Mr. Cohen testified that the meeting had occurred in Trump Tower in January 2017, just days before Mr. Trump was sworn in as president. Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen told the jury, approved of the arrangement and knew that the records were false.
Mr. Blanche cast that testimony as a figment of Mr. Cohen’s revenge-fueled imagination, arguing that it was not “corroborated by anything, there’s not a shred of evidence.” Mr. Steinglass, however, was expected to highlight the handwritten notes from the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer.
Ultimately, Mr. Steinglass argued, the case comes down to “a conspiracy and a coverup,” a plot that began in summer 2015, when Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Cohen and Mr. Pecker, the tabloid publisher, to Trump Tower. They met, Mr. Steinglass said, to hatch a scheme to suppress negative stories about Mr. Trump.
The stories focused on Mr. Trump’s sex life, not with his wife, but with a former Playboy model and with the porn star, Ms. Daniels.
Calling The National Enquirer “a covert arm” of the 2016 Trump campaign, Mr. Steinglass noted that the supermarket tabloid had bought and buried the model’s story of an affair with Mr. Trump. And although Mr. Pecker did not pay Ms. Daniels to keep quiet, he notified Mr. Cohen that she was shopping her story in the final stretch of the campaign.
“This scheme, cooked up by these men, at this time, could very well be what got President Trump elected,” Mr. Steinglass said.
Kate Christobek, Jesse McKinley, Michael Gold Wesley Parnell and Susanne Craig contributed reporting.
