Blanche, Todd (Attorney)

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      Trump’s Hush-Money Case Heads to the Jury: Takeaways From Closing Arguments

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      As the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump began its seventh week, the prosecution and the defense made their final pitches to jurors, sending the landmark case into deliberations on Wednesday.A defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, spent three hours Tuesday hammering Michael D. Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, including accusing him of perjury. He attacked Stormy Daniels, the porn star whose account of a tryst with Mr. Trump in 2006 set in motion the charges the former president faces.The prosecution countered with an even longer, more detailed summation, pushing into the evening. A prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, guided jurors through reams of evidence they had introduced and elicited, including testimony, emails, text messages and recordings.Mr. Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying 34 business records to hide Mr. Cohen’s reimbursement for a $130,000 hush-money payment he made to Ms. Daniels. Mr. Trump has denied the charges and the sexual encounter.Once deliberations begin Wednesday, no one knows how long they will take. If convicted, Mr. Trump — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — could face prison or probation.Here are five takeaways from closing arguments and Mr. Trump’s 21st day on trial.‘Michael Cohen is a liar’ was a refrain. It may be the defense’s best bet.“The human embodiment of reasonable doubt.”The Links Between Trump and 3 Hush-Money DealsHere’s how key figures involved in making hush-money payoffs on behalf of Donald J. Trump are connected.The Donald Trump Indictment, AnnotatedThe indictment unveiled in April 2023 centers on a hush-money deal with a porn star, but a related document alleges a broader scheme to protect Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Trial Could Bring a Rarity: Consequences for His Words

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      The former president has spent decades spewing thousands and thousands of words, sometimes contradicting himself. That tendency is now working against him in his Manhattan criminal case.“So that’s not true? That’s not true?”The judge in control of Donald J. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial had just cut off the former president’s lawyer, Todd Blanche. Mr. Blanche had been in the midst of defending a social media post in which his client wrote that a statement that had been public for years “WAS JUST FOUND!”Mr. Blanche had already acknowledged during the Tuesday hearing that Mr. Trump’s post was false. But the judge, Juan M. Merchan, wasn’t satisfied.“I need to understand,” Justice Merchan said, glaring down at the lawyer from the bench, “what I am dealing with.”The question of what is true — or at least what can be proven — is at the heart of any trial. But this particular defendant, accused by the Manhattan district attorney’s office of falsifying business records to conceal a sex scandal, has spent five decades spewing thousands and thousands of words, sometimes contradicting himself within minutes, sometimes within the same breath, with little concern for the consequences of what he said.Mr. Trump has treated his own words as disposable commodities, intended for single use, and not necessarily indicative of any deeply held beliefs. And his tendency to pile phrases on top of one another has often worked to his benefit, amusing or engaging his supporters — sometimes spurring threats and even violence — while distracting, enraging or just plain disorienting his critics and adversaries.If Mr. Blanche seemed unconcerned at the hearing that he was telling a criminal judge that his client had said something false, it may have been simply because the routine has become so familiar.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecutors Say Trump Keeps Breaking Gag Order, With Four New Violations

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      Prosecutors on Thursday accused former President Donald J. Trump of violating a gag order four additional times, saying that he continues to defy the judge’s directions not to attack witnesses, prosecutors and jurors in his hush-money trial.“He’s doing what the order tells him not to do,” said Christopher Conroy, a prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney.As Mr. Conroy laid out what he said were violations, Mr. Trump whispered to his lawyer Todd Blanche and frowned. After they spoke, Mr. Blanche rubbed his face several times.With the latest allegations, prosecutors now say that Mr. Trump has violated the gag order 15 times in less than two weeks. The judge in the case, Juan M. Merchan, is expected to rule soon on earlier violations and could hold the former president in contempt or issue a fine. The new instances include two separate attacks on his former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, once during a recent television interview and another while speaking to reporters in the hallway outside the Lower Manhattan courtroom. Another violation, prosecutors said, stemmed from a recent interview in which Mr. Trump referred to the jury as “95 percent Democrats.”The fourth example, prosecutors said, took place before the trial began on Thursday, at a campaign stop with construction workers in Manhattan. There, Mr. Trump called David Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher who took the witness stand for a third time on Thursday, “a nice guy.”Prosecutors accused Mr. Trump of sending a message to Mr. Pecker and other witnesses to be “nice,” or get attacked. They said they would submit the additional violations to the court.Justice Merchan imposed the gag order on Mr. Trump in late March, barring him from making public statements about any witnesses, prosecutors, jurors or court staff, as well as their families. But within a week, Mr. Trump found a loophole in the order and repeatedly attacked the judge’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant.In a hearing earlier this week on the 10 previous violations, lawyers for Mr. Trump argued that the former president had been exercising his right to respond to attacks. Prosecutors noted that the gag order did not include exceptions for Mr. Trump to respond to those who criticize him. More

