Former President Donald Trump said prosecutors in the costly and unprecedented NY v. Trump trial are “proving” his point that the legal system is weaponized against him. 

“‘This is becoming a three-card Monte game on: Where is the crime?’ Smart guy. Where’s the crime?” Trump said Thursday outside the Manhattan courtroom, reading insight from Fox News contributor and legal scholar Jonathan Turley before reading excerpts from other experts. “Mike Davis: ‘The U.S. would sanction a country for doing this.’ I think that’s good. I think that’s good. Steve Hilton: ‘It seems that every single day these proceedings go on, the judge or the prosecutor just go out of their way to prove Trump’s point.’”

Trump added after reading the excerpt: “…They are proving my point when you think. That’s why I write some of these things that are very sad.”

Trump has continually slammed the case as a “sham” and that presiding Judge Juan Merchan is “corrupt” and “conflicted,” appearing to refer to the judge’s familial ties to the Democratic Party. Trump has also lambasted the case as “lawfare” promoted by the Biden administration to hurt his chances of succeeding in the 2024 presidential election. 

NY V. TRUMP: JURY TO CONTINUE DELIBERATIONS FOR 2ND DAY IN UNPRECEDENTED CASE

Trump is back in court Thursday as the jury continues deliberations regarding whether Trump is guilty of falsifying 34 business records. Prosecutors worked to prove that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election to quiet her claims of an alleged affair with Trump in 2006. 

NY V. TRUMP: DEFENSE SAYS PROSECUTORS ‘DID NOT MEET THE BURDEN OF PROOF,’ FORMER PRESIDENT IS ‘INNOCENT’

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all counts and denied an affair with Daniels. 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump exits Trump Tower to attend his criminal trial over charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, at Manhattan criminal court, in New York City, U.S., May 30, 2024.  (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)

Amid the trial, Trump has repeatedly noted that security surrounding the trial has prevented most people from coming within blocks of the courthouse, which he again cited Thursday while lamenting the trial is costing the city “millions.” 

TRUMP URGES JUDGE MERCHAN TO ‘SAVE HIS REPUTATION’ BY DISMISSING TRIAL

“It’s a disgrace. The millions and millions of dollars that are spent daily on this case. Outside, it looks like it’s Fort Knox … I’ve never seen so many policemen. Now, with Columbia University, you can plant a tent right in front of the main door no problem. NYU, just put your tent, don’t worry about it … But I just want to say that this is a very sad day for America. The whole world is watching and it’s a very sad day for New York,” he said. 

“It’s all rigged, the whole system is rigged.” 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s children, Tiffany Trump, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump with his wife Lara sit next  to Trump in a front row,  as defense lawyer Todd Blanche presents closing arguments during Trump’s criminal trial on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan state court in New York City, U.S. May 28, 2024 in this courtroom sketch. (REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg )

“The outside world is watching and the outside world is just not going to bring their business to New York. And that’s going to cost the city trillions and the state trillions and trillions of dollars. Businesses are leaving and people are fleeing,” Trump added before heading into the courtroom. 

NY V. TRUMP: PROSECUTION SAYS THEY HAVE PRESENTED ‘POWERFUL EVIDENCE’ AGAINST FORMER PRESIDENT

Single and The City began in New York City where founder Amber Soletti was working in the beauty industry and struggling to find her person.  (iStock)

Court kicked off at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, when Merchan again read his jury instructions after the jury sent two notes to the judge on Wednesday. In New York criminal cases, juries are not allowed to receive printed copies of jury instructions or witness transcripts. 

Trump is required to remain in the courtroom as the jury considers the case in the event they send a note to the judge. 

A verdict could be reached as soon as Thursday. 

Democracy isn’t free.

Tell that to the more than half the states that have banned or limited donations to the roughly 8,000 county and municipal offices that run our elections.

The beleaguered public servants who make it possible for us to cast ballots, whether for school boards or the presidency, are already woefully underfinanced. Now the Big Lie that won’t die — that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump — is making that underfunding worse.

Red (and reddish) states have bought into the obnoxiously dubbed “Zuckerbucks” conspiracy, a far-right falsehood that in 2020, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to election offices not for the stated reason — to pay for costly protections against COVID-19 — but to help Democrats win. (Just how they supposedly achieved that the conspiracists don’t say.)

