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NEW YORK — For nearly three hours on Tuesday, Donald Trump’s lawyer did his level best to persuade the jury to acquit his client, wielding a scalpel to attack nearly every strand of the criminal case against the former president.Throughout a marathon closing argument that nearly outlasted daylight, the prosecutor delivered a sweeping rebuke of the former president, seeking to persuade the jury of 12 New Yorkers that Trump had falsified records to cover up a sex scandal involving a porn actor.
The closing arguments were each side’s last chance to pitch their case to the jury — and frame the facts to their advantage — as they drew from a deep well of evidence: testimony from 22 witnesses, reams of emails and a surreptitious recording of Trump coordinating a secret payoff. After the prosecution successfully objected, Blanche pivoted to a medley of sports-themed insults, calling Cohen “literally like the MVP of liars” and “the GLOAT,” or the “greatest liar of all time.”
“Making a comment like that is highly inappropriate,” the judge, Juan M. Merchan, scolded. “It is simply not allowed,” he added, noting that Blanche was a former prosecutor, and should know better. “It’s hard for me to imagine how that was accidental.” Trump, who faces probation or as long as four years in prison, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, one for each purportedly bogus document: 11 invoices from Cohen, 11 cheques to him and 12 entries in Trump’s ledger.
Blanche tried to undercut that argument, articulating a novel interpretation of the evidence: that the documents weren’t false. Telling the jury that Cohen was Trump’s personal lawyer and in fact performed legal work for Trump in 2017 while being paid, he said that “there were still outstanding matters they were dealing with.”
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