OPINION: Both sides put their best foot forward as Trump trial begins

Editor’s note: Norman Eisen is a CNN legal analyst and editor of .Trying Trump: A guide to his first election interference criminal trial” He served as an advisor to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment and trial of then-President Donald Trump. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.read more opinions On CNN.

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On Monday, former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial concluded with opening statements followed by several minutes of testimony from the first witness. Both the prosecution and the defense presented powerful arguments.

My takeaway: Prosecutors have the upper hand based on the evidence and the law, and President Trump knows it. He was clearly bowing under the weight of the day. Still, the case is not completely resolved, and the defense has much to work on.

As expected, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo hammered home his theory that this case is all about election interference and cover-up. He told jurors that the case is about two things: “an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the presidential election” and “steps taken by Donald Trump to cover up that illegal election fraud.” he said. Allegations of conspiracy and cover-up: A typical prosecutorial one-two punch.

Let’s start with the alleged plot. Colangelo made the complex simple. pass through A timeline of evidence prosecutors submit to prove election interference. Like Shakespeare’s plays, it had a five-act structure.

Act 1: Trump Tower meeting in August 2015. The first witness, former American Media CEO and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker (who was testifying when I started writing), will be the first to testify. Colangelo said Trump agreed in a meeting with Pecker and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to try to influence the election, so this proves Trump’s intentions. , said here is an important issue. Once the prosecution proves that, they can argue that everything else that follows supports that very intent.

Act 2: First “catch and kill” payment to Dino Sajudin, former Trump World Tower doorman who told damaging stories.

Act 3: Payments to another person who told damaging stories: Karen McDougal, who claims to have had an affair with Trump.

Act 4: Panic inside the campaign after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape. Colangelo named Hope Hicks, President Trump’s former White House communications director, as a key witness (and someone I know well; I interviewed her on these same issues in her first Trump impeachment). questioned).

Act 5: Hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.

Colangelo then led to an alleged elaborate plan in 2017 to cover it all up. Prosecutors say Mr. Trump repaid Mr. Cohen with false income (including Mr. Cohen’s tax payments on the false income) worth more than twice the amount Mr. Cohen paid Mr. Daniels.

Colangelo poked fun at Trump’s notorious stinginess, saying that Trump has always been “frugal” and that “the Trump Organization has never had a habit of paying twice what it owes on anything. ” he explained. Colangelo said that the fact that they did this to repay Cohen gives an insight into Trump’s state of mind and “understands the true nature of Cohen’s illegal payments to Daniels and the entire election conspiracy.” “It shows how important it was to him to hide it.”

Defense attorney Todd Blanche also focused on the issue of intent in the Trump campaign’s opening round. It is clear that he believes fighting this issue is the key to securing his client’s innocence. He told the jury that nothing prosecutors presented directly indicated whether Trump had criminal intent to cover up another crime, which is necessary to make document falsification a felony. . That’s because nothing Trump intended was criminal, Branch said.

He insisted that Trump took completely legal steps to protect himself and his family from “all sorts of salacious allegations,” and explained that “the signing of non-disclosure agreements is completely legal.” He also told jurors, “There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election.”

Judge Blanche then tried to suggest that anything done for Trump that may not have been scripted was attributed to Trump’s lawyers, but prosecutors disputed that account. After it was recited, Judge Juan Marchand presumably removed the statement from the record. lawyer problem. (The judge ruled before trial that that defense was not available here.) The number of objections was granted, perhaps the most I’ve seen in over 30 years of practicing law. The highest percentage of objections to the opening of the trial were approved.

Undaunted, Mr. Blanche continued to attack the idea that Mr. Trump even knew how payments to Mr. Cohen were allegedly misclassified in the documents. “Mr. Trump had nothing to do with the bill,” he said. Because Trump didn’t know about it, he couldn’t have broken any laws and wasn’t trying to cover up another crime, Blanche suggested.

And the prosecution was left with a fatally flawed witness, continued Mr. Blanche. He instructed jurors that they “cannot make a serious decision about Donald Trump.” [by] Michael Cohen, whose “entire financial livelihood depends on the destruction of President Trump” and who has pleaded guilty to perjury. Blanche also slammed Daniels, claiming he was unbelievable. He told the jury that to convict Trump they would have to accept testimony from Cohen and Daniels, which would prove unacceptable.

Like Mr. Hicks, I interviewed Mr. Cohen for impeachment and found that his story had not changed at all in these respects. But the jury didn’t know that, and Blanche did what was necessary to plant the seed. He was effective and every bit as good as Colangelo.

Still, the evidence and the law are still firmly on the side of the DA’s office, and it would be unwise for Mr. Trump not to know that.

I was sitting in the aisle and President Trump passed me within a few feet of me on his way home at the end of the day. As he left the courtroom, he was hunched over and grim-faced, the lines and contours of his face as deep as a desert landscape.

The weight of that day lay not only in what he heard, but also in its symbolism. For example, it’s not easy for a former president to stand up for a judge or jury. He’s used to people standing up for him. All of this must be a huge burden.