Prosecutor says Trump tried 'to hoodwink voters' while defense attacks key witness in last arguments

NEW YORK — Donald Trump engaged in a conspiracy “to hoodwink voters” in 2016, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday during closing arguments in the former president’s hush money trial, while a defense lawyer branded the star witness as the “greatest liar of all time” and pressed the panel for an across-the-board acquittal.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche told jurors that neither the actor, Stormy Daniels, nor the Trump attorney who paid her, Michael Cohen, can be trusted. The prosecutor acknowledged that Daniels' account of the alleged 2006 encounter in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite, which Trump has denied, was at times “cringeworthy.” But he said the details she offered — including about decor and what she said she saw when she snooped in Trump’s toiletry kit — were full of touchstones “that kind of ring true.”“Her story is messy. It makes people uncomfortable to hear. It probably makes some of you uncomfortable to hear.

Steinglass also maintained that the prosecution's case did not rest solely on Cohen, Trump's former lawyer and personal fixer who paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. Cohen later pleaded guilty to federal charges for his role in the hush money payments, as well as to lying to Congress. He went to prison and was disbarred, but his direct involvement in the transactions made him a key trial witness.

Blanche said the September 2016 recording, which cuts off before the conversation finishes, is unreliable and isn’t about McDougal at all, but rather about a plan to buy a collection of material the tabloid had hoarded on Trump. Steinglass said the recording was part of a “mountain of evidence” against Trump.

"Mr. Cohen spent more time being cross-examined at this trial than he did doing legal work for Donald Trump in 2017,” Steinglass quipped.

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