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      Dismissed Trump Jurors Describe Intense Days in a Glaring Spotlight

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      Two prospective jurors who were excused contacted The New York Times to describe their experience in the fraught environment of an unprecedented trial.The two Manhattan residents were led into the courtroom to fulfill a foundational civic duty: to be interviewed as prospective jurors.But in the room when they arrived was a defendant, Donald J. Trump, unlike any in American history.Both would-be jurors, a man and a woman, were eventually excused. But the experience thrust them into the spotlight in a way they never had imagined.One was challenged by Mr. Trump’s lawyers over his past social media posts relating to the former president. The other, the woman, has a medical practice that she could not shut for six weeks while serving on the trial.While they were not chosen to sit on the jury, their experiences illustrate the intensity of the attention focused on Mr. Trump’s trial — and on the first jury to ever weigh the fate of a former United States president in a criminal proceeding.Both contacted The New York Times only after they were excused from serving. Though the court’s rules protecting prospective jurors’ identities end when they are dismissed from serving, The Times is withholding their names and most identifying characteristics about them.Like the other prospective jurors who were considered, both included detailed personal information on the juror questionnaires they filled out, including where they work.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Inside the Manhattan Courtroom Where Trump Is on Trial

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      Protesters railed outside, media and security swarmed the area, and inside the courtroom, Donald J. Trump appeared to nod off.It was about 2:30 on Monday afternoon when the first 96 potential jurors filed into a drab courtroom in Lower Manhattan to encounter the world’s most famous defendant: Donald J. Trump.Some craned their necks to catch a glimpse, an indication of the undeniable power of Mr. Trump’s celebrity.But not long after, more than 50 of those same prospective jurors — drawn from one of the nation’s most liberal counties — were dismissed because they said they could not be impartial about the 45th president.The beginning of the first criminal trial of a former American president drew intense security, loud demonstrations and smothering media coverage to a dingy Lower Manhattan courthouse that will be the unlikely center of American politics for the next six weeks.Who Are Key Players in the Trump Manhattan Criminal Trial?The first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump began Monday. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.And if the first day is any indication, the trial may well be a surreal experience, juxtaposing the case’s mundane-sounding criminal charges — falsifying business records — against the potentially seismic effect it could have on the presidential race.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How One Hour Encapsulated the Chaos of Trump’s Coming Trial

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      One court offered Donald J. Trump a financial lifeline. Another set him on a path to prosecution. It was a taste of what America will experience until the November election.At 11 a.m. Monday, a New York appeals court made Donald J. Trump’s day, rescuing him from financial devastation in a civil fraud case.By noon, the New York judge overseeing his criminal case had nearly ruined it, setting Mr. Trump’s trial for next month and all but ensuring he will hold the dubious distinction of becoming the first former American president to be criminally prosecuted.The contrasting outcomes of Mr. Trump’s twin New York legal crises — a triumph in the civil case and a setback in the criminal one — set the former president on a winding path as he seeks to navigate around an array of legal troubles to recapture the White House.Unfolding in rapid succession in his hometown courts, the day’s events captured the disorienting reality of having a candidate who is also a defendant. And they showed that nothing about the months until Election Day will be easy, linear or normal — for Mr. Trump or the nation.Rather than mount a traditional cross-country campaign in the lead-up to the Republican National Convention in July, Mr. Trump, the presumptive nominee, is preparing to work around the criminal trial that will begin April 15 and last for at least six weeks.His schedule will be built around the four days each week that the trial is expected to take place in court, with Wednesdays expected to be an off day. One person familiar with his preliminary plans described weekend events held in strategically important states near New York, like Pennsylvania, or in hospitable areas outside Manhattan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Signals Plans to Go After Intelligence Community in Document Case

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      Court papers filed by his lawyers, formally a request for discovery evidence, sounded at times more like political talking points.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump said in court papers filed on Tuesday night that they intended to place accusations that the intelligence community was biased against Mr. Trump at the heart of their defense against charges accusing him of illegally holding onto dozens of highly sensitive classified documents after he left office.The lawyers also indicated that they were planning to defend Mr. Trump by seeking to prove that the investigation of the case was “politically motivated and biased.”The court papers, filed in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., gave the clearest picture yet of the scorched earth legal strategy that Mr. Trump is apparently planning to use in fighting the classified documents indictment handed up over the summer.While the 68-page filing was formally a request by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to provide them with reams of additional information that they believe can help them fight the charges, it often read more like a list of political talking points than a brief of legal arguments.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More