Todd Blanche Destroys Credibility With Comments On Staples, ‘Slimey’ Sentencing Statement

I believe that defense attorney Todd Blanche did his swan song today. This is a high profile case and it’s charitable to say that his closing argument is not exactly going to make Johnny Cochran look on from the afterlife and say, “Wow.” This was not a wowing closing argument, in fact it was surprisingly bland and desperate. The part I particularly enjoyed was him saying that the bookkeeper for Trump testified that she “usually” stapled the invoices to the bills which were sent for Trump to sign. He made particular note of the fact that she specifically did not recall whether she stapled the invoices in question regarding the hush money payments labeled as legal expenses but that was her usual practice. In other words, Blanche is hoping for one juror to conclude that “we can’t convict because we don’t know for sure if the invoice was stapled to the bill.” That strikes me as a desperate reach.

And then Todd Blanche truly crossed the line and was reprimanded for it. It’s carved in stone that you don’t talk to a jury about punishments or sentencing or anything like that in a closing argument. But Blanche, ostensibly a pro, did just that thing. Maybe Trump strong armed him to do so.

A slimy move here by Blanche. Every criminal lawyer knows you can’t talk about the possible penalties to the jury. Blanche knew this very well but ended his closing with an unethical argument and now he will lose credibility with the jury when judge gives a curative instruction. https://t.co/eDYCxWneRF

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 28, 2024

And when the court reconvened after lunch, Judge Merchan did precisely that.

“I think that was outrageous, Mr Blanche,” Merchan said. “Someone who has been a prosecutor as long as you should know. It’s hard for me to imagine how that was accidental in any way.”

Following a lunch break, the judge addressed the comment directly with the jury.

“That comment is improper, and you must disregard it,” Merchan said.

This is a lame closing argument and the defense lawyer shot himself shot himself and his client in the foot. 

Blanche said that the prosecution using quotes from Trump’s old books about his business practices should make the jury “suspicious” about their case because that is weak evidence. He said that in the Trump Org accounting system Tarasoff entered them as “legal expense,” which is more proof of what they were for. He also noted that the invoices were paid out of the trust being managed by Junior and Eric since Trump was president but when they realized that Cohen was Trump’s personal attorney they switched his payments to Trump’s personal account after three months.

Blanche then argued that when Trump signed the checks to Cohen he was very busy in the White House as president so may not have read or looked at the checks or invoices before signing them. He said that Trump’s assistant in the White House Westerhout testified that he was sometimes presented many checks in a stack to sign so he may have just quickly went through them without looking at them.

Blanche then argued that the prosecution could have called CFO Allen Weisselberg as a witness to corroborate the testimony of other witnesses but chose not to. He also said the fact that Weisselberg/Trump would agree to pay Cohen $420,000 as reimbursement for the $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy was “absurd” because there is no way they would pay him triple what he was owed since Trump paid close attention to his finances. (This seemed to contradict his earlier argument that Trump was just signing checks blindly).

Which is it, is Trump the micromanaging wizard, with a handle on all that happens in his world, nary a sparrow falls to the ground that he does not know about it, or does he just autograph anything that’s put in front of him? Now here’s where Blanche went “out into the weeds” to quote Jake Tapper.

Blanche then made a novel argument – that if Trump’s Comptroller McConney, Weisselberg, or Trump himself thought that anything they were doing was illegal, why would they have preserved all the documents and not destroyed them? He also argued that they would not have reported the payments to the IRS to leave another paper trail.

Blanche then shifted gears to argue that the “catch-and-kill” scheme with AMI and the Enquirer is not illegal because celebrities pay tabloids to kill stories all the time. He also argued that every political campaign tries to work the press to run positive stories on their candidate and negative stories on their opponents so there is nothing unusual or criminal about that. He noted that Pecker testified that the first story he killed for Trump was way back in 1988, long before he entered politics. He then argued that the Enquirer didn’t have much influence on elections anyway and Trump knew that.

Blanche then addressed the Karen McDougal story. He said that she didn’t want the story published at all anyway, which is why she sold it to Pecker. He argued that Trump wasn’t responsible for killing that story since that is what she wanted to happen to benefit herself not help Trump. He also argued that Pecker has less credibility as a witness because he was given immunity by the prosecution for his cooperation.

