There's like this chime that goes off and James and I like rush to the studio to get ready in case the jury comes back with a verdict. Rhonda fires up all of her cameras with her crew there. James and I are in permanent suit wearing mode. Welcome to the Trump Trials sidebar from the Washington Post. We're with you at a crucial moment of waiting, waiting for the jury to come to a decision on 34 felony counts in the trial of Donald Trump. The final arguments are done. The jury has been read its instructions. And now the seven men and five women of the jury are deliberating on the possible guilt of a former president and presumed presidential candidate. I'm Libby Casey, and I'm here with James Homan in our newsroom studio and a special guest, Perry Stein. Welcome, Perry. Thanks so much for having me. Co-author of the newsletter, The Trump Trials, which you can sign up for at our website, WashingtonPost.com. It is a...
not miss newsletter. And joining us from New York City in Lower Manhattan, Rhonda Colvin, who is outside the courthouse. Hey, Rhonda, great to see you there. Hey there. Prosecution and the defense rest. We'll talk about their most compelling arguments. Also, this small book over 50 pages that is jury instructions and the initial questions that jurors had when they started deliberating. Let's kick off with the last words from the lawyers. Here's how it worked in closing arguments. The defense went first, that's standard in New York, and the prosecution got literally, Perry, the last word. James, a lot of what the defense had to say boiled down to...
Do not trust the words of Michael Cohen. And indeed, Trump's defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, said you shouldn't send Donald Trump to jail on the discredited word of Michael Cohen. But he got in trouble for that. And he did. Exactly. The jury still hears it. You know, they still that will stick with them. And when I say he got in trouble, there was what's called a curative instruction, which is that the jury came back from a break and the judge said there's you shouldn't think about the sentence. The sentence is up to me. You're the triers of fact.
you're determining guilt or innocence, he's not necessarily going to go to jail. And indeed, it seems very, very unlikely if he is found guilty, even on all 34 counts, that a guy in his 70s who has no prior criminal record who's accused of a nonviolent crime would ever serve an actual day in prison. But Blanche was trying to push the jurisprudence. Totally. And you can see it would be effective, which is like, you want to send Michael Cohen, that guy? You're going to put the former president of the United States in jail? And you can. I mean, Michael Cohen, as Todd Blanche also said, is walking reasonable doubt. And you can see that...
Cohen in the prosecution acknowledged it that like he said, we don't we didn't go to the witness store to get Michael Cohen because, you know, he's damaged goods. He's not someone you would go pick up from the witness store. He's not anyone's idea of an ideal witness. You know, Perry, you got to see Michael Cohen testify on direct. And I want to hear more from you about how you think he came across to the jury. So let's just start there. I mean, it sounds like he was very measured. He was very calm. But they also played tape of him.
from like his broadcasts where he's cursing and yelling. So how did the jury interpret him? Yeah, I mean, he did what I think he needed to do for prosecutors, right? I mean, he connected the dots. He put Trump there, but he came off as this measured guy. And the word I would kind of most say is he came off as contrite. Like, look, yeah, I know I did all these bad things, but I'm a new guy now. Part of the reason why I want to come forward is kind of to atone for what I've done. And this is me starting a new leaf. So he did come off a contrite, but like, you know, then the...
you know, defense tried to play the other side of Michael Cohen. Okay. I know he's coming off as this, uh, cool, calm and collected guy right now who seems, you know, to have turned a new leaf or that's what he wants you to think. But look, listen to his podcast, look into all these things. This is a guy trying to make money. And ultimately, you know, the jury was left with two sides of Michael Cohen. And like, that's all kind of what always happens. The jury is to the side. I mean, he's, as James was saying, like not the ideal witness, but they knew this going into it. And as I talked to legal experts, like plenty of time, like prosecutors have gotten convictions on witnesses like Michael Cohen all the time. Um, not against the former president and presidential nominee, but.
you know, we have problematic witnesses take the stand all the time. You know, I want to play some tape and... We don't have tape from inside the courtroom because, unfortunately, there are no audio recordings. There are no cameras. What we've been doing here on Sidebar, however, is having some of our Washington Post colleagues read the testimony, read the words from the court transcription of moments in court. And so what I want to play for you is our colleagues reading Todd Blanche. This is Donald Trump's attorney in his closing arguments, and he's talking to the jury about how they just should not trust Michael Cohen. Let's listen. He stole tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump organization, and he admitted that on the stand. He admitted to committing a felony on the stand. Never prosecuted for that.