Election offices’ need for the money is evident from coast to coast. A 2021 study by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab found that the U.S. investment in our voting system falls “near the bottom of spending for public services, ranking at approximately the same levels as spending by local governments to maintain parking facilities.”

Yet maintaining parking lots isn’t anything like contending with the complexity and costs of modernizing and securing voting machines; investing in better ballot counting and voter registration technology; staffing and running polling centers; combating disinformation, AI scams and cyberattacks, and protecting against the threats of violence that have become a fact of life for election officials and their staffs in the Trump years.

Despite the crying needs of voting administrators, 28 states — 22 red ones and six swing states — have prohibited or restricted philanthropic funding for their election offices since 2020. Of those, only Pennsylvania paired its ban with offsetting state funds. It’s a double-whammy: no private money, yet skimpy public funds. As much as we might prefer that our elections aren’t subsidized by private interests, if states aren’t going to pony up more public dollars, let the charity flow.

States and local governments have historically had the most responsibility for voting under our decentralized election system, and the federal government chips in pitifully little. Yet MAGA Republicans in Congress want to get in on the anti-Zuckerbucks craze and extend the ban on election-administration donations nationwide. As early as next month, the House could vote on an “election integrity” package that’s anything but, and which includes a so-called End Zuckerbucks Act.

Fortunately, if it were to pass in the House, the bill would almost certainly be buried in the Senate. But that still leaves the state bans in effect across wide swaths of the country — including such pivotal and hotly contested states as Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia.

“What we’ve seen is not only is there not an investment in election departments in a way that ultimately will make them successful and keep our election process secure, but also a really concerted effort to cut off other avenues” of support, Tiana Epps-Johnson, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life, told me.

The center, whose mission is to promote election modernization and civic engagement, distributed most of the $420 million that Zuckerberg and Chan donated in 2020. The grants went to more than 2,500 government entities in nearly every state and Washington, D.C. — every election office that applied. The nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research doled out the rest.

To put the Zuckerberg-Chan gift in perspective, it was nearly eight times greater than the $55 million that the federal government is providing to election offices this year. The grants, as advertised, mostly paid for COVID-response measures necessary to safely conduct the 2020 elections: to buy masks and other personal protective equipment, supply and handle many more mail-in ballots, hire and train additional staff and reach out to wary voters.

But the funds covered other expenses as well: In Clark County, Nev., home to Las Vegas, election administrators used grant money to order in meals for vote counters who feared going outside because of the armed protesters there, according to Epps-Johnson. And some offices used the donated funds to build ramps and make other adjustments for disabled voters, finally putting their facilities in compliance with the three-decades-old Americans with Disabilities Act.

Local officials welcomed the help, of course. But state and national Republican groups took to the courts and the Federal Election Commission, alleging an illegal conspiracy to give Democrats an election advantage. The usually polarized FEC, evenly divided between Republican and Democratic commissioners, voted unanimously in mid-2022 against every complaint, finding “no reason to believe” the allegations against Zuckerberg, Chan and the nonprofits.

In fact, the Republican complainants lost everywhere except one place: Republican-controlled state legislatures. Politicians, unlike the courts and the FEC, aren’t constrained by truth and facts. The nonprofits dispersing Zuckerberg and Chan money “effectively commandeered the machinery of the actual elections,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lied in 2022, hailing a law he signed banning private grants and making other election changes stemming from conspiracy theories.

What’s confounding is that Republicans arguably are short-changing themselves in short-changing election offices. Their base of rural and working class voters could be especially inconvenienced — and perhaps dissuaded from voting — by fewer polling places and ballot drop boxes, for example, and by restrictions on early voting and voting by mail. A coalition of voter advocacy groups and election administrators is pressing Congress now for $400 million, pretty much matching what they once got from Zuckerberg. Yet the MAGA-fied House is unlikely to be receptive.

Yes, democracy isn’t free. Then again, we’ve learned the hard way: Republicans aren’t invested in democracy.

@jackiekcalmes

The sound of laughter was revealing.

Inside the media room at the hush money trial, say those who were there, many of the reporters openly chuckled when the prosecutor took jabs at Donald Trump. They found that quite amusing.

For all the craziness surrounding the first criminal trial of a former president, the closing arguments – and the judge’s confusing instructions – packed some surprises. Now the media’s biggest challenge is filling air time and column inches – let’s bring in ex-jurors from other cases! – while waiting for the seven men and five women to deliver a verdict.

