There is little doubt as to which side in the Trump hush-money trial did a better job in closing arguments. Todd Blanche barely stopped short of chanting the schoolyard taunt “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” in his closing summation. This was a surprising move by former President Trump’s lead defense counsel, who by some accounts invoked “lie” about 60 times in his rambling two-hour long argument. But a mantra of name-calling does not make for a coherent defense strategy.

Towards the end of his summation, Blanche did give the jury a David Letterman-style “Top Ten” list of reasonable doubts, which he prefaced by saying he would go through it before he sat down. Apparently, Blanche is unfamiliar with the journalism term “burying the lead.” Taken individually, there was nothing wrong with Blanche’s substantive attacks on the prosecution’s case. Among the better—albeit poorly developed—points was the argument that it was Michael Cohen who created the fake invoices, not Trump. Blanche would have been better off to have started with a roadmap of his attack and then methodically guided the jury to areas where reasonable doubt might be found about the strength of the government’s evidence. Such an approach would have been well-suited to Blanche’s primary experience as a prosecutor given that prosecutors must build cases.

But a common........

© The Daily Beast