New York prosecutors and Donald Trump’s lawyers make their closing arguments at his legal expenses Tuesday in a final bid to influence the 12 jurors who decide whether he will become the first U.S. president past or present convicted of a crime.
After six weeks of trial, prosecutors will argue Tuesday that Trump, 77, called a payment to his lawyer Michael Cohen a legal expense, which they are attempting to call illegal because it kept Democrats from smearing the then-candidate Trump with lurid sex allegations from Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.
Trump’s defense team will try to convince jurors he is not guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the standard required by U.S. law. Trump denies Daniels’ allegation of a sexual encounter in 2006 that was used as a potential political weapon to impact voters before the 2016 election.
Trump’s legal team called two witnesses of their own – one that was clapped back by Judge Juan Merchan in an exchange denounced by legal expert Alan Dershowitz, who was in attendance last week. The former president himself did not testify, saying the prosecutors have no case because they failed to make calling a legal expense a legal expense a crime.
Instead, they have tried to raise doubts about the credibility of prosecution witnesses, most notably Cohen, who testified as Trump’s fixer he handled the payment to Daniels, claiming Trump approved of it to keep Democrats from smearing him publicly before the election.
During cross-examination, Trump’s lawyers got Cohen to discuss his felony convictions and imprisonment, his history of lying and his lingering animosity for his former boss. Cohen also admitted to stealing from Trump’s company.
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 – which has never been brought before a court.
A conviction will not prevent Trump from trying to take back the White House from Democrat President Joe Biden as the Republican candidate in the Nov. 5 election, and it would not prevent him from taking office if he won. Opinion polls show the two candidates locked in a tight race.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, normally a misdemeanor under New York law.
Prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office elevated those charges to felonies, saying Trump falsified those records to disguise what amounted to an illegal campaign contribution: the payment that bought Daniels’ silence about the alleged 2006 sexual encounter at a time when Trump was already facing multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.
Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies wrongdoing. His lawyers have implied the $130,000 payment for Daniels’ silence was intended to spare Trump’s family from embarrassment, not to protect his White House bid. Prosecutors will cite testimony to argue otherwise.
Trump faces three other criminal prosecutions as well, but none is likely to go to trial before the election.
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.
Reuters and Newsmax’s Eric Mack contributed to this report.
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