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June 13 was the date on which House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan had hoped to haul Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo in front of Congress to embarrass and excoriate the New York prosecutors.
Why? For having the audacity to investigate and prosecute former President Donald Trump, whom a jury ultimately convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal a conspiracy to promote Trump’s 2016 candidacy through one or more unlawful acts.
And while Bragg and Colangelo have now agreed to testify voluntarily on July 12, the day after Trump’s sentencing, it appears that Jordan didn’t exactly choose June 13 out of a hat. Instead, he may have chosen that date because it is also Trump’s deadline for any post-trial motions, theoretically including a revived written motion to set aside the jury’s verdict due to a paucity of evidence.
I suspect, however, that even if Trump’s team does file such a motion, it would almost certainly fail. (To the extent Trump seeks post-trial relief, it’s also not clear when such a motion or motions would become public.) And that’s not because of the now-standard GOP refrain that Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the case, is impermissibly conflicted and/or biased against Trump.
Rather, it’s because the evidence collected and then presented at trial by the DA was not only extensive, but was interwoven together by the DA’s team to devastating effect.
How do I know? In part, it’s because I attended the trial all day, every day. But more importantly, it’s because I have now obtained — and am sharing with you — the 400-plus slides that the Manhattan DA’s office used in its hourslong closing argument to the jury.
From his own words, whether written or recorded, and his signature, on the one hand, to his pattern of phone calls right as other significant developments and communications unfolded, it was the weight and quality of the evidence that did Trump in with the 12 jurors.
Collectively, the slides illustrate the breadth and depth of the DA’s evidence. From his own words, whether written or recorded, and his signature, on the one hand, to his pattern of phone calls right as other significant developments and communications unfolded, it was the weight and quality of the evidence that did Trump in with the 12 jurors. The slides also highlight how to the extent that others helped ensure Trump’s current fate, those others are not named Alvin Bragg or Matthew Colangelo. They are David Pecker and Hope Hicks, two of Trump’s closest allies once upon a time and people whose affection for him is still palpable, even through just a cold read of the trial transcript.
With more than 400 slides overall, it’s hard to pick out which ones were the most effective or influential. But my favorite slide — and the one I could not wait to get my hands on after the trial — is the penultimate one.
In contrast to defense lawyer Todd Blanche’s insistence that prosecutors neither adequately tied Trump to the creation of the business records nor proved he intended to commit or conceal any other prior crime, my pet slide reminded the jurors of all the significant evidence they heard and saw about Trump’s own direct involvement in both the conspiracy and the cover-up.
Overall, the slides do not necessarily contain information that’s new for anyone who closely followed the trial. Yet as Trump confronts his first post-trial deadline to contest the verdict, they are nonetheless a powerful reminder of how the person Trump should most blame for his current predicament is Trump himself.