Now that's all fine, but what should matter to you, in addition to the lies in his past under oath to family, to the people that matter, what should matter to you is the lies that he said when he took an oath two weeks ago and gave testimony to you guys. That's what matters here. Sure, a past lie can be explained. Oh, it was loyalty to Donald Trump. Oh, it was to protect my family. Oh, at that point, I was still under the Trump cult. Fine, fine, he lied under oath. But when you come in here and you take an oath like he did, that matters. It has to matter. And he lied to you. Make no mistake about it.
That is a reading of Todd Blanche's words in his closing arguments. So the lie he is claiming that Michael Cohen made to the jury, Perry, is about this phone call. And so let's go back in time a little bit. Michael Cohen says he talked to Donald Trump and. talked about the Stormy Daniel situation, right? It's taken care of. Then he called Keith Shiller, who was Trump's bodyguard. He was just always with him, ever present, and basically called Shiller and Shiller gave the phone to Trump. And Cohen said, I told him it was taken care of. And then in this aha moment, Perry, the defense is like, but wait, there's all these text messages leading up to that phone call that shows you were actually texting with Shiller about something totally different, about a teenager who was calling you, just overwhelming you with phone calls. And what's the word I'm looking for, James? Harassment. Harassment, thank you. Harassing calls. So wasn't your phone call actually about that?
From all accounts, it sounds like Cohen seemed really thrown off. Devlin Barrett had talked to us in a previous episode of Sidebar about how the look on Cohen's face spoke volumes because he was like, ooh, like what? Trying to put it back together. But it seemed like the prosecution was able to clean that up. Yeah, they were. I mean, I think.
They were trying to say, like, this was a short call. I mean, Todd Blanche pointed out that it was a short call and that, you know, they talked about two things is what Cohen tried to say. So they did. I mean, look, what prosecution tried to say in the redirect was like, as you said, admitted not a perfect or I'm sorry, in their closings, not a perfect witness. But the case isn't about him. This is not about Michael Cohen. We don't need to count all his lies. The case is about Donald Trump.
And that's what you need to focus on. So James, in closing arguments, the prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, I'm not going to say he listened to one of our episodes of Sidebar, but he did do something that we talked about, which was let the jury really feel what 96 seconds, this phone call that lasted a minute and a half, what it actually feels like. Because it turns out, Perry, it's a long time. So what did he do, James? He basically recreated, he took liberties and said, here's what the conversation could have sounded like. And here's all the information you can convey. Like he does the call, basically, like he starts a timer on his phone and he's like, hey.
Keith, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, here's the thing about the harassing phone call. Can I talk to the boss? You know, hey, boss, this is what happened. It's taken care of me. And it was like 40 some seconds, not even close to a minute and a half. And that was all sort of trying to push the genie back into the bottle of reasonable doubt. Right. Which is you don't really need Cohen, which is the prosecution argument. But the defense argument is Cohen is the person who actually connects Donald Trump directly.
to the payments, to the scheme that he's charged with. And that's why the prosecution can't just sort of let that phone call slide, because that might be a seed that grows in some jurors' minds. Okay, I want to play some tape for Rhonda and then get her reaction to this. So Rhonda, this is a reading of some of the prosecution's closing arguments from Joshua Steinglass. Now, what he's saying is that Cohen is like, just this tour guide through the evidence. Let's listen. This case is not about Michael Cohen. This case is about Donald Trump and whether he should be held accountable for making or causing false entries in his own business records, whether he and his staff did that to cover up the election law violation.
Did you know you can play the Washington Post's games for free? Find the crossword, keyword, ridges, and on the record in the Washington Post app or at washingtonpost.com slash games. No subscription required. That's a reading of the prosecution's closing arguments. Rhonda, what is the evidence that prosecutors want the jury to focus on? They want the jury to focus on the tangible evidence, the receipts, the invoices, that phone call. We're told from the reporters who were in the room that day, it was on May 2nd, when the jury heard the phone call between Donald Trump and Michael Cohen, where Cohen is talking about the quote financing that needed to be done to pay off Karen McDougal. So the prosecution wanted to bring the jury back to what they heard, what their ears heard, and not to rely so much on what the defense was trying to do in their summations, which is to create some doubt. The defense really, you know, I guess when...
do get an answer of what the jury has decided. We'll find out how successful the defense was. But if you read the transcripts, the defense seemed to do a pretty artful job at trying to sow doubt, trying to tell the jurors that you can't convict Trump alone on just what Michael Cohen is saying. They even said that the jury should have heard from Allen Weisselberg, who's in Rikers Island. He was the former CFO of the Trump Organization. And Keith Schiller, who was Trump's body man, that the jury didn't get a chance to hear from them. So how can they make up any sort of conviction on Donald Trump just based on Cohen? So again, the prosecution seemed to be ready to take on the defense's argument that...
