In the hallway outside the courtroom, Trump denounced the case, and other legal battles he is fighting, with his usual bluster and vitriol against a system that he claims is targeting him unfairly for political reasons.
“I should be in Georgia now, I should be in Florida now,” Trump said.
Colangelo spent about 40 minutes Monday morning describing the evidence that he said would show Trump broke the law. The prosecutor’s delivery was calm and measured throughout — never raising his voice, and keeping his hands in his suit pockets for much of the time he spoke.
Trump’s crimes, the prosecutor said, arose out of his secret election-year deal with the National Enquirer to squelch bad stories about his sex life — a conspiracy launched in a meeting between Trump; the tabloid’s then-CEO David Pecker; and Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-lawyer and fixer.
That pact ultimately led Cohen to arrange a $130,000 payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her from going public about an alleged sexual encounter she’d had with Trump years earlier, the prosecutor said.
Cohen is expected to testify that Trump purposely misrepresented reimbursements to Cohen to conceal what the money was for.
Cohen’s testimony will be “damning” and convincing, Colangelo said.
“I suspect the defense will go to great lengths to get you to reject his testimony, precisely because it is so damning,” Colangelo said, though he acknowledged that Cohen “has made mistakes.”
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche countered when it was his turn to address the panel that the prosecutor’s case would collapse because it was built on Cohen’s lies.
“Unbeknownst to President Trump, in all the years that Mr. Cohen worked for him, Mr. Cohen was also a criminal,” Blanche said. “He cheated on his taxes, he lied to banks, he lied about side businesses.”
Blanche said that when the FBI began investigating Cohen, he tried to “blame Trump for virtually all of his problems,” and continues to do so.
“Michael Cohen was obsessed with President Trump, he’s obsessed with President Trump even to this day,” Blanche said.
Cohen weighed in on social media later in the day, using a profanity to refer to Trump and saying “your attacks of me stink of desperation. We are all hoping that you take the stand in your defense.”
Cohen, an admitted perjurer and felon, is considered central to the prosecution’s case, and how jurors view him may ultimately decide whether they convict Trump. Colangelo said the jury will be convinced Cohen is telling the truth about the hush money payments because his statements will be “backed up by testimony from other witnesses” as well as bank records, emails and text messages.
Trump will provide some of the evidence that will prove his guilt, Colangelo said, because jurors will hear “Donald Trump’s own words on tape, in social media posts, in his own books and in video of his own speeches.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records, for categorizing the reimbursement payments to Cohen as legal expenses.
The payment from Cohen to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was done “at Donald Trump’s direction and for his benefit, and he did it with the specific goal of influencing the outcome of the election,” said Colangelo.
“No politician wants bad press. But the evidence at trial will show this was not spin or strategy,” he said. “This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures, to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior, using doctored corporate records.”
Blanche struck back at that characterization, saying the district attorney is trying to make legal conduct sound like a criminal conspiracy.
“There’s nothing illegal about what happened between AMI, Mr. Pecker, Mr. Cohen and President Trump,” Blanche said, referring to American Media Inc., the Enquirer’s parent company at the time. “This sort of thing happens regularly, where newspapers make decisions about what to publish, how to publish. It happens all the time with famous people, wealthy people. It doesn’t matter if it’s a scheme — it’s not against the law.”
Prosecutors said Trump was motivated to keep Daniels from speaking publicly in part because in October 2016, The Washington Post revealed the existence of an “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump made graphic comments about grabbing women’s genitalia. Afraid of the damage more stories about sexual impropriety could do to his candidacy, Trump and his allies set out to keep more scandalous stories from surfacing, Colangelo said.