#Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection w/a #HushMoney payment made to a porn star to influence the 2016 election. The case could be in the jury’s hands as early as Wed.
#Blanche says that #Trump wasn’t known for overpaying, & testimony suggested #MichaelCohen didn’t deserve to be paid much for his campaign work, particularly #HopeHicks's testimony that Cohen occasionally went “rogue”.
Blanche: “That’s not exactly a glowing performance evaluation that justifies a larger bonus.”
At the same time, Blanche argues the $420k Trump did pay Cohen was for unspecified #legal work.
While other witnesses testified about #Trump’s knowledge of the payment — notably #HopeHicks — #MichaelCohen connected Trump to the case like no other witness, including when he testified about the Jan 2017 conversation at Trump Tower, when Trump okayed the arrangements to hide the reimbursements.
“There is no way that you can find that President Trump knew about this payment at the time it was made w/o believing the words of Michael Cohen — period,” Blanche says.
Steinglass describes the #Trump campaign’s reaction to the #AccessHollywood tape, & notes that the Trump campaign responded publicly that his words on the tape were “locker-room talk,” while they were quietly scrubbing the internet for anything that might be damaging to him. He shows that #HopeHicks relied on #MichaelCohen to use his media contacts to fight back against the negative press.
#Steinglass shows the jurors video clips of #Trump himself acknowledging that the “#AccessHollywood” tape & its aftermath could swing a very tight election. “If 5% of the people think it’s true, & maybe 10%,” Trump says in one clip, “we don’t win.”
Steinglass takes jurors through testimony from #HopeHicks describing what a disaster Trump understood the “Access Hollywood” tape to be, because she was “in the room where it happened.”
Steinglass reminds jurors that #HopeHicks sent over a statement for the story on behalf of Trump, & that Trump lied in the statement, saying he didn’t know anything about the Karen McDougal deal. Steinglass says Trump did know about it because he was on tape 2 months earlier talking about it.
“No detail is too small to consider” &, after talking about his preference for personally signing checks “When you sign a check yourself, you’re seeing what’s really going on inside your business.”
Steinglass points jurors to testimony from #HopeHicks, in which Hicks said that Trump had expressed it “would have been bad” to have the #StormyDaniels story come out before the election.
#Steinglass highlights other key testimony, including #HopeHicks's remarks that it would have been “out of character” for #MichaelCohen to have made that payment out of the kindness of his heart — meaning, without approval from #Trump.
Steinglass is linking Trump to each & every action that prosecutors say led to the #crime, the falsification of 34 business records related to the #HushMoney payment to #StormyDaniels.