Trump lawyer calls Michael Cohen a liar and tells jury there are 10 reasons for reasonable doubt on hush-money charges – live | Donald Trump trials

Joshua Steinglass is delivering the prosecution’s closing argument. He refers to his colleague Matthew Colangelo’s opening statements:

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In his opening, Mr Colangelo told you that this case at its core is about a conspiracy and a cover-up. Tune out the noise and ignore the sideshows and if you’ve done that … you will see that the people have presented powerful evidence.

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Now, judge Juan Merchan tells jurors:

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During the defense summation, you heard Mr Blanche ask in substance, do not send the defendant to prison. That comment was improper, and you must disregard it.

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Merchan says if there is a verdict of guilty, it is his job to impose an appropriate sentence.

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Trump attorney Todd Blanche ends his closing arguments by thanking the jury for paying attention.

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Blanche says:

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This isn’t a referendum of your views on President Trump. This is not a referendum of your views on the ballot box … The verdict that you’re going to reach has to do with the evidence you heard here.

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He adds:

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If you do that, if you focus just on the evidence that you heard in this courtroom, this is a very, very quick and easy not-guilty verdict. Thank you.

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“Have you guys heard of ‘GOAT’, a goat, greatest of all time,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche said. “Tom Brady’s a Goat, the greatest of all time.”

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Michael Cohen is the Gloat – the greatest liar of all time.

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Blanche said Cohen has lied to Congress, to federal judges, to state judges, to his family, to his bankers, to his colleagues.

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He stole from President Trump … His words can’t be trusted.

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Blanche continued: “all those lies, put them aside the moment … But then he came in here … and lied to each of you – repeatedly.”

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You cannot, you cannot send someone to prison … based upon the words of Michael Cohen.

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Trump attorney Todd Blanche tells jurors “I’m almost done” … and then tells them that he has 10 reasons why there’s reasonable doubt.

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The first reason you should have real reasonable doubt is that Cohen created those invoices … There’s no evidence that President Trump knew these invoices were sent.

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“The second is the Valentine’s Day 2017 communication that we talked about, the voucher and the checks,” Blanche said, adding that “there’s no proof that Donald Trump ever, ever” knew there was bad information on them. “Two of the checks he never even saw.”

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Number three and four: Blanche said there was no intent to defraud, and that there was no illegal agreement to influence the election.

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The bottom line is, as we talked about at length, there is no falsification of business records, period, and any argument on the contrary by the people is wrong.

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Trump attorney Todd Blanche tells the jury that “if there’s anything we’ve learned during this trial, it’s that Michael Cohen doesn’t take this oath seriously, period”.

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He adds:

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He’s literally like an MVP of liars. He lies constantly. He’s lied to Congress. He’s lied to prosecutors. He lies to his bosses. He lies to reporters. He lies to federal judges. He’s also a thief – he literally stole, on his way out the door, tens of thousands from the Trump Organization. He admitted to committing a felony on the stand – never prosecuted. What should matter to you [were] the lies that he said when he took the oath two weeks ago and lied to you.

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As Blanche said this, he pointed to the witness stand, arguably the most dramatic moment of his presentation.

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When you come in here and you take a oath like he did that matters, that has to matter, and he lied to you, make no mistake about it.

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Court has resumed after a short morning break.

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Trump attorney Todd Blanche resumes his closing statement:

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The question for you is: was what happened with Ms Daniels in 2016 consistent with the conspiracy, the conspiracy that the people tell you [that] Mr Cohen, President Trump and David Pecker entered into in 2015?

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Blanche is now trying to chip away at Stormy Daniels’ motivations. He noted how the late pornographer Larry Flint had offered to pay her legal fees.

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“You have no idea about the integrity about this file, this recording,” Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche said about the Michael Cohen recording.

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He noted how the recording just cuts off. Cohen said that he had received a phone call, ending the recording.

