Trump hush money payment undermined 2016 election: Prosecutor

NEW YORK: A New York prosecutor told jurors that Donald Trump engaged in a conspiracy to corrupt the 2016 election and then tried to cover it up, as lawyers made their closing arguments in the former president’s criminal hush money trial on Tuesday.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass spoke as the first criminal trial of a former US president neared an end. Jurors could begin assessing Trump’s guilt as soon as Wednesday.

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A lawyer for Trump urged jurors to set aside their personal views while considering whether to convict him of falsifying business documents to cover up a payment that ensured adult actress Stormy Daniels would not tell voters during the 2016 election with her story of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

“This isn’t a referendum on your views of President Trump,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said in his closing argument at the trial of Trump, 77, who is the 2024 Republican presidential candidate.

“If you focus just on that evidence you heard in this courtroom, this is a very, very quick and easy not guilty verdict,” he said.

In his closing argument, Blanche said Daniels had been trying to extort Trump by threatening to go public with her story as he battled a string of unflattering stories of sexual misconduct in the final weeks of the 2016 election. Trump denies wrongdoing and says he never had sex with Daniels.

Steinglass said it was irrelevant if Daniels was seeking a payday, because Trump broke the law by covering up evidence that his fixer Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 to keep quiet.

“It doesn’t really matter because you don’t get to commit election fraud or falsify business records because you think you’ve been victimized,” Steinglass said.

Prosecutors say the Daniels payment amounted to an improper campaign contribution because it kept voters from learning about an alleged affair that could have swayed their decision making. They must prove Trump is guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the level of certainty required by U.S. law.

Blanche drew a reprimand from the judge overseeing the trial for telling jurors the evidence was insufficient to send Trump to prison. Jurors are tasked with assessing guilt or innocence while judges determine punishment of those found guilty.

Justice Juan Merchan told jurors after they returned from lunch to ignore that statement. “That comment was improper and you must disregard it,” he said before prosecutors began their closing argument.

A conviction will not prevent Trump from trying to take back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 5 election. Nor will it prevent him from taking office if he wins. Opinion polls show the two men locked in a tight race.

Blanche said Trump did not know that Cohen paid the hush money to Daniels, and said prosecutors had failed to prove that Trump falsified documents when he reimbursed Cohen after the election.

He told jurors they could not trust Cohen, who testified that as Trump’s fixer he paid Daniels out of his own pocket and worked out a plan with Trump to be reimbursed through payments disguised as legal fees.

Blanche reminded them that Cohen had previously admitted to lying under oath, and said Cohen had lied again during the trial when he testified that he had spoken with Trump about paying off Daniels before the election.

“He is literally the greatest liar of all time,” Blanche said.

He said there was no evidence that Trump knew anything about how those payments were characterized in his company’s ledger. Prosecutors must prove that Trump knowingly broke the law.

Steinglass told jurors they were free to consider Cohen’s felony convictions and history of lying when weighing his credibility, but urged them not to dismiss his testimony out of hand.

“Mr. Trump not only corrupted those around him. He also got them to lie to cover it up,” Steinglass said.

The charges brought against Trump are misdemeanors on their own but prosecutors elevated them to felonies on the grounds that Trump was trying to cover up another crime – that of promoting a candidacy for political office by unlawful means.

Those “unlawful means,” prosecutors will argue, include excessive campaign contributions, tax violations, and other business records-related crimes.

If found guilty, Trump faces up to four years in prison, although imprisonment is unlikely for a first-time felon convicted of such a crime.

Blanche said prosecutors had not proven that there had been any underlying crime to cover up.

Trump faces three other criminal prosecutions as well, but none is likely to go to trial before the election.

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Separate cases in Washington and Georgia accuse him of illegally trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat, while another case in Florida charges him with mishandling classified information after he left office in 2021.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in all of the cases and says they are an effort by Biden’s Democratic allies to hobble his presidential bid.