Trump trial live updates: Prosecution says ‘documents don’t lie’ as Cohen’s credibility questioned

Steinglass notes that it’s “no coincidence” that the sex happened in 2006 but wasn’t the subject of an NDA until 10 years later.

His “primary concern was not his family,” as the defense has argued because he would’ve quashed it sooner, “but the election.”

Trump didn’t sign the NDA himself.

“That’s kind of the whole point. To keep him away from the documentation,” says Steinglass.

“The objective of the NDA was to keep Stormy Daniels quiet, period, and they had enough to do that.”

The business narrative in the Know Your Customer form for Cohen’s LLC notes it is for “real estate” consulting.

Then the purpose of the wire transfer: “retainer”.

“This wasn’t a retainer. This was a payoff.”

The deal was signed on October 28: “11 days before Election Day.”

Just a hilarious amount of calls.

Then, on October 26, Cohen called Trump twice – all in just half an hour before Cohen opened the account to wire cash to Keith Davidson for the Stormy Daniels deal.

“That’s pretty damning,” Steinglass says.

All of the messages and back-and-forth scrambling between Michael Cohen, David Pecker, Dylan Howard and Keith Davidson, and then Cohen’s messages to his banker Garry Farro to set up the shell company have all been displayed chronologically. Steinglass reads them in part and supplements them by reading parts of screenshots of their trial testimony to give it all extra context.

We’ve seen all of this in parts but during individual testimony. A lot of the prosecution’s summations have been just a straightforward but compelling story that shows the makings of the transaction.

Steinglass moves through the timeline: The Washington Post published the news about the Access Hollywood tape on October 7, Cohen was in London at the time and emailed Bannon asking “Whose doing damage control here?“, Trump posted a “mealy-mouthed” response on his campaign website dismissing the tape as “locker room banter”

On October 8, he tweeted out a video to “stop the bleeding” and tried to distinguish between words and actions by contrasting himself to Bill Clinton.

That day, Cohen emailed Dylan Howard at AMI to remove an old story about Trump as “Playboy Man” from Radar Online.

“They were privately scrubbing the internet and chasing down rumors” to ensure their attempts to “spin” the tape “didn’t backfire,” Steinglass says.

Cohen also called Trump and they spoke for nearly eight minutes to strategize and spin the comments as locker room talk. There was a debate the next day and Trump was immediately questioned about the tape.

The tape and other allegations from women could have cost him the election “and the campaign knew it,” Steinglass says.

Steinglass moves on to the Access Hollywood tape, when “all of a student there was a video of a presidential nominee” talking about “grabbing women by the genitals”.

The defense tried to argue that the idea that the campaign was in a tailspin came from Cohen, but Steinglass notes it was Hope Hicks who explained how they were in damage control mode.