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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass notes that it's true Michael Cohen has made money off of Trump.
"I suspect he will continue to do that regardless of the outcome of this trial," he says.
Steinglass says Cohen has endured the consequences for his actions and is the only one to do so in this scheme.
"I'm not asking you to feel bad for Michael Cohen. He made his bed, but you can hardly blame him for making money on the one thing he has left which is his knowledge of the Trump phenomenon," he says.
Steinglass also tried to explain Cohen's lies to the judge when he was sentenced.
"He believes the Trump Justice Department did him dirty, whether that's true or not, he was very forthright about the conduct he committed and he accepted responsibility for the conduct," he said.

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The prosecutor is moving to the lies to Congress, which he notes with a note of incredulity.
"What Michael Cohen lied about was the number of dealings the defendant had with Russia," Joshua Steinglass says.
He called it "rich" and "chutzpah" for Donald Trump to now claim the lies Cohen told to Congress to benefit Trump are now a reason to discredit Cohen.

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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass has turned to the October 24 call and is acting out a fake conversation between Michael Cohen, Trump and his former bodyguard Keith Schiller.
Steinglass says the defense has tried to claim it is the "big lie."
"Hey Keith, how's it going? It seems like this prankster might be a 14-year-old kid," Steinglass starts the fake conversation.
Steinglass uses his hand with his thumb and pinky finger extended as a fake phone as he does this.

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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass is describing how Michael Cohen was more of Trump's "fixer than his lawyer."
"He had a legal title, but he wasn't in the Trump Organization legal department. He didn't answer to the general counsel, he answered to the defendant directly," Steinglass says. "He got the jobs no one else wanted. The jobs that the defendant wanted to keep quiet.
"We didn't choose Michael Cohen to be our witness. We didn't pick him up at the witness store," Steinglass adds. "The defendant chose Michael Cohen as his fixer because he was willing to lie and cheat on his behalf."
Steinglass tells the jury that Trump chose Cohen "for the same qualities" that Trump's attorneys "now urge you to reject his testimony because of it."

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Loyalty for Donald Trump was "not a two-way street," prosecutor Joshua Steinglass says.
"Look what the defendant did to David Pecker," he says, referring to the publisher of the "National Enquirer."
"Mr.Pecker saw Mr. Trump as a mentor. Mr. Trump saw him as a useful tool."
Steinglass continued:

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"He corrupted those around him and he got them to lie and cover it up. Stay on message or your out."

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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass is arguing that there's plenty of evidence to corroborate Michael Cohen's story.
"In this case, there's literally a mountain of evidence of corroborating testimony that tends to connect the defendant to this crime, from Pecker to Hicks to the defendant's own employees," Steinglass says, referring to former CEO of American Media Inc. David Pecker and Trump's former aide Hope Hicks.
"It's difficult to conceive of a case with more corroboration than this one," he adds.

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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass says the defense wants to make this case about Michael Cohen.
"It isn't. That's a deflection," Steinglass tells the jury.
"This case is not about Michael Cohen. It's about Mr. Trump and whether he should be held accountable for making false business entries in his own business records. Whether he and his staff did that to cover up election interference," Steinglass says.
The prosecutor said Cohen's "significance in this case is that he provides context and color to the documents, the phone records."
"He's like a tour guide through the physical evidence, but those documents don't lie and they don't forget," Steinglass said.
Remember: Trump was charged by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office last year with 34 counts of falsifying business records. The charges stem from reimbursements made to Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, for hush money payments he made before the 2016 election to an adult film star alleging an affair with Trump. The former president has pleaded not guilty and denied the affair.
Each criminal charge Trump is facing relates to a specific entry among the business records of the Trump Organization, according to the indictment. Prosecutors accuse Trump of repeatedly causing false entries in the business records.

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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass says Robert Costello, one of the two witnesses for the defense, was a "double agent" working to keep Michael Cohen quiet against Donald Trump.

Remember: Costello is an attorney who was in talks with Cohen to represent him after the FBI raided his home and office in 2018.

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The August 2015 Trump Tower meeting with David Pecker, Donald Trump and Michael Cohen is the "prism" through which the jury should look at this case, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass says.

Steinglass now appears to be turning to tell the prosecutors' story chronologically as he returns to the Trump Tower meeting and what Pecker agreed to do for Trump.

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Referring to Donald Trump's meeting with David Pecker in 2015, Joshua Steinglass tells the jury:

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"The real game changer of this meeting was the catch-and-kill component. And that's the illegal part. Because once money starts changing hands on behalf of a campaign, that's federal election campaign finance violations."

