Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Lawyer SCREWS UP BADLY in Final Moments of Trial

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Trump’s rusty lawyer Todd Blanche almost CAUSED A MISTRIAL during his closing argument, causing the trial judge to instruct the jury to disregard parts of his argument. Michael Popok a long-time NY trial lawyer analyzes Blanche’s disjointed mess of a closing where if he wasn’t using inappropriate sports metaphors that were confusing to the jury, he was admitting Trump‘s criminal, intent, and involvement, and making payments to Michael Cohen as part of the very conspiracy that is at the heart of the prosecution! Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://RocketMoney.com/legalaf Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. This is Michael Popak, Legal AF with a Trump On Trial update on the closing argument by Todd Blanch for Donald Trump. One trial lawyer talking about another trial lawyer. I'll tell you straight, it was a disjointed mess. Not only that, because Todd Blanch has not tried a case in a long, long time, hasn't done closing argument or summation

in front of a jury in a long, long time. He screwed up. He screwed up so badly that the judge had to chastise him, excoriate him, told him again, you're a 13 year federal prosecutor, you know better. Why? Because he looked the jury in the eye and he violated the golden rule.

One of the golden rules in trial, we literally call it that, is you can't look the jury in the eye and he violated the golden rule. One of the golden rules in trial, we literally call it that, is you can't look the jury in the eye during closing and tell them, please, pretty please, don't send my client to prison. You can't do that. You can't ask the jury to put themselves in his position or to use your credibility as a lawyer

to bolster your clients and say, he shouldn't go to prison, you shouldn't send him to prison, please don't send him to prison. That is an improper transference. That is a violation of the golden rule. It's so bad that Judge Murchon, once the jury was excused for lunch after hearing argument from Josh Stinglass on behalf of the prosecutors prosecutors excoriated Mr. Blanch admonished him was angry visibly angry that you know better you know you were a prosecutor for 13 years you were the head of the criminal division for the US Attorney's Office you know that you're not supposed to do that I'm going

to give a curative instruction and hope it works a curative instruction little breakout session here a little patreon breakout. A curative instruction, little breakout session here, a little Patreon breakout session, a curative instruction is done by the judge after the bell has been rung on the violation of a rule or a golden rule or something like that, looks the jury in the eye and says, everything that person said at the end about trying to make you feel sorry and pity

for his client asking him not to go to jail is completely inappropriate, you are to disregard it. That is an attempt to cure the problem, to mitigate the issue raised by Todd Blanch. Now it was at the very end of his couple of hours or so of closing, but he lost his mind. That's because he's rusty. It's because he's out of practice.

That's just, he's got his client's hand up his back. I'm being kind here. And this is the case of a lifetime for him. He left his lucrative law practice. He opened up his own shop. He took up an office inside of Donald Trump's own building at 40 Wall Street. He's got no other clients than Donald Trump, effectively. The pressure was on.

Now, the rest of it is what we expected, a dump on Michael Cohen. And he used all, I don't know all these sports metaphors and analogies he used. Michael Cohen is the GLOAT. He's the greatest liar of all time. A play on the word goat, which used to be assigned to Muhammad Ali back in the day. Great, you know, the greatest, greatest of all time. Gloat. That's an interesting word to leave in the jury's mind because it looks like Donald Trump, not Michael Cohen, is gloating over what's been going on in trial. And believe me, this jury knows what Donald Trump's been doing outside the four walls of this jury and of this courtroom. So I'm not sure you want to leave that with the jury.A-T, gloat. And then of course they said, oh Michael Cohen

is the MVP, most valuable player of liars. He is the embodiment, the physical embodiment of reasonable doubt, ladies and gentlemen. The problem with that argument is that the prosecution has spent six weeks, 20 witnesses, hundreds of pieces of evidence, audio tapes, text messages, photographs, and testimony to inoculate about this argument, to immunize the jury from this argument that the entire case hinges on the slender shoulders of Michael Cohen. It doesn't. Michael Cohen, notwithstanding what Blanche said, and I'm sure the jury will recall, is not the only witness that establishes criminal intent, criminal mind for Donald Trump or

his participation in this 2016 conspiracy. He is not. David Pecker testified for two days, and that connects Donald Trump in 2016. Jeff McConnie and his notes about the conspiracy and the payments and repayments to Michael Cohen connect Donald Trump to it. The checks that Todd Blanch had to admit during his closing, at times I thought

