‘Outrageous’: Judge in hush-money case blows up at defense lawyer for ‘highly inappropriate’ comment about sending Trump to prison – By Colin Kalmbacher (Law & Crime) / May 28, 2024
Closing arguments in Donald Trump’s New York City hush-money trial began with a long and winding, nearly three-hour-long, statement offered by defense attorney Todd Blanche. During a lunch recess after the pitch, the judge in charge of the case briefly upbraided the former president’s counsel for a wayward reference to punishment.
The narrative theme delivered to jurors was that Michael Cohen, 57, the state’s star witness, simply cannot be trusted.
The defense reminded the assembled Manhattan arbiters of facts that Cohen was an admitted, serial liar – using a permutation of the acronym G.O.A.T. to call Cohen the Greatest Liar Of All Time – and alleged that Cohen committed several instances of perjury during the trial, lying to each and every juror, in order to implicate Trump and shore up other pieces of his, at-times uneven, testimony.
“You cannot send somebody to prison, you cannot convict somebody based upon the words of Michael Cohen,” Blanche said, finishing his sentence over a sustained objection from the prosecution.
