05/30/2024
CAMPAIGN COMES TO THE COURTHOUSE
Outside the courthouse, there were dueling press conferences from the Trump and Biden campaigns, which sought to capitalize on the gathering of reporters and cameras to attack their respective opponents and score political points.
While the defense was delivering its closing argument, the Biden campaign deployed outside the courthouse actor Robert De Niro and a pair of police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It was a sharp about-face for Biden’s team, which had largely ignored the trial since it began six weeks ago.The purpose of the effort, Steinglass argued, was “to manipulate and defraud the voters, to pull the wool over their eyes in a coordinated fashion.” It’s impossible to know whether Trump’s effort to “hoodwink voters” made a difference in the 2016 election, Steinglass said, but that’s not something prosecutors have to prove.
Steinglass pushed back against the defense’s contention that the former president was trying to protect his reputation and family — not his campaign — by shielding them from embarrassing stories about his personal life. It’s “no coincidence” that Daniel’s alleged sexual encounter with Trump happened in 2006 but she wasn’t paid for her silence until right before the 2016 election, Steinglass said.
The defense, told jurors that “every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people who are working together to help somebody win.” Trump’s alleged efforts to suppress negative stories were no different, Blanche said.
‘A CONSPIRACY AND A COVER-UP’
The prosecutor used his closing argument to bring jurors back to what District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office alleges is the crux of the case: a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by keeping Daniels’ story from surfacing. The case “at its core, is about a conspiracy and a cover-up,”“The government wants you to believe that President Trump did these things with his records to conceal efforts to promote his successful candidacy in 2016, the year before,” Blanche said. “Even if you find that is true, that is not enough...it doesn’t matter if there’s a conspiracy to win an election.” (NY AP)
