To drive home the loyalty point, Steinglass pulls up another Trump book excerpt:

'This woman was very disloyal, and now I go out of my way to make her life miserable.'

He displays one of these 'attacks,' a Trump tweet about Cohen, and Steinglass says the message, a warning, was clear: Cooperate and you will face the wrath of Donald Trump—objection, overruled.

1/Blanche has 3 buckets of reasonable doubt
-The documents aren't fraudulent

-Trump didn't have the intent to commit crimes, he was too busy running the country

-Michael Cohen is a liar & without him there's not enough

Trump has never, that I can think of-someone may be able to correct me-seriously criticized Pecker. Pecker has all the dirt is one possible explanation; it's very odd in the context of this trial

If Trump is convicted, he will turn on his lawyers along with the judge, the jury & the witnesses. To the extent the lawyers let Trump guide strategic decisions (like not criticizing David Pecker or addressing ex 35 & 36 directly), that won't matter. He will blame it all on them.

Like all fixers, Steinglass resumes, Cohen knew where the bodies were buried, and it was essential to keep him loyal. Within days of the FBI raid, Trump reassured Cohen over the phone, then later via messages from surrogates.

After brief sidebar to discuss scheduling again, Steinglass returns to the podium.

You guys good to go a little bit longer? Steinglass asks the jury, getting some half-hearted nods.

Alriiiiiiight, he says cheerily.

We roll on.

One possible weakness of Steinglass's summation so far: the sheer scope of the story he's trying to tell, and the breakneck speed at which he's telling it.

We see text after text, email after email, transcripts from witness testimony, and interlocking timelines.

Steinglass on the Cohen-Trump tape:

'This recording shows the defendant’s cavalier willingness to hide this payoff.'

Some Savage Steinglass Sound Bites:

1. Cohen is understandably angry because he’s the only one who has paid the price while the defendant has escaped justice.

2. Blanche criticized Cohen for lying to Congress, but Cohen did so as part of his joint defense agreement to benefit

If you can’t vote for the decent man over the narcissistic psychopath that mental pathology is your own.
As a Canadian I’ve watched Fox News and the likes of Rush on RW radio hijack American brains with fear mongering, condescension, aggrieved entitlement and feigned victimhood.

Cohen spent more time being cross-examined at this trial than he did doing legal work for Trump in 2017, Steinglass quips. And do you think there's any chance Trump would pay $42k an hour for Cohen's legal work anyway?

Cohen probably did more legal work in the first three months of 2018 than he did in all of 2017—both McConney and Cohen told you that, but you can also check the general ledgers, Steinglass says. Why? Because he wasn't paid for legal work in either year. 2017 was reimbursements.

Maybe if they had created a phony retainer agreement that would've helped their story, but that would've been another false business record, and you'd be deliberating 35 counts instead of 34, Steinglass says.

Steinglass says there was not an oral retainer, not a written retainer—there was no retainer—before turning to what he calls one of his favorite emails in the whole case, in which Cohen asks McConney: 'Jeff, Please remind me of the monthly amount?'

Finally, more progress through the timeline, the Feb 2017 calendar entry 'Meeting with POTUS' from Cohen's phone, then emails between Cohen and McConney.

To be sure, this 'tax fraud' meant more taxes are getting paid than are owed, but it's a crime to prepare false tax docs regardless, Steinglass says. Preparing these tax docs was yet another unlawful means Trump and associates used to influence the election.

We move to Blanche's argument re: the 1099s (recall, why would they report this to the IRS if it was fraud?), but Steinglass zooms in on the boxes that say nonemployee compensation—that's income.

Steinglass addresses Blanche's argument that this wasn't fraud, bc if it was, they would've destroyed the business records, then twists himself in a pretzel gaming out the argument: so they would've committed another crime to hide this crime—it doesn't add up, he says.

Now back to McConney's notes, scribbled on Trump Org stationery: they were acting in concert, Steinglass says, and the judge will explain what that means to you. Steinglass points out, again, that he wrote 'x2 for taxes,' at Weisselberg's direction.