Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
The defense lawyers signaled throughout the trial that they would push an argument that Todd Blanche is making right now: That the documents weren’t false because Michael Cohen really was doing legal work for Trump in 2017. He’s casting aspersions on the government’s theory of Cohen being repaid for his payment to Stormy Daniels, saying that if that were so, Cohen would have been doing unremunerated legal work.
That’s not a good argument, imo. Cohen said he did about 10 hours of work for Trumpie after the election. Since everything he said was a lie, in the defense telling, the defense has to prove that lie. Cohen got 11 checks, monthly, for $35,000 each, that we have documentary evidence for. That’s a helluva lotta legal work. If that defense argument were true, and since Blanche has framed this as a “paper case” the defense would have introduced docs showing detailed invoices. They did not.
