This should be a week, eh?
“Closing arguments are scheduled to begin this morning in Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial,” Mika Brzezinski said on Morning Joe.
She said the defense goes first, with Trump attorney Todd Blanche expected to spend several hours on his summation argument. Prosecutors then offer their rebuttal, before Judge Juan Merchan then gives the jury its instructions, which is expected to last about an hour. That could happen tomorrow, she said.
“What can we expect today specifically from each side’s closing arguments?” Brzezinski asked.
“Mika, today one of the things I’m going to be looking for is how Todd Blanche constructs a narrative out of what usually is a hole poking. When you’re the defense, what you really want to do is try and create doubt in the juror’s minds about the narrative they’ve heard. Todd Blanche will spend a lot of time saying that these legal invoices and the other documentation of the repayment scheme, they’re not actually false because, in fact, Michael Cohen was appointed as the personal attorney for Donald Trump,” Rubin said.
“He did, in fact, perform legal services, and it wasn’t incorrect for these documents to then refer to the payments as for legal expenses or retainment. But you can only do that sort of hole poking for so long. How Todd Blanche turns that exercise into a coherent, cohesive narrative that the jurors follow and eagerly is something I’m interested in seeing.
“On the other side, Josh Steinglass’ job is less about feelings and more about facts. It is to convince the jury that everything they’ve seen fits together neatly, like a jigsaw puzzle. He has elicited evidence over these last six weeks, sometimes from disparate time periods or people who don’t go together. Now is the time for them to connect the dots in the ultimate way, chronologically, methodically, and, most importantly, without very much reliance on Michael Cohen.
“They want to show the jury they don’t need Michael Cohen to prove their case. There are a couple episodes where Michael Cohen’s testimony stands alone and unrebutted. Anyone else in the room has not taken the stand or wasn’t called to the stand. For the most part, all of the evidence in the case comes from other sources, too, from people like David Pecker and Hope Hicks. From a series of documents that range from the allegedly falsified documents themselves to phone records and emails and texts, there is a mountain of evidence in the case,” Rubin said.