I was listening to the closing argument for the prosecution because he had to admit there were nine checks signed by Donald Trump while he was in the White House. And he wants the jury to believe, oh, he was so busy being president in the first few days, he didn't know what he was signing. He didn't know what he was signing. The guy, and they already heard passages from his books, who said he's a fastidious about

details, his attention to detail. He picks up pennies and nickels in front of a steamroller. That Donald Trump didn't know what he was signing, his own executive assistant testified that she would send him checks to the White House from his personal bank account or from the company's bank account. And if he didn't like the check, he would cross it out,

rip it up and send it back to her. So where was the evidence that, you know, they brought him in a whole raft of paper and he didn't know what he was signing? Oh, what's this? Michael Cohen check, $35,000. Really? That penny-pinching, penny-wise, pound-foolish Donald Trump didn't know what he was signing, but Blanche had to admit in front of the jury that there were nine checks signed by his client. That is an indicator, an indicia of willfulness, of intent, of involvement in the conspiracy.

And then when all else failed him, and I love this, and I've presented to dozens and dozens, at least three dozen juries in closing arguments, Todd Blard actually looked the jury in the eye and said, there are 10, juries love numbers like that, there are 10 reasons. There is reasonable doubt in this case, but the embodiment of it is Michael Cohen. And then he starts to go through the 10, he stumbles around number four,

he gives short shrift to the others, and even his number four is broken into three subparts. You think the jury's really following along on this? I once had a trial team that worked under me tell me that they were gonna present a 10, I'm not kidding, a 10 part, a 10 step plan that they were gonna present to the jury. I said, stop, stop.

The jury is never gonna follow you through a 10 step plan. You better come up with a shorter plan. And there's reporting from inside the room that even the jury four person going to follow you through a 10-step plan. You better come up with a shorter plan. And there's reporting from inside the room that even the jury four person who sits in seat number one started to look like almost rolled their eyes and certainly had a bemused look on their face, not in a good way when Todd Blanch was speaking, especially when Todd Blland's tried to downplay the Access Hollywood hot mic moment, which the prosecution has said is the flame that lit, is the match that lit the fuse that started the conspiracy, that the campaign freaked out about the Access Hollywood hot mic moment, which had been recorded three years earlier secretly, but released in the

October leading into the November election in 2016 against Hillary Clinton. We know that because Hope Hicks testified to that, and she was the press secretary, that the campaign freaked out because he was heard on his mic, not AI, not deep fake, Donald Trump saying he could grab a woman's private parts and get away with it because he's a celebrity.

And they freaked out and they didn't need any more sex stories on top of that one, including the one by Stormy Daniels or Karen McDougall. So when he got to the Access Hollywood portion of his closing, the best blanch could come up with is it wasn't that big of a deal. It was like another day in the campaign to which the foreperson, according to people who observed him, sort of like rolled his eyes in shock, like that's a normal day in the campaign. And then of course Todd Blanch sort of saw that. So he tried to walk it back. Well, of course it was important

because, you know, Melania would have been upset. The family was upset. It's all about the family, right? The only testimony that the jury heard about that is Hope Hicks saying, and one of his assistants saying, that Donald Trump didn't want the daily newspaper sent to his house because Melania might read it. I don't think that's going to be enough for the jury to conclude that this was not about election interference, but this was about protecting Melania from a philandering husband

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I mean, there's already reporting that in 1990, there was a deposition of Ivana, wife number one, in which she said that she was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump while they were married. So she knew what she was marrying. So that whole Melania thing sort of doesn't work. And the other thing that doesn't work in Todd Blanch's convoluted, upside down, half-baked presentation to the jury was his whole alternate conspiracy theory. Oh, here we go. There's a second shooter, right? I mean, not to be to laugh at it, but Kennedy, there was the grassy knoll, there was another shooter in Dallas that day. So instead you hear from Todd Blanch to the jury, there's an alternate conspiracy.

It didn't involve Donald Trump. It was the National Enquirer with the Karen McDougals and the Stormy Daniels of the world and the editor and the publisher, and they were all involved in it and had nothing to do with Donald Trump. Well then how do you explain Michael Cohen informing on an audio tape, Donald Trump, in which Donald Trump participates and acknowledges the existence of a payoff to Stormy Daniels?

And then Donald Trump paying for the payoff and paying back Michael Cohen threefold to cover his taxes because this was a phony sham transaction when he was back in the White House, when he was in the White House, which is exactly where he wanted to be, hence the election interference. The more Todd Blanch has to talk about the White House,

the more it reminds the jury that Donald Trump successfully executed the conspiracy, tamped down on all of these sex stories, and won the election over Hillary Clinton. If he lost, it'd be a different argument. We wouldn't have election interference necessarily. So when Josh Stinglass finally gets up for the prosecution and walks through all the evidence

of the elements of this case, this should be based on that summation by Trump and he went first. This should be a no brainer. And the fact that a rusty, creaky Todd Blanche who hasn't tried a case in a long time, like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, oil can, oil can.

