Former President Donald Trump’s legal team began giving final arguments to a Manhattan jury on Tuesday morning as the trial over alleged hush-money payments comes to a close.
Trump’s defense argued that government prosecutors had presented no evidence of a criminal conspiracy, largely dependent on unreliable testimony from ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records over alleged payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.
During his testimony earlier in the trial, Cohen admitted that he secretly recorded Trump and that he stole tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump Organization.
“You cannot convict President Trump,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said. “You cannot convict President Trump of any crime beyond a reasonable doubt based on the words of Michael Cohen.”
Blanche added that the secret recording Cohen made did not actually show Trump discussing payments to McDougal, as the prosecution had argued. “You don’t know about the integrity of this file and this recording,” he told the jury.
The lawyer also argued that Cohen did not tell Trump about a $130,000 payment to Daniels.
“There’s no way that you can find that President Trump knew about this payment at the time it was made without believing the words of Michael Cohen, period. And you cannot — you cannot — believe his words,” Blanche said.
Blanche also argued that the government was trying to create a criminal conspiracy over documents filed in 2017 when the alleged conspiracy was supposed to aid his 2016 presidential campaign.
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“The charges relate to documents in 2017, and the government wants you to believe that President Trump did these things with his records to conceal efforts to promote his successful candidacy in 2016, the year before,” Blanche said “Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people working together to help somebody win. You have to find that this effort was done by unlawful means.”
Trump, who has said that the charges brought against him are an attempt to interfere with his 2024 presidential campaign, has been limited in speaking out about the trial due to a gag order placed on him by Judge Juan Merchan.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump called the gag order placed on him illegal and unconstitutional and said the whole prosecution was “the Biden White House at work.”
The Biden campaign held a press event with actor Robert De Niro outside the courthouse on Tuesday, during which the actor railed against the former president.