The jury should not listen to Cohen. They were ready for that. I love seeing you in New York City. So I want to hear more about what it's like there in just a moment. We're seeing like bikes was past you and all the real life of New York. You know, Perry, Todd Blanch also seemed to be talking to an audience of Donald Trump, his client, because he was using these like glib, you know, the MVP. He called Cohen the MVP of liars. What else did he call him? He called him, I think, the gloat. So the greatest liar of all time instead of gloat. So he had some some clever things. It might stick in a jury's mind, but it's not evidence, right? It's not.
No, it's not. But like, you know, that happened on both sides. Right. I mean, how many how often did we focus on Stormy Daniels and her testimony? And, you know, it is not right. The crime is not that he allegedly had a sexual encounter with her. The crime is not that he paid her off allegedly. So, I mean, I think in this case, we focus on a lot like this was a pretty kind of trial that had, you know, sex in it. It had, you know, politics, all these things. But at the end of the day, it's a.
case about falsification of records. So I think both sides kind of did that a lot. But I think you're absolutely right that I think Todd Blanche is, and Trump's lawyers in general, has reported a story about what it's like to be Trump's attorneys. And he is a very involved client. And, you know, people that I talked to for this article said like, yeah, he wants his, you know, he wants his attorneys sometimes to be bombastic and do things that they normally, you know, wouldn't do like on the stands. I mean, I think these are fairly respectable attorneys, right? Todd Blanche was an SDNY. And so.
Yeah. James, we've been talking about the defense and that's important because honestly, we didn't hear much of a case built from them throughout the actual trial. They had one witness they called. It was sort of a disaster of a witness. So we've been talking a lot here about what they've been trying to tell the jury. But from the trial transcripts, which is as close as I can get to it, it sounds like a prosecution in their very lengthy, what was it, five hours of closing arguments, told a story, right? They really took the jury through the case they wanted to build. Every witness, every moment to try to stitch everything together.
they're trying to do something that is unusual, which is falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. The statute of limitations has passed. And you can't say enough that to make this a felony and to make it an act of charge, they have to show that it was in furtherance of another crime. And the judge in his instructions said it could be in furtherance of basically tax fraud. It could be election fraud, election interference, essentially. Or it could be basically business record related. And so the jury has to believe that there's like five or six different verbs that the judge said.
basically knew that this would cause this to happen, knew that it was going to happen, and that Trump himself wanted these records to be falsified in order to win the election. And what the prosecution has to show is that it wasn't just to win the election, that it was with kind of the corrupt intent to win the election, that it wasn't just everyday standard politicking. So they're trying to jump through some hoops. Ultimately, it is a bookkeeping case, but it's a... there are some hurdles they have to clear. And so it did take a couple hours. I thought reading the transcript, it was too long. They didn't need to go on. Some of our colleagues in the courtroom said that some of the jurors started looking bored. Even the judge said, you've got to wrap this up by 8 p.m. to Josh Steinglass, the prosecutor, because it was going on a little too long. Does that matter, Mary? I mean, it's hard to say exactly what the jury is going to think. I mean, that's not on the jury instructions, right? I mean, at the end of the day, they are looking at...
you know, the crime and looking at the evidence and assessing the witness. But yeah, you don't want to like, you know, I think the juries, you don't want the judge to get mad at you too many times. Right. Because you're journeying out of the information you have to share. Absolutely. Losing the forest in the trees. That gets us to the jury instructions. I'm just going to flip through this for our audio only audience. It is very long. Why is it so, why is it so weighty? Literally.
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a lot of things that the judge tells them, right? He wraps it up and says, you know, I want you to I mean, I think you'll find a lot of it probably seems a little redundant in there. But like, we want you to assess the witnesses, their credibility, use your judgment. It's kind of like a warning. Don't take my word for it. Everything I've said, don't judge that on me. Like really focusing them after, you know, a month of court time, like here, like, you know, we're back on focus. Here's what we're here for. These are what it is. These are the charges. This is what you got to do. So, you know, a lot of it's boilerplate, but a lot of it is specific to this case. And Rhonda, you know.
the jury has to be unanimous if they want to acquit or convict Trump on any and all, or really any of the 34 charges. They can convict on some, acquit on others, and be hung on others. So there can be like a mishmash. But the judge was expressing and emphasizing that they have to come to consensus if they want to reach a conviction, Rhonda. That's exactly right. And, you know, as we've been reporting all this time and reminding people that you only need one juror to not agree before you have a hung jury. So that's important. I also reading from the transcripts of what the judge told the jury when he was reading the instructions, I thought that this was striking. He said, as a juror, you are asked to make a very important decision about another member of the community. Now, I mean, take that in another member of the community. And this is a former president. Whether you voted for him or not, he is a former president. So I don't think anyone really envies this jury. This is such a weighty case. This is something that only the 12 of them can decide unanimously or decide for a hung jury. I mean, just the way of it all.
