It’s Over to the Jury

It could take a day, a week, a month. But the criminal trial of Donald Trump is in the endgame.

Both sides made closing arguments today, capping a six-week odyssey. It was rife with accusations of adultery and illicit sex and tales of covert payments and frantic cover-ups, populated by bombastic lawyers, flawed witnesses and a defiant defendant at its center, often listening to the action with his eyes closed.

The jury will receive instructions tomorrow morning from the judge, Juan Merchan, who pushed today’s proceedings well past its usual 4:30 p.m. quitting time to make sure that prosecutors finished their closing arguments. Deliberations will then begin. The outcome could be acquittal or conviction on all charges; conviction on some and acquittal on others; or a hung jury, if jurors are unable to reach unanimous agreement on a verdict.

Mounting the first criminal trial of an American president, the lawyers for the Manhattan district attorney’s office presented a vivid narrative of an unglamorous financial crime: Trump is charged with falsifying 34 business records, each one a low-level felony.

Those charges are related to a $130,000 hush-money payment made by Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who says she and Trump had sex at a celebrity golf tourney in 2006, a decade before his election as the 45th president.

Trump has denied the charges; he faces prison or probation if convicted. But that declaration of innocence was only part of the larger argument that Todd Blanche, his lead attorney, made in his closing. Its central point could well be summed up by one little word: “Lies.”

During a nearly three-hour-long summation, Blanche savaged Cohen with that word, dubbing him a