Back here in the zone, and we're going to New
York City now and talking,
of course, to our reporters here that are just watching
these closing arguments as they happen in real time at
today's Trump's hush money trial.
Six weeks and more than 20 witness testimony.
The jury deliberations are set to happen very soon.
Short after these arguments and then they'll get instructions then
they'll deliberate
supposedly this week so pretty soon we could have a
verdict here.
Our Tom Fitzgerald live with us now
Fitz both lawyers here trying to put a bow on
this and hopefully the jury believes their side.
What do we know so far?
Well, this has certainly been an odyssey and you know,
today is both sides to lawyers last chance
to get into the heads of these jurors before they
head into that jury room to ultimately make a decision
on this case.
Now this started off this morning with team Trump.
Todd Blanche, the president's lead attorney in this case,
held the courtroom for hours as he basically went point
by point in his view,
dismantling the prosecution's case. Now,
Blanche seemingly describing this as a what he called a
paper case in a book caping case and,
you know, suggesting that the jury really hadn't seen any,
you know, paperwork or bookkeeping that directly ties Donald Trump,
in his view, to the
34 charges that are alleged in this case.
He also, Blanche took really sharp aim today and
arguably what was the star witness in this case for
the prosecution side,
Of course, that would be former Trump fixer Michael Cohen
at one point.
Get this, Blanche called him the gloat.
The gloat stands for greatest liar of all time.
So, you know, you can take that for what it's
worth.
It went on like that,
you know, for hours today.
Eventually prosecutors were able to start their closing arguments as
well.
Prosecutor Michael Colangelo just basically dismissing everything that Blanche said
that prosecution closing is still under way right now.
We expect that to continue for for a while.
So, Tom, you've, you've listen,
you've seen all kinds of things throughout your years of,
of, of reporting. Is this case,
do you think that the American people are taking this
case as
seriously as they should? Is it,
does it carry as much weight?
It's a former president on trial?
Or is this thing just becoming
maybe just a footnote to what's going to be the
Donald Trump's legacy?
Well, you know, that's an interesting question.
And I'll say this, anybody
who covers politics, who's tells you they've seen this before,
they have it, nobody has seen this before.
This has never happened before.
You know, we could possibly be seeing the first felony
conviction in U.S.
history of a former United States president.
That's never happened before. So all of this,
you know, from day one right up until now has
been,
you know, history precedent setting now as to whether or
not people are paying attention to this.
There's some indication that we had from some recent polling
that they have get this,
there was a, a Quinnipiac college poll.
They looked at this, they said
46% of voters believe that Trump did something illegal,
29% did he something unethical,
but not particularly illegal. And
21% said they don't think he did anything wrong.
So, you know, this is a situation where you've got
really two courts here,
you know, the courtroom in New York
and the court of public opinion.
And, you know, while the court in New York is
going to render a decision one way or another whether
they're going to convict,
whether they're going to, you know,
acquit, whether there's going to be a mistrial,
this other court, you know,
the court of public opinion,
we don't know how that's going to turn out because
this election still hasn't fully rolled out.
Yeah. And we know that the president has many times
gone against the judge,
saying you're not allowing me to campaign ahead of this
election.
He is to some degree,
use this trial to campaign in a Mr.
Trump way, if you will.
We have seen, forget about what's happened inside the court,
Tom. We've seen a circus really play out outside this
courthouse.
A man sadly losing his life after lighting himself on
fire.
We've not seen the former first lady show up to
court.
But today he had a strong presence of his family,
including Tiffany Trump, there at the courthouse.
And then we've got Hollywood showing up today.
What happened?
Yeah, Well, maybe not Hollywood,
but Tribeca was certainly there in the form of Robert
De Niro.
Now, look, it's no surprise.
Robert De Niro, the actor has been blasting Donald Trump
for years.
What was interesting about this today
was that De Niro's appearance,
along with two former police officers who fought off rioters
on January 6th at the US Capitol.
That would be. Michael Fanon was a former DC police
officer.
And US Capitol Police officer,
former Officer Harry Dunn, who recently lost a primary to
be a Maryland Democratic congressman,
all three of them showed up outside the courthouse today,
you know, to blast Donald Trump
on the insurrection. They didn't really have much to say
on this actual trial,
but this was a warning about Donald Trump that it
was.
This was to get the insurrection,
you know, back on, you know,
front page, if you will.
The interesting thing about this,
though, that this wasn't quite,
you know, just coming out of nowhere.
This was an official event by the Biden Harris campaign
today.
And that's noteworthy because coming on the last day of
these closing arguments,
you know, we're about to enter this phase where the
jury's about to start making these deliberations.
This this presidential campaign of Joe Biden's has been absolutely
silent on this trial almost since the day it began.
So to come out on the day of closing arguments,
you know, with one of the biggest stars in Hollywood
and also two police officers who fought
during the insurrection is notable that the Biden campaign now
is trying to put a political focus on this as
well as the the legal proceedings that have been going
on for weeks now. All right,
Tom Fitzgerald for us. We'll see if
if that effort works come November.