It's really stunning. But I really thought that when the judge said that today, that he's a member of the community. That really also brings home that this is a part of the American judicial system and our jury system. And anyone is subject to this if they are brought into criminal court. Let's talk about what the jury wanted to hear. After just a couple hours of deliberation on Wednesday, there's like this chime that goes off. And James and I like rush to the studio to get ready in case the jury comes back with a verdict. Rhonda fires up all of her cameras with her crew there. James and I are in permanent suit wearing mode. We're like in our fanciest duds to go to go live as broadcasters if the jury should.
reach decisions. But instead, what they were coming up with on Wednesday afternoon was some questions for the judge. So let's go over, Perry, what they wanted to hear read back from the transcripts. One of the key reasons why the transcripts are kept in the first place in trials like this. They wanted to hear about Pecker's testimony about calling Trump on the phone. This is David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer. They also wanted to hear Pecker's testimony on the decision not to pay for buying Stormy Daniels rights to her story. For life, yeah. Okay. And then they also wanted to hear Pecker's testimony on a meeting in Trump Tower. And finally, Cohen's testimony on the Trump Tower meeting as well.
Why are those significant pieces of evidence and information from this trial? It seems to me that they're really honing in with, I mean, look, we're extrapolating from just four questions I asked, but that they're honing in on what was Trump's involvement, right? They weren't asking about Cohen's credibility at all. They were asking, you know, what did Trump know and why did he know it and how did he know it? So all of these seem to point to Trump's potential involvement in these payments and knowledge about them. Which is ultimately the key thing. And this meeting that they had at Trump Tower, which Pecker also, his business reached an agreement, basically a plea deal. But Pecker is a more credible witness than Cohen.
And Pecker testified that they had this secret meeting where they basically Pecker said, I'll watch out for you in this kind of tabloid supermarket world to Trump. And if anything is kind of percolating out there, I'll alert Cohen and we'll make these things. Basically, the National Enquirer is here to help your campaign and that Trump basically assented to this. But it gets at Trump's knowledge of any potential scheme to work with the National Enquirer, because part of the defense's suggestion is that Cohen was freelancing. Cohen wanted to do something for his boss and didn't want to bring it to Trump. And this shows that.
Trump was very much a party to the dealings with the Enquirer. I want to point out one thing that we'll listen for when we do hear how the jury decides this case. The way the counts, the 34 counts are broken down, it's an invoice that Michael Cohen says, it's ledger notes in the Trump ledger, and then it's a check that's signed and cut. And the first two checks in the various counts were not signed by Donald Trump. The other nine were. So I'll be curious to hear, Perry, if the jury makes a distinction between the checks that Donald Trump signed versus the trustees signed, Alan Weisselberg and one of the Trump sons.
And if there's a pivot point, because they go in chronological order as well, if there's a pivot point, the jury finds that he was made aware of it and then started signing, or if they just see full guilt for full innocence either way. Right. I mean, yeah, again, we really just don't know, but it is the same charge. But as you said, I mean, there's three buckets, there's the ledgers, there's the checks, there's the invoices. So in theory, they could, you know, say, you know, maybe, you know, I don't know, they showed pictures of all of them, maybe they divide up the buckets, or maybe they do it, as you said, by time periods, you know, so.
You know, I would imagine if there is a split, it would be in division of time or within those three buckets. It's in the hands of the jury now. We'll see how long they deliberate. We're going to wrap up this episode for now. We will be back as the sidebar crew once we have a verdict. And Perry will be cranking out the Trump trials newsletter regularly. At this point, Perry, you guys are all over it. Our colleagues in the courtroom will be letting us know the minute the jury has a verdict. And we will be broadcasting live on WashingtonPost.com as well as on YouTube.com slash Washington Post. We'll be here with an episode of Sidebar afterwards, after we know how the jury decides. And again, they could convict.
on any or all the 34 counts. They could acquit on any or all the 34 counts, or they could ultimately be a hung jury on any or all of those counts. And we will break down what all that means when we find out more. I'm Lydia Casey. I'd like to thank Rhonda in New York, James Homan and Perry Stein here in the studio. We'll see you soon.
Hi, this is Libby Casey, host of the Trump Trials Sidebar. And each week, Rhonda Colvin, James Holman, and I take you inside the courtrooms and speak with the Washington Post law and justice reporters. They're the folks who are on the ground and in the room as Donald Trump stands trial. The Trump Trials Sidebar is a place where you get to learn about some of the most consequential developments in American politics and our judicial system. If the show has been valuable to you, if it's become a weekly habit, if you've learned something new, the best way to support us is by becoming a Washington Post subscriber.
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