Judge blasts Trump lawyer over ‘outrageous’ prison comment to hush money jurors

The judge presiding over the New York criminal hush money trial of Donald Trump blasted a defense lawyer Tuesday for arguing to jurors that “you cannot send someone to prison based on the words of Michael Cohen,” the one-time fixer for Trump.

After the 12-member jury had left the courtroom at the end of defense attorney Todd Blanche’s closing argument, Judge Juan Merchan laid into him.

“I think that statement was outrageous, Mr. Blanche,” Merchan said in Manhattan Supreme Court, where Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

“Someone who has been a prosecutor for as long as you have and a defense attorney as long as you have,” the judge said.

“It’s simply not allowed. Period. It’s hard for me to imagine how that was accidental in any way,” Merchan said.

Assistant district attorney Joshua Steinglass complained about Blanche’s remark, which referenced Cohen’s trial testimony that he paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 before the 2016 election at Trump’s direction to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual tryst with Trump a decade earlier.

Steinglass called Blanche’s comment “blatant and wholly inappropriate.”

When jurors were brought back into the courtroom after lunch, Merchan told them that Blanche’s comment “is improper and you must disregard it.”

The judge also said that if the jury convicted Trump it would be up to Merchan to impose the sentence.

Merchan also noted that a prison sentence is not mandatory if Trump is convicted.

Jurors in criminal cases are instructed to consider whether a defendant committed a crime, not to factor in the potential punishment for that crime, such as prison.

Blanche began his closing argument on Tuesday morning by telling jurors that Trump “is innocent” of the charges.

Trump “did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof. Period,” Blanche said.

The business records at issue in described as legal expenses the reimbursements that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, gave his then-personal lawyer and fixer Cohen for paying off Daniels.

Prosecutors said the payment was designed to prevent the adult film actor from damaging Trump’s chances to win the White House in 2016.

Blanche argued, “You should want and expect more than the testimony of Michael Cohen” to convict Trump.

“President Trump is not guilty,” Blanche said.

Blanche told jurors the records were not false, and there was no intent to defraud anyone by labeling the records as legal expenses.

“Cohen lied to you, Cohen lied to you,” Blanche said of Trump’s former lawyer, who testified at length about Trump directing him to pay off Daniels, and how he did little if any legal work for Trump on the heels of that payment.

“The story Mr. Cohen told you on that witness stand is not true,” Blanche said. “There is no proof that President Trump knew about the payment before it was made.”

But Blanche argued that Cohen had believed that Daniels’ shopping over her story about Trump to media outlets “was an extortion attempt” against Trump.

“And, by the way, it was another opportunity for Mr. Cohen to take advantage,” Blanche said. “He paid $130,000 to Ms. Daniels because he knew he could take credit whether they won the election or lost the election he would get credit.”

“He was very worried about his future,” the lawyer said about Cohen. “You saw and heard multiple, multiple examples of that. He was worried about if President Trump won, he was worried about if President Trump lost.” 

Referring to Daniels, who also testified at the trial, Blanche said, “She wrote a book, and she has a podcast. And a documentary.”

“This started out as an extortion. There’s no doubt about that, and ended very well for Ms. Daniels – financially speaking,” Blanche said.

Blanche said that even if jurors determined there was a conspiracy to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, he expected them to conclude that Trump was innocent.

“As I said to you in the opening statement, it doesn’t matter if there was a conspiracy to win the election,” Blanche argued. “Every campaign is a conspiracy to promote a candidate.”

Steinglass, a prosecutor from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, on Tuesday afternoon began his closing argument.

“I’m not suggesting [Daniels] wasn’t looking to get paid, but that is a different thing from … extortion,” Steinglass said.

And “in the end it doesn’t really matter, because you don’t get to commit election fraud or falsify your business records because you think you’ve been victimized,” the prosecutor said.

“You’ve got to use your common sense here.”

Steinglass urged jurors to consider the testimony at trial of David Pecker, the former head of the company that for years published The National Enquirer, a supermarket tabloid newspaper.

Pecker had told the jury about his agreement with Trump and Cohen to alert them to possibly damaging stories about the then-Republican presidential nominee, and his publication of negative stories about Trump’s political opponents, among them 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Pecker testified about how his company paid $150,000 to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, to buy her silence before the 2016 election about her alleged sexual affair with Trump.

“Keep in mind Mr. Pecker has no reason to lie, no bias towards the defendant and thinks Mr, Trump is still a friend and a mentor,” Steinglass said.

On his way into the courtroom, Trump called Merchan “highly conflicted” and “corrupt.”

“This is a dark day in America,” Trump told reporters. “This is a very dangerous day for America. It’s a very sad day.”

Trump is the first former U.S. president ever to be tried in a criminal case. If convicted, Trump faces a possible maximum sentence of four years in prison for each felony count.

He denies Daniels’ claim that the two had sex once in 2006, months after his wife Melania gave birth to their son, Barron.

In his opening statement, assistant D.A. Matthew Colangelo had told jurors that the hush money payment to Daniels, and the reimbursements to Cohen, amounted to “election fraud. Pure and simple.”

This is developing news. Check back for updates.