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The prosecutor notes that Trump's attorney Todd Blanche told the jury there was no discussion of catch-and-kill during the 2015 meeting.
"That's not true. They discussed catch and kill plenty. They didn't use the term catch and kill. But that's exactly what it was," he says.
Steinglass quotes Blanche's opening statement.
"Blanche said there is nothing wrong with trying to influence an election it's called democracy. In reality, this agreement at Trump Tower was the exact opposite. it was the subversion of democracy."
Steinglass accused Trump and AMI, the owner of the National Enquirer, of trying to "pull the wool over" voters' eyes "in a coordinated fashion."
"Pecker and AMI stopped engaging in legitimate press activities the moment they agreed to be a covert arm of the defendant's campaign," Steinglass says.

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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass continued to zero in on the importance of the alleged hush money scheme and its possible role in the 2016 election.
"You may say who cares if Mr. Trump slept with a porn star 10 years before the 2016 election. Many people feel that way. It's harder to say the American people don't have the right to decide for themselves whether they care or not," he says.
"The value of this corrupt bargain," Steinglass says, "cannot be overstated."
"It turned out to be one of the most valuable contributions anyone ever made to the Trump campaign," Steinglass says, adding that "this scheme cooked up by these men at this time could very well be what got President Trump elected."
Earlier, Steinglass also noted that that the defendant "has pointed out again and again NDAs (nondisclosure agreements) aren't illegal. That's true but that's beside the point. Contracts aren't illegal in and of themselves but a contract to kill your wife is illegal."

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aggiehawg said:

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. It's about Mr. Trump and whether he should be held accountable for making false business entries in his own business records. Whether he and his staff did that to cover up election interference," Steinglass says.

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aggiehawg said:

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This is a very bad closing argument. I understand Steinglass doesn't have much to work with here, but geez louise, this is bad.

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aggiehawg said:

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Joshua Steinglass calls out Trump's attorney Todd Blanche on what he said was an inconsistency in the defense argument about Michael Cohen.
"You can call him a thief or say it wasn't a reimbursement but not both," he says.
"I don't know if anybody caught this," he tells the jury.

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"Blanche said (Cohen) stole $60,000 because it was grossed up. So that means the defendant is trying to have it both ways, right. They're denying the $420,000 was a reimbursement at all. Claiming payment for legal services rendered in 2016. But if that's true, then there was no theft. He's getting paid for legal services in 2017. They can call him a thief and claim this wasn't really reimbursement, but not both."

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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass is now talking about American Media Inc.'s agreement with Trump to purchase stories on his behalf.

"Once AMI purchased stories on the candidate's behalf, those purchases became unlawful campaign contributions," Steinglass says.

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Joshua Steinglass now walking through the Dino Sajudin story, showing the source agreement documents with the former Trump Tower doorman and noting that National Enquirer publisher David Pecker agreed to pay more than normal for the story.
The prosecutor notes that Pecker did say that the Sajudin story, if true, would have been bigger than the death of Elvis.
But Steinglass notes that Pecker said he would have waited to publish the story until after the election because that was the agreement he had reached with Michael Cohen and Donald Trump.

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"They were willing to wait because that would help the defendant's campaign. And that was the only reason," Steinglass says. "That is catch and kill."

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Remember: The jury on April 23 saw an agreement AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, struck with Sajudin, the doorman selling a story about Trump allegedly fathering a son.
The deal was to purchase the rights to the story, and the document is dated November 15, 2015

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AustinAg2K said:

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aggiehawg said:

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This is a very bad closing argument. I understand Steinglass doesn't have much to work with here, but geez louise, this is bad.

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I agree, but I also feel like the defense's wasn't great either. They did a good job of making this about Cohen, but I feel like the defense should have hammered home more that Trump didn't have anything to do with how the documents were filed. That's what the actual crime supposedly is, anyways. Even if for some reason you believe Cohen, there's no evidence that Trump knew anything about how the documents were filed.

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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass is now moving on to the Karen McDougal story.
He's walking jurors back through text messages between Michael Cohen and Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller after Cohen learned about the potential story.
Steinglass is also quickly showing text messages and call logs showing that National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard was in the loop when Howard went to California to interview McDougal in June 2016.
"Understand I've got this locked down for you. I won't let it out of my grasp," Howard texted Cohen in June 2016, the messages show.
Steinglass says Howard wasn't shopping around for a story. "Howard is acting in cahoots with a candidate to kill the story," he argues.

