By Emmanuel Nduka
The defence of former US President Donald Trump opted out of the Manhattan “hush money” case on Tuesday without him taking the stand, as the case enters its final stages.
The decision which was an apparent climbdown by Trump, who had repeatedly vowed that he would testify to clear his name, came at the end of more than four weeks of evidence from prosecutors, during which they called 20 witnesses including Stormy Daniels, the porn actor allegedly paid off by Trump in exchange for her silence over a claimed sexual encounter.
Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who organised and facilitated payments totalling $130,000 to Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, also testified for several days.
Financial Times reported that Trump’s defence team, which had sought to undermine Cohen’s credibility during cross-examination, rested its case after calling just two witnesses: a paralegal working with defence counsel, and Robert Costello, a former legal adviser to Cohen and a Trump ally.
Costello testified that Cohen had repeatedly confided in him that “President Trump knew nothing about these payments [to Daniels] — that he did this on his own”. The evidence threatened to undermine Manhattan prosecutors’ claim that the former fixer was acting on behalf of his boss’s 2016 election campaign.
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He further claimed Cohen had told him in 2018, while under federal investigation over offences related to the Daniels payments: “I swear to God Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump.”
The former federal prosecutor was told off by Justice Juan Merchan on Monday for rolling his eyes and mocking the judge’s rulings sotto voce with exclamations like “ridiculous” and “jeez”.
One Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, had previously suggested that he might call one additional witness, election law expert Brad Smith, but declined to do so after the judge restricted the scope of that testimony.
Meanwhile, closing arguments are set to begin next Tuesday, after which the jury will begin its deliberations.
77-year-old Trump faces 34 charges of falsifying business records. He has pleaded not guilty and decried the proceedings as a politically motivated witch hunt.
While the testimony went on for weeks, Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has been forced to limit his presidential campaigning and spend hours sitting at the defence table in the Manhattan criminal courthouse, which he referred to as an “icebox”.
He often appeared to sleep through hours of testimony, stirring at moments of high drama.