Blanche said that Cohen’s story about the recording he made of his conversation with Trump in 2017 made no sense because he said the purpose of the recording was to play it for Pecker, but then he never did that and gave no explanation why. He said that Cohen testified that Trump assistant Rhona Graff was in an out of that meeting but she was never asked if she remembered it by the prosecution. He then argued that the recording of the call cuts off when Trump says the word “check” and he might have been about to say “check with my people.”

This is the pattern, here. Blanche is out in the woods extemporizing on theories and opinions and what ifs. It’s not a solid closing argument. A solid closing argument is, “you have seen” and then a description of rock solid evidence that was presented. A solid closing argument is when you can give a plausible version of what really happened, using the evidence the defense has presented. This is all rambling and speculation. But I don’t blame Blanche, you do what you can with what you have to work with, always.

The argument then switched to the Stormy Daniels allegations. Blanche said that her story had already been published by a small publication in 2011 so it was already out there. He argued that Cohen wanted to pay off Stormy himself without telling Trump about it so he could later “take credit” for it with Trump. He then argued that the deal was negotiated between Davidson and Dylan Howard with AMI and that Trump was not part of the negotiations. He cited other deals they did together that he said were done to extort people and had nothing to do with politics – the Hulk Hogan sex tape story was one example.

Blanche then argued that Stormy later profited off the story despite the original payoff by doing a book, a documentary, and selling products, and this showed that her intent was just to extort Trump for her own benefit.

He then gave a strange argument about the Access Hollywood tape. He said that was a very stressful time for Trump and his family because of what was revealed to the public, but it was not the “Doomsday event” as suggested by Cohen and the prosecution. He said that Daniels wasn’t called to testify to the grand jury because her testimony wasn’t necessary to this case, but they called her during the trial solely to embarrass Trump to the public.

Blanche then took a scattershot approach to discrediting Cohen. He first argued that Cohen wanted a job in the White House but knew that he had no chance of getting one. He then noted that Trump himself never signed the NDAs with McDougal or Daniels, which he argued made no sense because it could never be enforced if Trump wasn’t a party. Then he said the White House call logs show that his call went to Trump’s bodyguard Schiller instead of Trump, so how do they know he really spoke to Trump. He said that Cohen was dealing with a 14 year old that was prank calling him at the time, so the call could’ve been to talk to Schiller about that.

Blanche then noted all the various things Cohen admitted lying about, calling him “the MVP of liars.” He played clips from Cohen’s podcast to show how biased he is towards Trump, giving him a motive to lie. He then talked about how much money Cohen made off his two books and his podcast, and all of that was entirely based on Trump.

It’s not disputed that everybody in this case is making money off of Donald Trump. He’s a freak show. That’s why people are making money off him. It’s the very nature of the grotesque that you cannot look away and we’ve all been riveted to this spectacle for nine years now.

Here is Meidas Touch’s summation of Blanche’s key points. This is what the prosecution will do a final refutation of when they give their closing argument.

1. Cohen created the invoices to be billed for legal services.

2. No proof Trump saw the vouchers or knew what he was signing.

3. The fact that Trump reported payments to the IRS and on his government ethics form showed he had no intend to defraud.

4. There was no evidence that any of this was done with the intent to influence the election.

5. There is nothing illegal about paying to kill a story and celebrities do it all the time.

6. AMI would have run the “love child” story if it was true, which is inconsistent with the theory that they only wanted to help Trump.

7. McDougal never wanted her story published so there was no need for anyone to catch and kill it.

8. Stormy Daniels story had already been made public in a small publication in 2011.

9. Some of the testimony didn’t line up with the documents and exhibits entered and parts of the story were intentionally omitted from the prosecution’s case, such as the harassing texts from the 14 year old to Cohen.

10. Cohen is a habitual liar and is biased against Trump because he hates him. He called him the GLOAT – “Greatest Liar Of All-Time.”

No, Mr. Blanche, that title does not belong to Michael Cohen. That title belongs to your client. He, along with Satan, is the Father Of All Lies.

We’ll have updates and other posts as this moves along.

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