Closing arguments in Donald Trump hush money trial

Attorneys delivered closing arguments today in former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial. The judge in the classified documents case has refused to issue a gag order against Trump.

Judge Aileen Cannon said the prosecution’s request was “lacking in substance and professional courtesy.”

Paul Charlton, Partner at Denton’s, joined “Arizona Horizon” to provide more details and analysis about the trial.

“The jury’s job is not to consider prison, not to consider incarceration in the event of a conviction, and he was roundly criticized by the judge for that,” said Charlton. 

Charlton described an analogy between the jury acting disrespectful and being rude to a beloved family member. 

“They’re like a juror’s favorite aunt or a favorite uncle, and when they see a lawyer acting in a way that’s disrespectful towards the judge, or even worse the criminal defendant acting in a way that’s disrespectful, it’s as if you were being rude to a beloved family member, so it is poor tactics,” said Charlton. 

Charlton added Mr. Blanche was arguing to an audience of two. 

“This is his goal: just to get one juror to hang, not to vote for a conviction. If everybody else votes for a conviction and only one juror says, ‘No, I won’t,’ that means there’s a mistrial and a possible new trial. The second audience is former President Trump,” said Charlton. 

It is prohibited to talk about the likelihood of incarceration after conviction. 

The jurors will need to decide if Trump’s lawyer is accurate about not trusting the whole case. Blanche is anticipating they will discover one juror who will believe that Michael Cohen can’t be trusted based on evidence on what he said today. 

“The jurors need to sift through that and decide whether or not Mr. Blanche, the Trump lawyer, is correct about not being able to trust the whole of the case because of Mr. Cohen, or to say, ‘No, we can take all of the evidence as a whole and find evidence to convict former President Trump,’” said Charlton.