Bombast vs bookkeeping: how Trump failed to sway a jury of his peers

As Manhattan prosecutor Joshua Steinglass entered the fifth hour of his summation on Tuesday, he thanked a panel of weary New Yorkers for “sticking with him” while he presented Donald Trump’s incriminating accounting records, invoice by invoice, cheque by cheque.

A couple of jurors — who had already sat through more than five weeks of often monotonous testimony — managed wry smiles in response. Reactions in the gallery, chock full with representatives from the world’s media, were less charitable. “If I were them, I would acquit Trump just out of spite,” one journalist hissed.

One of the most watched trials in history, which was to turn the former and perhaps future US commander-in-chief into a convict, was at that moment yielding precious few good headlines.

Earlier, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche had delivered more bombast, in a style many Americans associate with his client. Prosecution witness Michael Cohen, a former Trump fixer turned arch enemy, had committed “per-juh-ry”, Blanche cried, furrowing his brow as he emphasised each syllable. A character assassination ensued with tabloid-friendly soundbites — Blanche called Cohen a “thief” who “literally stole on his way out of the door” and who was driven by “outright hatred” of his former boss.

The outbursts had more in common with the performances of defence attorneys in the TV legal dramas of which Trump is said to be fond, than with the arguments routinely deployed by trial lawyers in the Lower Manhattan courts. There is rarely much mileage to be gained by lambasting the prosecution — it is much more convincing to calmly pick apart inconsistencies.

Blanche, who consulted with Trump on trial strategy, could be forgiven for thinking this baroque approach was worth a shot. A few feet away from him at the defence table was a man who had conquered this city, and then the White House, by manufacturing outrage and attacking rivals, and who continued to think it politically expedient to berate the judge, his daughter and jurors.

Yet it was Steinglass who ultimately had the better grasp on the kind of argument that would win over 12 of Trump’s peers, when presented with a historic, and perhaps election-defining choice.

Yes, the odds were always in prosecutors’ favour — the borough’s jury pool is overwhelmingly Democratic. When quizzed ahead of the trial, some among the dozen picked revealed they got their news from left-leaning outlets; one even said she didn’t like Trump’s “persona” before insisting she would be able to remain impartial nonetheless.

But there was nothing inevitable about the conviction Steinglass and his colleagues secured. The precise contours of the underlying crimes with which Trump was charged remain a mystery even to keen observers of the case, and must have been somewhat perplexing to the jury, who asked Justice Juan Merchan to repeat a significant chunk of his 55-page instructions on Thursday morning, before coming to a unanimous verdict.

Then there was the matter of the less than ideal witnesses for the prosecution: Stormy Daniels, a porn actor who has revelled in describing Donald Trump’s penis on cable TV, and Michael Cohen, convicted of lying to Congress and a vituperative Trump critic. Cohen’s account of arranging to pay off Daniels was ripped apart by Blanche on cross-examination, after he failed to mention the main subject of a crucial call to Trump’s bodyguard regarding the alleged “catch and kill” scheme.

The sole courtroom intervention by Trump, who declined to testify in his own defence, was to mumble “bullshit” and shake his head when Daniels recounted swatting his behind with a rolled-up magazine. But there was no mistaking his pleasure at Blanche’s theatrics, especially when the lawyer stood up to register frequent objections to the court’s treatment of the man he always pointedly called “President” Trump.

If these interventions stuck in the jury’s mind, they did so to Trump’s disadvantage. The seven men and five women tasked with deciding the Republican front-runner’s fate — some of whom took copious notes throughout the trial — seemed as attentive to Steinglass’s bookkeeping seminar as they had been to Daniels’s allegation that Trump failed to wear a condom during their “brief” tryst.

Perhaps, at least on the densely inhabited island of Manhattan that knows him so well, Donald Trump’s shtick had grown tiresome. As one potential juror screened back in April put it when asked for his views of the former president, “He is a New Yorker, I am a New Yorker . . . We don’t really get star-stuck or really care about anything like that.”

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