Trump accused of trying to ‘hoodwink’ voters with election conspiracy fueling hush money scheme

Donald Trump’s “catch and kill” scheme to buy up stories about his alleged sex scandals launched a conspiracy to corruptly influence the 2016 presidential election, what Manhattan prosecutors called his attempt to “hoodwink” voters with his fraudulent scheme to keep politically crushing stories away from the public.

“It was the subversion of democracy,” according to Manhattan District Attorney Joshua Steinglass, who delivered an epicclosing statement to jurors in the former president’s hush money trial on Tuesday.

Mr Trump sought to rob voters of the truth, “to manipulate and defraud the voters, to pull the wool over their eyes in a coordinated fashion,” according to Mr Steinglass.

Over five hours, Mr Steinglass traced the timeline of Mr Trump’s campaign to suppress damaging information by threading the dozens of pieces of evidence and witness testimony presented to jurors over the last five weeks into a damning narrative of his alleged fraud.

A meeting at Trump Tower in August 2015 with Mr Trump, tabloid publisher David Pecker, and Mr Trump’s then-attorney Michael Cohen is “the prism through which you should analyze” the evidence against the former president, who is accused of falsifying business records as part of a months-long scheme to corruptly influence the 2016 election.

“Three rich and powerful men in Trump Tower, trying to become more rich and powerful by controlling the flow of information to influence voters,” Mr Steinglass said.

According to trial testimony, Mr Pecker agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of Mr Trump’s campaign and identify and then buy up stories about Mr Trump to prevent them from being published – an arrangement that is not by itself illegal, but one that gave Mr Trump’s campaign a powerful