Today, after Judge Juan Merchan gives his instructions to the jury, they will begin deliberations on the 34 felony counts of business fraud on which the Malignant Loser is charged. If you're looking for a bare bones summary of the core of the case, this works:
On Tuesday afternoon, Manhattan prosecutor Joshua Steinglass presents the state's closing argument against former President Donald Trump, seeking to reframe the case after two hours of defense arguments that it all relies on the credibility of one Michael Cohen.
Steinglass began by arguing that that the case is not in fact about Trump’s former fixer. “That’s a deflection,” Steinglass told the jury, CNN reported. “It’s about Mr. Trump and whether he should be held accountable for making false business entries in his own business records,” he continued, and "whether he and his staff did that to cover up election interference.”
The prosecutor reminded the jury of the testimony from David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer, and his stated belief that Trump had an affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump has denied the affair but, Steinglass noted, Pecker testified that the former president had described her as a "nice girl," indicating that he knew her.
Steinglass called Pecker's testimony "powerful evidence of the defendant’s involvement, wholly apart from Cohen." [snip]
The former president has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records. And while the charges against him stem from his reimbursement payments to Cohen, who paid off adult movie star Daniels, Steinglass reminded the jury that Cohen’s “significance in this case is that he provides context and color to the documents, the phone records.”
In fact, each criminal charge Trump faces is directly related to a specific entry among the business records of his organization. Steinglass said jurors should see Cohen as "like a tour guide through the physical evidence," and that while his own credibility has been questioned, "those documents don't lie and they don't forget." (our emphasis)
The jury will deliberate until 4:30 today (if that's necessary). As we've noted previously, there are multiple variations on what the jury may decide. Let's see if "no one is above the law" still applies in this country.