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He said that testimony from a telephone company technician indicates that Cohen didn’t pick up the phone call – it went to voicemail, Blanche said.

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This isn’t the first time Trump’s team has questioned the integrity of evidence, and flirted with the idea that there was tampering.

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One of Trump’s attorneys, Emil Bove, asked a forensic analyst whether Cohen’s phones had been put in a signal-blocking Faraday Cage.

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Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche argued that the effort to silence the former Playboy model Karen McDougal is “not a catch and kill either” because she didn’t want her story published.

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McDougal “wanted to kick start her career” and the agreement with American Media Inc was to do just that, Blanche said.

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How is that a catch and kill? It is not.

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Blanche notes that the former AMI CEO David Pecker said that Michael Cohen said “I would take care of” the McDougal story, adding that “ultimately [there is] no proof that Trump ever bought the McDougal story”.

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Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche argues that prosecutors want jurors to believe that Donald Trump caused false filings to promote the candidacy of an election that he already won.

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“Even if you find that’s true, that’s still not enough.” Blanche said.

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It doesn’t matter if there was a conspiracy to try and win an election. Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to win an election. You have to find that this effort was done by unlawful means.

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Just across the street from the courthouse, the Biden campaign is holding a press conference including the actor Robert De Niro.

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De Niro says downtown New York city is his neighborhood. “I grew up here and feel at home in the streets … I love the city.”

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He says the Twin Towers “fell just over there”, adding that we vowed “we will not allow terrorists to change our way of life.”

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Donald Trump “wants to sow total chaos”, De Niro says, arguing that the former president is a “tyrant”.

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Donald Trump wants to destroy not only the city, but the country and eventually he could destroy the world.

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The former president “does not belong in my city. I don’t know where he belongs, but he certainly doesn’t belong here,” he says, adding that Trump is a “grubby real estate hustler masquerading as a big shot”.

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De Niro says he became involved with the Biden Harris campaign to remind people that Trump will “use violence against anyone who stands in the way of his megalomania and greed.” He adds:

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Yesterday was Memorial Day. It’s a good time to reflect on how Americans fought and died so that we may enjoy the freedoms guaranteed to us by a democratic government … Under Trump, this kind of government will perish from the earth. If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted.

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DeNiro arrives outside Manhattan criminal courthouse for Biden campaign event pic.twitter.com/dHbcrWk6QS

— Robert Costa (@costareports) May 28, 2024

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Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche is trying to chip away at allegations that there was a scheme to falsify business records.

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He points to a document that Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr signed off on, related to repayment to Michael Cohen.

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“Guess who else you did not hear from in this trial – Don or Eric,” Blanche said.

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Is there some allegation they’re part of the scheme, they’re part of the conspiracy? That is reasonable doubt. We have no burden to do anything. The burden is always on the government. They make decisions about who to call at trial. They called Cohen. They did not call Don or Eric.

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Donald Trump spoke to reporters before heading into the courtroom, as he repeated his claims that he was forced to attend his hush-money trial because of Joe Biden, without providing evidence.

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Trump, with his attorney Todd Blanche beside him, read excerpts from a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story, at times interrupting himself with his own opinion.

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He called the judge, Juan Merchan, “corrupt” and “conflicted” but said he couldn’t speak about the trial because of the gag order. He added:

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We’ll see how it goes. This is a very dangerous day for America. It’s a very sad day.

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Trump speaks to the media with his attorney Todd Blanche (R) during his criminal trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City.”,”caption”:”Donald Trump speaks to the media with his attorney Todd Blanche (R) during his criminal trial for allegedly covering up hush-money payments at Manhattan criminal court in New York City.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Spencer Platt/AFP/Getty Images”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1716903419000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”09.36 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1716904810000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”10.00 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1716904730000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”09.58 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”09.58″,”title”:”Trump says it is ‘a dark day in America’ before entering courtroom”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Tue 28 May 2024 14.11 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Tue 28 May 2024 08.19 EDT”},{“id”:”6655e0108f082cc3ef066deb”,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche said jurors should want more than Michael Cohen’s testimony.

