Donald Trump is “innocent and has committed no crime”: the lawyers of the former president of the United States asked for the last time Tuesday the jurors of his trial to spare him a criminal conviction with incalculable consequences in the middle of the presidential campaign .
Upon his arrival at the Manhattan court, the Republican presidential candidate on November 5 warned of a “dangerous day for America”, once again presenting himself as a victim of political prosecution.
At the end of this historic criminal trial, the first for a former president of the United States, the 12 jurors will have to decide whether or not Donald Trump was guilty of 34 falsifications of accounting documents to hide a payment of $130,000 to the porn actress Stormy Daniels, in order to avoid a sex scandal at the very end of her 2016 presidential campaign.
But for his main lawyer, Todd Blanche, “there was no intent to defraud and no conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.” “It’s a not guilty verdict, pure and simple,” he insisted.
The defense has a final opportunity to torpedo the credibility of the number one accuser, Donald Trump’s former confidant, Michael Cohen, who has become his sworn enemy.
“Leader of the Free World”
The latter had paid the money, on the orders of his boss, to Stormy Daniels, to buy her silence about a sexual relationship that she claims to have had in 2006 with the billionaire, when he was already married to his wife Melania.
An episode that Donald Trump denies but to which the actress returned at length during a shocking testimony before the jurors, during which she spoke of a consensual relationship but where the “balance of power” was “unbalanced”.
Once Donald Trump was elected and in the White House, Michael Cohen was reimbursed using, according to the accusation, false invoices and entries disguised as “legal fees” in the accounts of his group of companies , the Trump Organization, hence the prosecution for accounting falsifications.
“It was Michael Cohen who produced the invoices,” insisted Todd Blanche, for whom Donald Trump, then “leader of the free world”, had other things to worry about than looking at the checks in detail.
“He was president of the United States. “It’s absurd that the prosecution wants you to believe that he examined the checks and the invoices,” he insisted.
The defense only needs to convince one juror not to convict Donald Trump, because any guilty or acquittal verdict requires jury unanimity.
If the jurors cannot agree, the trial will be canceled and started again.
The prosecutors, who must speak after the defense, will insist that through this hidden payment, which they equate to a hidden campaign expense, Donald Trump “corrupted” the 2016 election. The prosecution anticipates that his indictment will last more than 4 hours.
Judge Juan Merchan will then entrust jurors, perhaps as early as Wednesday, with the difficult task of deciding whether they find the former American head of state guilty or not guilty.
Fears
If he is found guilty, the 77-year-old Republican presidential candidate will be able to appeal and, in any case, appear on November 5. But with the considerable weight of a criminal conviction, while his duel with Joe Biden, 81, promises to be close.
The stakes are all the more important as this trial will probably be the only one to take place before the presidential election, among the four cases in which Donald Trump is indicted, in particular the one, of a much larger scale, on his alleged illegal attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Throughout the debates, the jurors delved behind the scenes of another presidential campaign, that of 2016, where the fear of a sex scandal seemed omnipresent, especially after the revelation of a video where we heard Donald Trump vulgarly boasting about “grabbing” women “by the pussy”.
A former tabloid boss, friend of the billionaire, told the stand that he was his “eyes and (his) ears” to chase away any embarrassing revelation, even if it meant paying a Playboy model $150,000 to keep her quiet. on an affair with Donald Trump.
Here again, nothing reprehensible, assured Donald Trump’s lawyer.
“A campaign is designed to amplify the positive aspects of a candidate. This is a campaign, not a crime,” he said.