Trump prosecutor focuses on ‘cover-up’ in closing arguments while defence attacks key witness

Donald Trump engaged in “a conspiracy and a cover-up,” a prosecutor told jurors during closing arguments Tuesday in the former president’s hush money trial, while a defence lawyer branded the star witness as the “greatest liar of all time” and pressed the panel for an across-the-board acquittal.
The lawyers’ dueling accounts, wildly divergent in their assessments of witness credibility and the strength of evidence, offered both sides one final chance to score points with the jury before it starts deliberating the first felony case against a former American president.
“This case, at its core, is about a conspiracy and a cover-up,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors.
The trial featured allegations that Trump and his allies conspired to stifle potentially embarrassing stories during the 2016 presidential campaign through hush money payments , including to a porn actor who alleged that she and Trump had sex a decade earlier. Trump has denied having sex with both women. His lawyer Todd Blanche told jurors that neither the actor, Stormy Daniels, nor the Trump attorney who paid her can be trusted in their testimony.
“President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period,” Blanche said.
Following more than four weeks of testimony, the daylong summations teed up a momentous and historically unprecedented task for the jury as it decides whether to convict the presumptive Republican presidential nominee ahead of the November election.
The political implications of the proceedings were unmistakable as President Joe Biden’s campaign staged an event outside the courthouse with actor Robert De Niro while Blanche reminded jurors that the case was not a referendum on their views about Trump.
Steinglass sought to defray potential juror concerns about witness credibility. He acknowledged that Daniels’ account about the alleged 2006 encounter in Lake Tahoe hotel suite was at times “cringeworthy” but said the details she offered — including about the decor and what she said she saw when she snooped in Trump’s toiletry kit — were full of touchstones “that kind of ring true.”
The story matters, he said, because it “reinforces (Trump’s) incentive to buy her silence.”
“Her story is messy. It makes people uncomfortable to hear. It probably makes some of you uncomfortable to hear. But that’s kind of the point,” Steinglass said. He told jurors: “In the simplest terms, Stormy Daniels is the motive.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Manhattan criminal court on May 21, 2024 in New York (Mark Peterson / Pool Photo via AP)
He also tried to reassure jurors that the prosecution’s case did not rest solely on Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer who paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. Cohen later pleaded guilty to federal charges for his role in the hush money payments, as well as to lying to Congress.
He went to prison and was disbarred, but his direct involvement in the transactions made him a key witness at trial.
“It’s not about whether you like Michael Cohen. It’s not about whether you want to go into business with Michael Cohen. It’s whether he has useful, reliable information to give you about what went down in this case, and the truth is that he was in the best position to know,” Steinglass said.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, charges punishable by up to four years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. It’s unclear whether prosecutors would seek imprisonment in the event of a conviction, or if the judge would impose that punishment.
Though the case featured seamy details about sex and tabloid industry practices, the actual charges turn on something more mundane: reimbursements Trump signed for Cohen for the hush money payments.
The reimbursements were recorded as being for legal expenses, which prosecutors say was a fraudulent label designed to conceal the purpose of the hush money transaction and to illicitly interfere in the 2016 election. Defence lawyers say Cohen actually did substantive legal work for Trump and his family.
Trump’s lawyers contended throughout the trial that they were legitimate payments for actual legal services. Blanche, delivering a PowerPoint presentation to jurors, pointed to emails and testimony showing that Cohen did indeed work on some legal matters for Trump that year. While Cohen characterized that work as “very minimal,” Blanche argued otherwise.
The attorney’s voice became even more impassioned as he revisited one of the more memorable moments of the trial: when Blanche sought to unravel Cohen’s claim that he had spoken to Trump by phone about the Daniels arrangement on Oct. 24, 2016.
Cohen said he had contacted Trump’s bodyguard as a way of getting a hold of Trump, but Blanche asserted that at the time Cohen was actually dealing with a spate of harassing phone calls and was preoccupied by that problem.
“It was a lie,” Blanche said. “That was a lie, and he got caught red-handed.”
Blanche also sought to distance Trump from the mechanics of the reimbursements, saying checks to Cohen were signed as Trump was preoccupied with the presidency in 2017.
He pointed to the testimony of a former Trump Organization controller, who told jurors that he never talked to Trump about how to characterize the payments sent to an accounts payable staffer. Blanche also noted that another Trump aide said Trump would sign checks while meeting with people or while on the phone, not knowing what they were.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump speaks alongside his attorney Todd Blanche following the day’s proceedings in his trial Tuesday, May 21, 2024, in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York. (Michael M. Santiago/Pool Photo via AP)
The nearly two dozen witnesses included Daniels, who described in sometimes vivid detail the encounter she says she had with Trump; David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, who testified that he used his media enterprise to protect Trump by squelching stories that could harm his campaign, including by paying $150,000 to a former Playboy model to keep her from going public with a claim that she had had a yearlong affair with Trump; and Cohen, who testified that Trump was intimately involved in the hush money discussions — “Just pay it,” the now-disbarred lawyer quoted Trump as saying.
Prosecutors are expected to remind jurors of the bank statements, emails and other documentary evidence they have viewed, as well as an audio recording in which Cohen and Trump can be heard discussing the deal involving the Playboy model, Karen McDougal. Trump has denied a relationship with McDougal too.
Defence lawyers called two witnesses — neither of them Trump. They focused much of their energy on discrediting Cohen, pressing him on his own criminal history, his past lies and his recollection of key details.
On cross-examination, for instance, Cohen admitted stealing tens of thousands of dollars from Trump’s company by asking to be reimbursed for money he had not spent. Cohen acknowledged once telling a prosecutor he felt that Daniels and her lawyer were extorting Trump.
The New York prosecution is one of four criminal cases pending against Trump as he seeks to reclaim the White House from Democrat Joe Biden. It’s unclear if any of the others will reach trial before November’s election.
Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.