CNN host Jake Tapper agreed with attorneys on Tuesday that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has not proven former President Donald Trump’s guilt during his trial.
Trump is on trial facing 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records pertaining to reimbursing his former attorney Michael Cohen for a payment he made for a nondisclosure agreement with porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. Tapper said Bragg’s team has not sufficiently proven that Trump has the requisite awareness of the payment for a jury to find him guilty, with attorneys on the panel backing up that there is reasonable doubt. (RELATED: Trump’s Attorney Made Swiss Cheese Out Of Michael Cohen’s Testimony, Raising Questions Of Perjury)
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“It‘s not even about that he didn’t know about the reimbursement, it’s that he didn’t know that the bookkeeper used the drop-down menu to say legal fees, that that was not something that Donald Trump said, ‘yes. Use that drop-down menu so that we can conceal this and lie,'” former Trump attorney Tim Parlatore said.
“What Tim just said … to me makes sense because I don’t know that they have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that … even if you believe the prosecution’s theory of the case … I don’t know that they’ve have proven that Donald Trump knew,” Tapper responded.
Defense attorney Randy Zelin told CNN earlier on Tuesday that “There is reasonable doubt all over this case,” in part pointing to the lack of evidence of Trump’s awareness of Cohen’s actions. Cohen admitted during his testimony that he stole from his former boss.
“They have not, they absolutely have not … Time and time again, people keep talking about what might be missing or what’s not quite there,” criminal defense lawyer Brandi Harden said. “That is, in fact reasonable doubt when things are missing, when there are facts that to want to hear and you look to the prosecution and say, so where is that thing that means unfortunately here, he should be acquitted. And I think that because there are certain things that the government has to prove here, certain specifics that he knew, he had specific knowledge of these things. Those are just things I think that have fallen by the wayside. They just have not established those things in this particular case.”
Cohen testified that he and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg met with the former president in January 2017, where Trump approved payments to him totaling $420,000 over a 12-month period. Bragg did not call Weisselberg as a witness during the trial.
Tapper referenced books Trump wrote suggesting he had knowledge of all payments that took place in his company.
“It’s circumstantial. It’s inferential. It’s asking the jury to draw conclusions over books that were probably ghostwritten,” former principal deputy assistant attorney general Tom Dupree said. “I mean, look, my problem with the prosecutors’ case, the way they have put this on, is they needed to come in with a Hemingway-like presentation. Instead, they came with a Tolstoy-like presentation, one that was too long, one that was unnecessarily complex and frankly, one that may well have omitted the critical facts they need to prove that Donald Trump committed these felonies. I think that‘s one reason why the prosecutors this morning made this stunning prediction that it could take them four and a half hours to present a closing argument, which should have been a major red flag to anyone listening, that if you take, if you need four and a half hours to present your case, it’s too long and too complicated for a jury.
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