business in any way – in fact it hurt their bottom line. Pecker valued the life rights to the story at $150,000 when he purchased it not to run it, which was an illegal contribution to Trump’s campaign at that point.

Steinglass then played the entire recording of Cohen’s meeting with Trump again for the jury and encouraged them to listen to it as many times as they want because it clearly shows Trump say “150” on there and suggesting to Cohen that he should pay it in cash to leave less of a paper trail.

He then turned to the Access Hollywood tape. He said that just 4 weeks before the election, the campaign was rocked by the tape getting revealed to the public. He then went through the phone records again to show a “flurry of activity” between the Trump campaign and the other conspirators, which included the campaign getting AMI to take down their, ‘Donald Trump, Playboy Man’ story. He showed the call from Trump to Cohen where he told him to spin to the press Melania’s suggestion that Access Hollywood was just “locker room talk.”

Then Steinglass pointed out that Stormy Daniels story, coming just a few days later, would have unraveled the “locker room talk” and (“boy talk” as Melania characterized it when talking to Anderson Cooper. That’s not in the summary, I’m adding it from memory. Maybe the “boys” you hang out with, Melania.)

When Daniels came forward shopping her story, Steinglass showed all the phone calls and texts between Cohen, AMI and Davidson which indicated that they were taking it extremely seriously and were desperate to kill the story. He emphasized that the only reason Cohen ended up paying for the story himself was because Pecker was irate that he was never reimbursed by Trump for McDougal. Steinglass then spent a lot of time going through all the text messages and phone records to corroborate every conversation between Cohen, Howard and Davidson.

One set of calls Steinglass put extra emphasis on, showing that on October 25, 2016 Cohen and Weisselberg spoke, which they did only a total of 6 times, then Cohen called Trump. Then the money was wired to Davidson. “Pretty damning, right?” said Steinglass to the jury.

Then Steinglass went into another sticky area for Trump, which is proving that Trump had knowledge of and directed the reimbursement payments to Cohen. He said that Trump gave the orders to Weisselberg and Cohen and then the comptroller and bookkeeper carried out the plan.

He then addressed the “smoking gun” evidence – the invoice to reimburse Cohen. He pointed out that Trump’s long-time Comproller McConney, with no axe to grind against Trump, testified that he wrote on the invoice that the reimbursement was to be “priced up” to cover Cohen’s taxes, and that was done at Weisselberg’s direction. He argues that this was tax fraud because it was being reported as income rather than a reimbursement to the IRS.

Steinglass then argued persuasively that the email Cohen sent McConney to “remind him of the monthly retainer” clearly proves that he wasn’t being paid for legal work because it was predetermined ahead of time before any work was performed. He said that it was preposterous for the defense to claim that Cohen performed legal work in 2017 to justify $420,000 when “he spent more time being cross-examined in this trial than he did on legal work.” In fact, Cohen’s fees would have worked out to $42,000 an hour for the time he spent on legal work, if that’s what he was really being paid for.

Even for Trump’s pocketbook, that’s a little rich. Then Steinglass delivered his best line, that “the defendant didn’t actually pay a lawyer – he paid a porn star, by funneling money through a lawyer.” That is the essence of the case.

You can hit the link above and read every detail but this is the gist of the summary. Pundits will be parsing through it and poring over the transcript for quite some time. Meanwhile. Trump is already on Truth Social complaining about the wickedness of the judge. He must be paranoid about a conviction verdict, don’t you think?  And he has good cause to be worried. A guilty conviction will change the course of this election and toute suite.

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