Trump hush-money lawyer uses DA evidence against the former president – Business Insider
It’s the classic defense closing argument: My client didn’t do it, ladies and gentlemen — but if he did do it, it wasn’t intentional.
This is the argument that Donald Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, tried out on the hush-money jury in Manhattan on Tuesday.
Yes, Blanche spent the bulk of his arguments denying that Trump committed the charges he’s on trial for.
Prosecutors say Trump falsified 34 business records to hide a year’s worth of reimbursement payments to his then-attorney, Michael Cohen, who had fronted a $130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump was not involved with any such conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, Blanche told jurors in great detail on Tuesday — during a three-hour summation where he walked them through a more than 180-part slideshow presentation.
But if he was involved, there was no requisite intent to commit fraud, Blanche argued. How could there be, he asked, when Trump freely and repeatedly admitted to reimbursing Cohen?
Blanche then showed the jury three exhibits from the prosecution’s own case.
Each exhibit — showing a tax form, a tweet, and a government ethics form — was shown on the courtroom’s display screens.
Each bolsters the prosecution’s case: that Trump knew full well that the $130,000 he paid Cohen in installments throughout 2017 was for reimbursement, not legal fees as his business-record entries falsely claimed.
“The government has to prove to you that President Trump caused these entries — even if they were false — with an intent to defraud,” Blanche told jurors.
“Where is the intent to defraud on the part of President Trump?” the lawyer asked the jury.
Prosecutors must demonstrate Trump had an intent to defraud in order to prove first-degree falsifying business records, the state charge that Trump allegedly violated 34 times throughout 2017, including when he personally signed nine of Cohen’s reimbursement checks.
Blanche also earned the anger of the judge by telling jurors that “you cannot send somebody to prison based on what Michael Cohen is saying.”
Jurors are supposed to weigh only the facts in their deliberations — not the potential punishment.
“That was outrageous, Mr. Blanche,” state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan told Blanche after jurors were dismissed for lunch.
“Someone who’s been a prosecutor as long as you have, and a defense lawyer as long as you have, knows it’s highly inappropriate,” the judge said.
“It’s simply not allowed. Period,” the judge added. He gave a curative instruction to the jury, explaining that Blanche’s comment was “improper” and that if Trump is convicted, “a prison sentence is not required.” Falsifying business records carries a sentence of anywhere from zero jail to four years prison.
Here are the three exhibits that Blanche displayed in court for jurors as “proof” that Trump had nothing to hide and, therefore, could not have intended to defraud anyone.
But each is highly incriminating of Trump, prosecutors have argued.
The Trump Organization — and Trump as an individual — reported that they’d paid Michael Cohen a total of $420,000 in 2017.
Prosecutors say this is the sum Trump’s then CFO, Allen Weisselberg, calculated for what Cohen would be paid as reimbursement for his hush-money outlay, plus taxes and other money Trump owed him.
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Why would Trump announce these payments to the IRS “if there was some deep-rooted intent to defraud on the part of President Trump,” Blanche asked jurors.
But the 1099s are “false,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors in his own closing argument.
They demonstrate that Trump filled out phony forms” reporting income for Cohen that did not exist, Steinglass said — “because it wasn’t income. It was reimbursement.”
On May 3, 2018, Trump posted a somewhat garbled tweet that conceded the payments he’d made to Cohen throughout 2017 were, in his word, “reimbursement.”
This tweet was made just five months after signing the last of nine $35,000 checks to Cohen. Each check was labeled “RETAINER.”
Also during closing arguments, Blanche showed jurors what’s called an “Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report” for the year 2017. This was the then-president’s mandatory disclosure of his assets and liabilities .
Under “Liablities” — which is the section where Trump must list the money he’s borrowed — Trump certified that in 2017, he “fully reimbursed” Cohen an interest-free sum of between $100,000 and $250,000.
“President Trump tweeted what happened when it came out,” and then signed a government ethics form that also admitted to the reimbursement, Blanche told jurors Tuesday.
“That’s not evidence of any intent to defraud,” Blanche said.
The defense lawyer spent most of his summation impugning the credibility of Cohen, whose testimony is key to the prosecution case.
Cohen is “literally like an MVP of liars,” Blanche told jurors. Two jurors — a woman in the front row and a man in the back row, smiled when Blanche went on to call Cohen “The ‘GLOAT'” — for Greatest Liar of All Time.”
Hinging the case on Cohen’s testimony was a sign of weakness in the prosecution’s case, Blanche said. He said that Cohen committed “per-ju-ry” — stressing every syllable — on the witness stand and was “the human embodiment of reasonable doubt.”
“You should want and expect more than the testimony of Michael Cohen,” he said.
In Blanche’s telling, the $35,000 Cohen received every month in 2017 wasn’t reimbursement for hush-money payments. It was, he said, payments Trump gave to Cohen to keep him on retainer as his personal lawyer.
If there was really something sinister about the payments, then certain pieces of evidence — like an email from Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. asking for permission to pay Cohen — would not make sense, Blanche said, while asking why prosecutors didn’t call Trump’s eldest sons to the witness stand.
“They could call Cohen, they did not call Don and Eric,” Blanche said.
Blanche skirted around the most pivotal documents in the case, where Weisselberg and company comptroller Jeffrey McConney drafted handwritten notes apparently explaining how Cohen would be repaid for hush money in $35,000 payments, including a “gross up” to cover for taxes. Blanche claimed that if the document was truly proof of an illegal conspiracy, it wouldn’t make sense that the Trump Organization would have kept it in a filing cabinet — where it was ultimately turned over to prosecutors.
Steinglass said it was hard for Blanche to make that argument “with a straight face,” saying the illegal conspiracy was laid out “in the document itself.”
“These documents are so damning that you almost have to laugh,” he said.
At the beginning of the prosecution’s closing argument on Tuesday afternoon, Steinglass said that while Cohen may have a track record of dishonesty, he has come clean and has “been consistently explaining the facts of this case for six years.”
Steinglass acknowledged that Cohen had a shady past — which he said is precisely why Trump hired him in the first place.
“We didn’t choose Michael Cohen. We didn’t pick him up at the witness store,” Steinglass said. “The defendant chose Michael Cohen because of his willingness to lie.”
Blanche had also also criticized prosecutors for spending time teasing out testimony from Daniels, which he said wasn’t critical to the criminal charges, related to falsified documents. Prosecutors, the defense lawyer said, just wanted to “embarrass” Trump.
Steinglass said that Daniels’s vivid details may have been “cringeworthy” — but that was the point.
The details “ring true” and were “uncomfortable,” Steinglass said, and it would make sense that Trump wanted to cover up her story to influence the election.
“That’s kind of the point,” Steinglass said. “That’s the display the defendant didn’t want the American people to see.”
Trump didn’t pay $130,000 to cover up a photo of him and Daniels on a golf course — but to cover up a scandal, Steinglass said.
“Stormy Daniels is the motive,” he said.
Deliberations are expected to begin on Wednesday.
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