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Joshua Steinglass says the catch-and-kill scheme to suppress the Dino Sajudin story was election interference.
"This was overt election fraud," the prosecutor says, telling the jury it was an act in furtherance of the conspiracy to interfere with the election.

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"An illegal corporate campaign contribution made by AMI to Mr. Trump's campaign and it was made in collusion Mr. Trump."

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During their closing argument, prosecutors are likely to bring up all the times when other evidence, documents or testimony corroborated what Donald Trump's former fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen said on the stand, but ultimately, the jury will have to take a leap of faith to get to a conviction, according to CNN legal analysts.
The defense spent much of its closing argument this morning trying to discredit Cohen, telling the jury he was lying and pointing out inconsistencies.
Cohen's credibility has been a theme throughout the trial one that prosecutors tried to anticipate. In the spirit of "pre-corroboration," they called a series of witnesses before Cohen to set the jury up for what he was going to say, CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams said.
Those witnesses included Stormy Daniels and Cohen's banker Gary Farro, for example, who testified about how Cohen set up LLCs to pay Daniels.

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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass "is trying to bridge this gap. He's trying to say he's corroborated with a mountain of evidence everywhere you look, he's backed up. They're going to get into the checks in the ledgers and the handwritten notes," CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said.

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But, in the end, Honig said there is an "unavoidable gap that you have to be able to take Michael Cohen at his word if you're going to convict."
He added the documents show "a plan happening within the accounting department," but Cohen brings key context to Trump's knowledge and intent.

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I agree, but I also feel like the defense's wasn't great either. They did a good job of making this about Cohen, but I feel like the defense should have hammered home more that Trump didn't have anything to do with how the documents were filed. That's what the actual crime supposedly is, anyways.

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"They've shamed her. They've tried to suggest her story has changed over the years. It has not, at least not in any way that's significant.
"To be sure, there were parts of her testimony that were cringeworthy," Steinglass says.

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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is looking over at the jury while prosecutor Joshua Steinglass runs through several text messages.

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Going through more text exchanges, Steinglass says, "(Dylan) Howard tells (Michael) Cohen, (Keith) Davidson rejected their offer. Howard tells Cohen that he implored Davidson to get it done. They agree on the brand strokes of the deal."
He then reads Davidson saying they should throw in an ambassadorship for him for the Isle of Man.

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"Why is the joke funny? The joke is funny because it's a palpable recognition of what they're doing. They're helping Mr. Trump get elected," Steinglass says.

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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass reminds the jury that Karen McDougal was willing to tell her story. Her other offer from ABC, which would have secured her a spot on "Dancing with the Stars," also required her to tell her story about Trump publicly.
Steinglass notes, "Now it's true that Karen McDougal preferred the AMI deal because she thought it would revive her career and she wouldn't have to be the next Monica Lewinsky."

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"But her motivations are totally irrelevant. The question is, what was the defendant's motivation? What were the rest of the co-conspirators' motivation? Their motivation was to serve the campaign. That's what makes this a catch and kill," Steinglass says.

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Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass is now turning to the September 2016 recording with Trump about Karen McDougal.
He's accusing the defense of "going to laughable lengths in a feeble attempt to cast doubt" on the evidence on Michael Cohen's phone.
"Here's a newsflash. People have used their phones," Steinglass says, asking jurors how many times they have gotten a new phone and done a factory reset.
Steinglass also pushes back on questions from Trump attorney Todd Blanche about why Rhona Graff, Trump's longtime assistant who was heard on the call, wasn't asked about it. "She wasn't even there for the important part of the conversation," he says.
Meanwhile, Manhattan DistrictAttorney Bragg is watching Steinglass try to explain Cohen's cell phone and the voice recording.

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Im Gipper said:

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So far, Steinfeld has done a decent job of connecting the dots. In a civil case, I'd say he maybe came close to preponderance of the evidence.

But this is criminal. And there is TONS of reasonable doubt on both the actual fraudulent document part as well as the predicate crimes.


Its a lib NY jury, so I won't predicate an acquittal, but man there is a mountain of "reasonable doubt" here!

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jja79 said:

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Isn't the purpose of the trial election interference?

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Prosecutor: The defense tried to imply AMI admitted to campaign finance violations because they were trying to close a 2d deal-
Trump's lawyer Blanche: Objection!
Justice Merchan: Overruled.
Prosecutor Steinglass: C'mon. These were unlawful campaign contributions

— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) May 28, 2024

Here is another false business record, Steinglass says showing a Resolution Consultants invoice, continuing his common refrain, "in service of this conspiracy to promote or prevent an election."

— Tyler McBrien (@TylerMcBrien) May 28, 2024