Former President Donald Trump’s legal team began giving final arguments to a Manhattan jury on Tuesday morning as the trial over alleged hush-money payments comes to a close. 

Trump’s defense argued that government prosecutors had presented no evidence of a criminal conspiracy, largely dependent on unreliable testimony from ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records over alleged payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.

During his testimony earlier in the trial, Cohen admitted that he secretly recorded Trump and that he stole tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump Organization.

“You cannot convict President Trump,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said. “You cannot convict President Trump of any crime beyond a reasonable doubt based on the words of Michael Cohen.”

Blanche added that the secret recording Cohen made did not actually show Trump discussing payments to McDougal, as the prosecution had argued. “You don’t know about the integrity of this file and this recording,” he told the jury. 

The lawyer also argued that Cohen did not tell Trump about a $130,000 payment to Daniels.

“There’s no way that you can find that President Trump knew about this payment at the time it was made without believing the words of Michael Cohen, period. And you cannot — you cannot — believe his words,” Blanche said. 

Blanche also argued that the government was trying to create a criminal conspiracy over documents filed in 2017 when the alleged conspiracy was supposed to aid his 2016 presidential campaign. 

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“The charges relate to documents in 2017, and the government wants you to believe that President Trump did these things with his records to conceal efforts to promote his successful candidacy in 2016, the year before,” Blanche said “Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people working together to help somebody win. You have to find that this effort was done by unlawful means.”

Trump, who has said that the charges brought against him are an attempt to interfere with his 2024 presidential campaign, has been limited in speaking out about the trial due to a gag order placed on him by Judge Juan Merchan. 

In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump called the gag order placed on him illegal and unconstitutional and said the whole prosecution was “the Biden White House at work.”

The Biden campaign held a press event with actor Robert De Niro outside the courthouse on Tuesday, during which the actor railed against the former president.

Messages show Hunter Biden proposed a meeting between his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, and a Chinese business partner during a trip to a memorial service for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The House Ways and Means Committee released the exchange last week as part of a trove of records obtained from IRS agents who became whistleblowers and raised concerns about how a federal investigation into Hunter Biden was being conducted.

“Can you meet this evening early,” Hunter Biden messaged Lui Yadong, an executive at the Chinese Community Party-linked energy company known as CEFC, on the Chinese messaging app WeChat in mid-December 2017.

“My father will be in New York also and he wants me to attend the Sandyhook [sic] memorial service with him and I would like him to meet you along with my uncle and then you and I can talk let me know if that works,” he added.

Within an hour, Liu responded, “No Problem. Pls let me know where and when to meet.”

As noted by the New York Post, it was not clear whether the meeting actually took place, but Joe Biden was photographed at an event marking the five-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting at the Plaza Hotel.

Congressional investigators are examining Hunter Biden’s contacts, including in China, as part of a corruption-focused impeachment inquiry into now-President Joe Biden. The elder Biden has denied being financially involved in his son’s foreign business dealings.

CEFC previously drew attention with the disclosure of a WhatsApp message in which Hunter Biden appeared to shake down another executive at the company, Henry Zhao, for money in the summer of 2017.

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“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Hunter wrote to Zhao.

Less than ten days later, CEFC-associated accounts wired more than $5 million to accounts associated with Hunter Biden.

In congressional testimony this year, Hunter Biden claimed that he messaged the wrong Zhao in the summer of 2017 because he was “drunk and probably high.”

Another impeachment witness, former Biden family business partner Tony Bobulinski, claimed that Hunter Biden lied to lawmakers about his communications with CEFC.

Hunter Biden separately faces two criminal indictments that arose out of the federal investigation into his conduct. The first son has pleaded not guilty to gun and tax charges. His gun-related trial is expected to begin next week in Delaware.