And I've litigated against trial lawyers who haven't tried a case in a long, long time and it shows. I had one, just like Todd Blanch, almost mistried the case I was involved with because he hadn't tried a case in over 10 years. Same thing with Todd Blanch. I warned everybody on Legal AF and on my own hot takes. Todd Blanch is rusty. He's making mistakes.

He doesn't know what he's doing on his feet in a state criminal court proceeding. He's at best a federal former prosecutor who hasn't been inside of a New York state court trying a case ever, and it shows. Especially when you have to, you know, he couldn't get through his opening without objections. And now in his closing, the judge has to go so far as to give a curative instruction to the jury and hope it resolves the issue. Because that's going to be an issue on appeal. If something goes awry, Blanche just handed the prosecution an issue on appeal for the appellate court to decide whether that curative instruction work, depending upon the results

of this case. I got to jump on with hot takes like this one. It burns my backside. I don't jump on with hot takes like this one. It burns my backside. I don't really care about what's going on outside. I mean, it's interesting that Robert De Niro, Stephen Chung, and others are holding press conferences. And there's a little bit of a village that has been created out in front of 100 Center Street,

the criminal courthouse. I haven't been there in about two weeks. I'm going to go down there again. I don't really care about that. What I care about is what's inside the courtroom and in the hearts and minds of 12 jurors who are hearing the presentation of this evidence. And if that is the best that they have, then Trump, I believe, has lost. I believe there's a greater than 80% chance that this is going to be a conviction. We may not know this week, it'll be next week. There is just an overwhelming mountain of evidence

that defeats any reasonable doubt. And give the credit to the prosecution if I'm right, because they inoculated and they immunized this jury from the attack on Michael Cohen. This is the reason that they were so late to Manhattan DA in bringing this case. Cy Vance, who Karen Freeman at Niflo, my colleague, worked for, before he retired, he started the investigation, he did not bring that prosecution. The only prosecutor in New York

who brought successfully prosecutions against Donald Trump is Alvin Bragg, who was elected after that. He got 17-count criminal conviction against the Trump Organization entities for tax fraud and business record fraud just like now and He's the one that brought this case now. The reporting is that Alvin was concerned about Michael two years ago That if the entire case hinged on Michael, he was not comfortable But when the prosecutors presented their case to Alvin, so the reporting goes. Alvin Bragg got a lot more comfortable because of the overwhelming amount of corroborating evidence that the jury would hear even before they heard from Michael Cohen as the last witness. There's a reason Michael Cohen went towards the end of the case and not at the beginning of the case, because there needed to be 20

other witnesses corroborating, re-corroborating, reinforcing, insulating Michael Cohen before he took the stand. And that's exactly what happened. The jury would have to ignore 20 other witnesses, 19 other witnesses, and audio recordings and text messages and checks and ledgers and general ledgers and the testimony of people inside the Trump Organization, including the money people and outside people like David Pecker involved with the conspiracy in order to exonerate Donald Trump.

Okay. Yes, Michael Cohen is a complicated witness. We've talked about it at length. Make some times he made himself a little bit more complicated by talking about the case, writing about the case, podcasting about the case. I get it. But the jury can believe Michael Cohen now coming clean, having served his time, his debt to society, and turning over a new leaf. He looked that jury in the eye, and I don't think the prosecution could have asked for a better version of Michael Cohen that what happened had transpired.

Sure, there are moments, a little bit of a hair-raising moments during some cross-examination, but by and large, Michael Cohen did well, and that jury has to remember that as well. And the prosecution will remind them, will follow here on Legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network, the closing arguments, the combination of the closing arguments, and as we get into jury instructions and deliberation, which should start by middle of this week. So until my next hot take, until my next Legal AF, now you know why Ben and I named that show Legal AF four years ago. That's why we called it that. Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time right here on the Midas Touch Network. And then I do hot takes,

I don't know, about every 20 minutes it seems, on the Midas Touch Network. And then I do hot takes, I don't know, about every 20 minutes it seems, on the Midas Touch Network. And if you like what I'm doing, give me a thumbs up, leave a comment, it really does help, it's not my ego, it's more like keeps me on the air. Then you can go over to my body of work under Midas Touch Playlists or Contributors,

look for Michael Popak, boom, there's, I don't know, 1, 1300 of these hot takes. So until my next hot take until my next legal AF podcast, this is Michael Popak reporting. Here, here, legal AF law breakdown is now in session. Go beyond the headlines and get a deep dive into the important legal concepts you need to know and we discuss every day on legal AF exclusive content you won't find anywhere else,

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