Yesterday saw closing arguments in the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump for falsifying business records, the first-ever criminal trial for a former president. In this high-stakes final endeavor, it appeared that Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass’ summation significantly outmatched that of Todd Blanche, the former president’s chief defense counsel. As a former prosecutor myself, I was surprised that Blanche’s three-hour argument failed to focus on what it needed to—the element of the charged crime on which prosecutors’ proof is weakest. Instead of offering clarity in this area, Blanche undercut his best points by making other arguments contradicted by overwhelming evidence or common sense.
The best example? His flailing attempt to dismiss the prosecution’s strongest evidence—the “smoking gun” notes of Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg showing how the conspirators “grossed up” Cohen’s $130,000 reimbursement for the purchase of Stormy Daniels’ silence, and then hid it by adding other cash to Cohen. All Blanche could conjure up was the mind-boggling insistence that Weisselberg’s written words—“gross up”—“were a lie!” Blanche gave no actual reason why the notes weren’t true; he simply asserted that the $420,000 “gross-up” sum was for legal expenses. Throughout, his meandering argument fell short of telling the jury a coherent story.
By contrast, Steinglass checked every box on a prosecutors’ closing argument list, albeit at excessive length. He methodically connected the evidence to each element of the crime and reminded jurors how it all supported the prosecution’s theory of the case: “The defendant used his own business records as the vehicle to disguise the reimbursement because he didn’t want anyone finding out about the conspiracy to corrupt the election.”
It’s mystifying why Blanche failed to pounce on the fact that during weeks of testimony, prosecutors never even identified which criminal law’s........