Scandal-plagued former President Donald Trump’s infamous Manhattan Hush Money criminal trial has been saturating the media headlines for weeks now, as Americans wait on bated breath to find out whether or not a former United States president will be criminally charged with multiple felony counts for the first time in the country’s history.
With the bombshell trial on pause for the Memorial Day weekend, a panel of Politico correspondents who have been on the ground, inside Judge Merchan’s Manhattan courtroom throughout the proceedings gave their analysis on where they see this trial going in the end — and one analyst believes that a guilty verdict against Donald J. Trump could very likely hinge on one piece of “dream evidence” in the form of an “amazing document” that the prosecution has against the former president.
Politico’s Josh Gerstein suggested that the bombshell testimony of Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen — who has been personally implicated in the infamous hush money scandal — could ultimately carry less weight with the jury than the cold, hard documents being presented by the prosecution that details the money trail that traces 6 figures back to Stormy Daniels and the 2016 Trump Campaign.
When Politico’s Ankush Khardori asked what specifically stood out, Gerstein said, “Having sat through a good chunk of that trial, I think, at the end of the day — despite a lot of questions about Michael Cohen’s credibility, and other things that aren’t clear in the trial — that the basic facts of what happened are going to be pretty well established in terms of who has paid what amounts and when.”
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
Gerstein noted that it was “pretty clear” that Trump signed “most of these $35,000 reimbursement checks to Cohen,” adding, “We have this almost amazing document where the Trump financial people are sketching out what this $420,000 to Michael Cohen represents.”
“It’s sort of a dream piece of evidence for prosecutors,” the legal analyst goes on to explain. “I think that that part of the case is going to be pretty well nailed down.”
He also further suggested that the Trump team’s defense tactic of blaming the entire scandal on former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg by suggesting that Weisselberg backchanneled these payments while keeping the then-presidential candidate in the dark was a non-starter, at best.
“But the idea that this was totally freelanced by Weisselberg — the prosecution tried to make that sound basically insane, and that tends to diminish the significance of the actual alleged meeting with Cohen and Trump.”
You can read Politico’s full analysis here.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