TRUMP STRATEGY: HITTING BLUE AREAS, COURTING MINORITIES AND UNFRIENDLY AUDIENCES

The consensus of those who were there is that Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, who has little experience in such cases, spoke in a monotone EXCEPT FOR OCCASIONALLY RAISING HIS VOICE. At least his summation lasted only three hours.

Josh Steinglass of the Manhattan D.A.’s officer was far more passionate and animated, but he spoke for an eye-glazing five hours. Who on earth thought that was a smart idea? The jurors clearly lost focus as he got into the weeds of calls and emails, then repeated much of it, and kept them there until 8 p.m.   

How much information is the jury supposed to absorb?

That was equally true yesterday as Judge Juan Merchan spent an hour on the crucial jury instructions that only lawyers could love.

If someone testified falsely, you can disregard his entire account.

Michael Cohen, whose credibility was savaged by the defense, is an “accomplice.”

IT FEELS ‘HORRIBLE’ WAITING FOR JURY TO DELIBERATE: CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY

The jury can’t convict on Cohen’s word alone, but can use his testimony if it’s corroborated with other evidence.

The extent of the defendant’s participation doesn’t matter as long as there’s a “general intent to defraud.” Ah, but intent does not require premeditation.

The defendant must be found to have falsified business records or caused them to be falsified.

Former President Trump sits in the courtroom during his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 21, 2024, in New York City.  (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

As long as the jury agrees on the facts, they can use different reasoning, whether it applies to, say, election fraud or taxes. 

And the mystery crime that supposedly boosts this into felony territory? A violation of New York election law, about which we’d heard almost nothing.

Whew. Got that?

JUDGE MERCHAN ‘MUDDIED UP THE WATERS’ TO TRY AND MAKE TRUMP TRIAL A ‘VERY COMPLICATED CASE’: JUDGE JEANINE PIRRO

It comes down to the jurors just using their common sense.

Todd Blanche scored some points, such as branding Cohen the GLOAT (Greatest Liar of All Time). But he left several gaping holes.

The defense lawyer began by saying that Trump and Stormy Daniels have repeatedly denied that a sexual encounter took place in 2006. Well, Stormy did lie about it in exchange for the money from Cohen, but she just as obviously now insists there was a hookup, as she testified.

Blanche said the president may have been too busy to focus on the 11 reimbursement checks he signed for Cohen. He argued that there was no email showing a conspiracy – uh, even incompetent criminals who have seen a couple of mob movies know you don’t leave a paper trail.

Blanche said the National Enquirer didn’t engage in catch-and-kill deals with the Trump campaign – of course they did, while the term wasn’t used, and that was confirmed by David Pecker.

The biggest shortcoming: The Trump defense didn’t address the emails, texts, Signal messages and banking records that back up Cohen’s account – because they don’t have an alternative version of events.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, walks out of a Manhattan courthouse after testifying before a grand jury, in New York, United States on March 15, 2023.  ((Photo by Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images))

The prosecution tried to knock down Blanche’s argument that Cohen did legal work for Trump and his wife in 2017 which the president might have thought was legitimate. But Cohen devoted less than 10 hours to that work and, Steinglass said, had spent more time being cross-examined at the trial.

Yes, Cohen lied over the years, Steinglass said, yes he stole from the Trump Organization, but now he’s just a “tour guide” for the evidence. Right.

The prosecutor said Trump’s team had “shamed” Stormy and suggested her story has not changed over the years. Of course it has!

SUBSCRIBE TO HOWIE’S MEDIA BUZZMETER PODCAST, A RIFF ON THE DAY’S HOTTEST STORIES

Steinglass did rebut the argument that there was no panic as the media pursued the porn star after the “Access Hollywood” tape by citing Hope Hicks’ saying they all felt Trump could lose the election.

The most absurd moment for the prosecution came when he hypothetically reenacted a 90-second call in which Cohen claims he both complained about harassing calls from a 14-year-old and discussed the Stormy situation with Trump. Only took 46 seconds! But if you don’t buy that, Steinglass said, maybe Cohen got the date wrong.

Oh, and who in the Biden campaign thought it was a brilliant idea for Robert De Niro to show up at the courthouse and start slamming Trump?