Donald Trump’s defense team put forth an eyebrow-raising argument on Tuesday morning in the former president’s criminal hush-money and election interference trial: that conspiracies to win elections happen all the time.
“It doesn’t matter if there was a conspiracy to try and win an election,” Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche said of the alleged payoff plot involving Trump, who is accused elsewhere of election meddling and fomenting civil unrest to thwart Joe Biden from taking office. “Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate.”
Blanche’s comment came as he insisted to jurors that Trump didn’t falsify business records – nor did he try to – and that jurors need not even consider his alleged efforts to sway the 2016 race by burying potentially damaging news coverage. Prosecutors allege that Trump plotted a catch-and-kill scheme during a summer 2015 meeting with his then-fixer Michael Cohen and the tabloid mogul David Pecker.
“Many politicians work with the media to try and promote their image,” Blanche also said, adding that Pecker had provided favorable coverage to Trump for decades – far before his candidacy – “because it was good for business”. He called this symbiosis between media and politicians “standard business procedure”.
Blanche did not admit that Trump did collude with cronies to influence election results with a hush-money payment, but presented it more as a hypothetical: even if true, there was “nothing criminal, nothing criminal about it, it’s done all the time”, Blanche said.
“You have to find that this effort was done by unlawful means.”
Trump, who is almost certain to secure the Republican presidential nomination, is charged with falsifying business records related to paying the adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence about an alleged sexual liaison.
Prosecutors argue that the recording of these payments in business records amounts to election interference, as Trump was running in the 2016 race for the White House at the time of the payoff and seeking to cover up a potentially damaging scandal.
For weeks, testimony has gripped America and the world amid the prospect that the former US president could be found guilty of a crime, though details of the case and Trump’s liaison with Daniels have had seemingly little impact on the 2024 race – where Trump still often narrowly leads Joe Biden in head-to-head polls and is performing strongly in the swings states that are crucial to victory.
Trump denies all the allegations.
Trump, sporting a crimson tie and crisp white shirt, walked into court just before 9.30am, carrying a sheet of paper. He was accompanied by his daughter Tiffany and two of his sons, Eric and Donald Jr. The defense summation was expected to take up to two and a half hours, while the prosecution could take up to about four and a half.
“President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period,” Blanche said moments into his closing, after he started by thanking the jury for their service.
“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.”
The trial has played out in remarkable scenes in which Trump has been in court and largely kept off the campaign trial, except at weekends and some events in and around New York City. Despite admonishments from the court, he has continued to rail against his prosecutors, and Judge Juan Merchan, on social media, labelling the trial as a “witch-hunt”.
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Central to the case is the testimony of Trump’s former lawyer and once-feared fixer Cohen. Cohen gave vital evidence for the role that Trump played in the alleged hush-money scheme, but was also brutally grilled by Trump’s lawyers for his previous history of lying and his evident dislike of his former boss and desire to see him behind bars.
What weight the jury places on the reliability of Cohen’s testimony is likely to decide the case one way or the other. If found guilty, Trump could face the prospect of jail, though that is mostly seen as unlikely. Any guilty verdict would also almost certainly trigger a lengthy series of appeals.
In his closing, Blanche repeatedly hammered on Cohen’s credibility. “The words that Michael Cohen said to you on that stand, they matter. They matter,” Blanche said. “He told you a number of things on that witness stand that were lies.”
He emphasized that the invoices in the case were submitted by Cohen, adding: “You cannot convict President Trump. You cannot convict President Trump of any crime beyond a reasonable doubt based on the word of Michael Cohen.”
Blanche urged jurors to want more than Cohen’s testimony and, referring to Daniels, “something beyond the word of a woman who claims that something happened in 2006”.
He also insisted that the key allegation of prosecutors – that business records were falsified because they wrongly claimed that repayments were for legal services – fell flat, insisting that Cohen was Trump’s personal lawyer and “was rendering services to President Trump in 2017 as his personal attorney”.
Trump also faces three other criminal trials: one for trying to sway the 2020 election in Georgia, another for his conduct around the January 6 attack on the Capitol and a third one related to his treatment of sensitive documents after he left the White House. However, all three have been seriously delayed and none are seen as likely to conclude – or even start – before November’s presidential election.
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