Donald Trump has lost a “winnable case” in which he could have faced a hung jury or escaped with only a misdemeanor charge, legal experts have argued.
The former president was found guilty by a jury of falsifying company records in the so-called ‘hush money’ trial in New York.
Trump covered up $130,000 in payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to hide extramarital affairs and now faces the unlikely possibility of jail time.
But veteran defense attorneys argue that District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case had weaknesses — despite 200 pieces of evidence and weeks of witness testimony.
Donald Trump after being found guilty of all 34 charges in his hush money trial in Manhattan Criminal Court
Former President Donald Trump and his attorney Todd Blanche (right) leave the courthouse
Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, detailed how Trump’s defense was undone by two crucial mistakes in an analysis for the New York Times.
The first was the use of a defense that amounted to “a haphazard cacophony of denials and personal attacks” rather than a tightly woven narrative.
Trump has used this “deny everything, attack everyone” strategy for years on TV, social media and his loud and vulgar campaign rallies.
But Mariotti said it was not appropriate for a courtroom and torpedoed his chances of winning, or at least fighting the case to a draw that he could call a victory.
Mariotti explained that the prosecution case hinged on the testimony of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer,” which was the only evidence that Trump knew about the plot to falsify the data.
Trump was in the White House by the time the false data was created and could have argued that Cohen and Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg had masterminded the scheme themselves while he was in the middle of being president.
Cohen’s credibility has been damaged, he is known to hate Trump, and he pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and charges of bank fraud, tax evasion and campaign finance violations.
“You don’t have to be a lawyer to see how this could be a powerful legal defense,” Mariotti wrote.
Trump covered up $130,000 in payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to hide extramarital affairs and now faces the unlikely possibility of jail time
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass (right) was successful despite a case with exploitable weaknesses
Trump’s lawyers tried to do this, but the trial took weeks with a dizzying array of witnesses and evidence for the jury to keep track of.
Todd Blanche, who delivered the defense’s closing argument, even spoke about it, but his speech to the jury lasted three hours.
“The problem is that the defense has made so many other points and disputed so many other issues that it has failed to focus the jury on the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case and has instead tried to do everything and to fight everyone, even if she has gained little from it. so,” Mariotti wrote.
“The defense needs its own story, and in my experience, the side that tells the simpler story at trial usually wins.”
Team Trump’s second fatal mistake, Mariotti explained, was sticking to Trump’s usual “deny everything” policy.
Mariotti wrote that if he were leading the defense, he would have made Trump admit to his affair with Daniels and remove her from the board.
Instead, the prosecution further complicated the trial by trying to prove that the affair took place, and the jurors sympathized with Daniels’ testimony.
Trump’s defense failed again with the “keep it simple” maxim as it questioned Cohen on the stand for days on every little point.
In response, prosecutors produced dozens of documents that supported Cohen’s testimony and made him more credible and the case stronger.
‘It’s not about whether you like Michael Cohen. This is not about whether you want to do business with Michael Cohen,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors.
“What matters is whether he has useful, reliable information about what happened in this case, and the truth is he was in the best position to know.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (center) speaks with prosecutor Joshua Steinglass (left) next to him at a triumphant post-verdict press conference
Anti-Trump protesters gather with banners after the verdict in Trump’s hush money trial
All the defense had to do was attack the parts of his testimony that were not supported by the many texts, documents and audio recordings and portray him as an unreliable witness.
‘It may be that an innocent verdict was always a gamble. But if the defense had been more effective, one of the two attorneys on the jury would have voted for acquittal, all that is necessary for a hung jury,” Mariotti wrote.
Trump’s lawyers also took an “all-or-nothing approach” that demanded a total victory without the possibility of getting away with a crime.
If they had let the judge instruct the jury that they could find him guilty of a lesser charge, they might have compromised on that instead of felonies.
“Mr. Trump’s team was a reflection of his client, always attacking and never backing down. That playbook has worked for Mr. Trump time and time again. Before this trial and in a Manhattan courtroom, the attitude and strategy backfired,” Mariotti wrote.
Trump will be sentenced on July 11.