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“Something beyond the word of a woman who claims that something happened in 2006” he said, referring to Stormy Daniels.

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“The bottom line is, the charges in this case have to do with invoices, vouchers and checks. The invoices were all submitted by Michael Cohen,” he said.

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\n

You cannot convict President Trump. You cannot convict President Trump of any crime beyond a reasonable doubt based on the words of Michael Cohen.

\n

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“The words that Michael Cohen said to you on that stand, they matter. They matter,” Blanche said.

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He told you a number of things on that witness stand that were lies.

\n

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The defense attorney Todd Blanche is starting his closing argument.

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“Every one of you have been here on time and we see you paying close attention to the evidence all day every day and we really appreciate that,” Blanche said.

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“Our criminal justice system, as Judge Merchan just told you, is unique.”

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Blanche said: “Each of you will decide at the end of this case whether President Trump is guilty or not guilty.”

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\n

President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period. The evidence is all in, it all came in as of last Tuesday, and that evidence – as I said to you on April 22 – should leave you wanting more.

\n

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Donald Trump is entering the courtroom. He’s wearing a red tie and a suit that appears to fall somewhere between black and slate gray.

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Tiffany Trump is here as well as two of Trump’s sons.

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Donald Trump has arrived at the Manhattan courthouse for closing arguments.

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The jury for the first criminal trial of a former president in US history is made up of seven men and five women who live in different parts of Manhattan, including the Upper East Side, Harlem, Hell’s Kitchen and the West Village.

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They come from a range of personal backgrounds and employment histories. Several jurors said they had no strong opinions on Trump, and a few said that they do not closely follow the news. The exact racial makeup of the jury, and the ages of the jurors, is unclear.

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The full identities of the jury will remain anonymous because of security concerns, but during jury selection the individuals were asked to provide some personal details about themselves. Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the criminal hush-money trial, barred reporters from revealing the current and former employers of jurors and urged them not to use physical descriptors that could compromise their identity.

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Here’s what to know about them.

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The defense rested in Donald Trump’s criminal trial last Tuesday without the former president himself testifying.

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Trump had previously railed about being silenced and falsely claimed he was not allowed to testify, but ultimately elected of his own volition not to take the stand in his own defense.

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The former president previously said he would “absolutely” testify in his hush-money trial, telling reporters last month:

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I’m testifying. I tell the truth, I mean, all I can do is tell the truth. And the truth is that there is no case.

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Trump’s decision not to testify came without fanfare. The move was not surprising – defendants in criminal cases rarely testify, because they would be subject to cross-examination, during which they could easily say something that harms their defense – but followed several instances of Trump claiming he was not allowed to do so.

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The judge, Juan Merchan, had gone so far as to address Trump’s claims, saying: “I want to stress, Mr Trump, that you have an absolute right to testify at trial,” and adding that the gag order preventing Trump from verbally attacking witnesses did not affect his right to take the stand.

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Good morning. After more than four weeks in a freezing New York courtroom, nearly two dozen witnesses and 10 gag order violations, lawyers for the prosecution and defense last week rested in Donald Trump’s historic criminal hush-money trial.

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Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of felony falsification of business records over an alleged hush-money scheme involving the adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal. Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney say that Trump facilitated payoffs to the women through his then attorney Michael Cohen to cover up alleged extramarital liaisons that could have damaged his candidacy in the 2016 election.

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Trump’s criminal hush-money trial: what to know

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• A guide to Trump’s hush-money trial – so far

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• The jurors: who is on the Trump trial jury?

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• From Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels: the key players

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Closing arguments will begin today, and then the jury will start deliberations. A jury of seven men and five women who live in Manhattan will have to consider the charges against the former US president and presumptive Republican nominee. If they find Trump guilty, he could face prison time.

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We’re at the courthouse again today. Stay with us.

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