Prosecutor: Tabloid pact led Trump to falsify company records

In the hallway outside the courtroom, Trump denounced the case and other legal battles he is waging, with his usual bluster and vitriol against a system he claims is unfairly targeting him for political reasons.

“I should be in Georgia right now, I should be in Florida right now,” Trump said.

Colangelo spent about 40 minutes Monday morning describing the evidence that he said would show Trump broke the law. The prosecutor’s delivery was calm and measured throughout; he never raised his voice and kept his hands in his suit pockets most of the time he spoke.

Trump’s crimes, the prosecutor said, stemmed from his secret election-year deal with the National Enquirer to suppress bad stories about his sex life — a conspiracy launched during a meeting between Trump and the tabloid’s then-CEO David Pecker, and Michael Cohen. Trump’s then lawyer and fixer.

That pact ultimately led to Cohen arranging a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to prevent her from going public about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump years earlier, the prosecutor said.

Cohen is expected to testify that Trump deliberately misrepresented the refunds to Cohen to hide what the money was for.

Cohen’s testimony will be “damning” and compelling, Colangelo said.

“I suspect the defense will do everything in its power to get you to dismiss his testimony precisely because it is so damning,” Colangelo said, though he acknowledged that Cohen “made mistakes.”

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche responded when it was his turn to address the panel that the prosecution’s case would collapse because it was based on Cohen’s lies.

“Unbeknownst to President Trump, Mr. Cohen was also a criminal during all the years that Mr. Cohen worked for him,” Blanche said. “He cheated on his taxes, he lied to the banks, he lied about side activities.”

Blanche said that when the FBI began investigating Cohen, he tried to “blame Trump for virtually all of his problems” and continues to do so.

“Michael Cohen was obsessed with President Trump, he is obsessed with President Trump to this day,” Blanche said.

Cohen weighed in on social media later in the day, using profanity to refer to Trump and saying “your attacks on me stink of desperation. We all hope you will take the stand in your defense.”

Cohen, a known perjurer and criminal, is considered crucial to the prosecution’s case, and how jurors view him could ultimately decide whether to convict Trump. Colangelo said the jury will be convinced that Cohen is telling the truth about the hush money payments because his statements will be “supported by testimony from other witnesses,” as well as bank records, emails and text messages.

Trump will provide some of the evidence that will prove his guilt, Colangelo said, because jurors will hear “Donald Trump’s own words on tape, in social media posts, in his own books and on video of his own speeches.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying corporate documents for categorizing the reimbursement payments to Cohen as legal fees.

Cohen’s payment to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was made “at the direction of Donald Trump and for his benefit, and he made it for the specific purpose of influencing the outcome of the election,” Colangelo said.

“No politician wants bad press. But the evidence at trial will show that this was not a distortion or a strategy,” he said. “This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal spending, to silence people who had anything bad to say about his behavior, using falsified company information.”

Trump’s lawyer Blanche hit back at that characterization, saying the prosecutor is trying to make legal conduct sound like a criminal conspiracy.

“There is nothing illegal about what happened between AMI, Mr. Pecker, Mr. Cohen and President Trump,” Blanche said, referring to American Media Inc., Enquirer’s parent company at the time. “These kinds of things happen regularly, with newspapers making decisions about what they publish, how they publish. It happens all the time to famous people, rich people. It doesn’t matter if it’s a plan; it is not against the law.”

Prosecutors said Trump was motivated to stop Daniels from speaking publicly, in part because The Washington Post revealed in October 2016 the existence of an “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump made explicit comments about gleefully grabbing genitals of women. Fearful of the damage that more stories of sexual impropriety could do to his candidacy, Trump and his allies tried to prevent more scandalous stories from surfacing, Colangelo said.