Blanche still centering Trump's defense on "the payments to Cohen were not reimbursements" despite the Trump admissions, which are in evidence, that they were in fact reimbursements, is a CHOICE, y'all.
x.com/KlasfeldRepo...
And his attempt to spin the Trump "they were reimbursements" tweet as "come on, he can't have had an intent to defraud (in 2017) if he said it openly (in 2018)" does not strike me as wise
x.com/KlasfeldRepo...
I cannot imagine basing my defense on the jurors ignoring a public written admission by my client.
Whether one juror (or more) will stand by the Trump defense on this point is something that we will see.
And there it is. The prosecution shoves Donald Trump's admission that the payment to Michael Cohen was a reimbursement, not a legal fee, down Trump's throat.
So, uh...
I can only imagine that whoever is delivering the closing argument for the prosecution is listening to the defense's closing argument with a puzzled look on their face, and doing some hasty rewrites.
"Oh, I gotta respond to this bullshit."
These are the moments that a trial lawyer lives for. When opposing counsel says something demonstrably false, I immediately think of ways to pounce.
It appears Mr. Blanche has buried a good 25 minutes of closing argument (you can't convict without believing Michael Cohen) in 2 hours of dreck.
"Opposing counsel insists that Michael Cohen is lying to you, but opposing counsel also just stood in front of you and lied in his closing argument. Here are the receipts."
My P response would be something like:
"For Trump to be right, EVERY other person you heard from had to be wrong! (witnesses describing DJT's controlling style, signing every check, etc.)
And now, in closing, DJT is once again asking you to ignore evidence and take his word for it. Don't!"
If you were delivering the defense's closing in this case (which, as you've said, you would never do), how long would you expect your arguments to take?
A short and focused closing, in my view.
You MANY bad facts, so get the jury to focus on the single good fact for the D—that the only direct evidence that Trump knew the purpose of the payment comes from the mouth of a convicted perjurer with an axe to grind and a financial incentive to grind it.
1/ If it were me, I would have closed in under 45 minutes. I'd start with thanking the jurors and gone to "you have great power in this case. And, as the movie says, with great power comes great responsibility."
The rest: Michael Cohen can't be believed & you can't convict without believing him.
2/2 I would do the full "Michael Cohen is the cockroach in the middle of the plate of pasta" litany.
It seems that Todd Blanche has ended on that note, but only after two hours of largely extraneous points that may have lost the jurors.
If I had to guess (and I absolutely am guessing), I'd say that if he had done his closing in under 45 minutes, Trump would be fuming about how short it was, and why didn't he go into great and lengthy detail over.... you get the point.
As Mitchell said, it's not so much "puzzled" as "predatory" when an opponent says something I can capitalize on.
But if you're going to take that swing, you have to *connect*. My team and I still joke about the time we opened with "this case is DARVO in action" and OC adjusted his open on the fly &
Yeah. I can't tell you how fucking gleeful we got when their response to our opening of "he's trying to accuse our client of all the things he actually did" was "actually, she's the one using that tactic"
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we will prove to you that the defendant...er, the def... alright, hey, could you guys stop giggling and high-fiving each other for like a SECOND? C'MON!"
Part of arguing for a jury nullification is finding a reason for the jury to decide they don’t believe facts in evidence. If the prosecution didn’t have the evidence, it would be a directed verdict. Threading that needle in argument is hard, doing so ethically is even harder.
Exactly. I discussed the possibility of Trump's legal team pursuing jury nullification and the difficulty in so doing in this article by Adam Klasfeld in Just Security:
www.justsecurity.org/94560/trump-...
