Michael Cohen is the ‘Greatest Liar of All Time’: The new nickname and the incendiary claim that caused chaos and prove Trump’s fingerprints were all over his lawyer’s closing argument

Donald Trump said nothing in court as his lead lawyer delivered his closing arguments that the former president should be found not guilty of falsifying company records.

That wasn’t necessary.

Todd Blanche’s two-and-a-half-hour statement was peppered with the words and fingerprints of the defendant himself, making it part legal argument, part campaign speech.

There was a disparaging nickname for a key witness: “Michael Cohen is the GLOAT. The Biggest Liar of All Time’ – frequent references to prosecutors as the ‘government’ (while in New York State court it is ‘the people’ who bring charges) and a final incendiary reference to his client going to jail.

“You can’t send someone to jail… you can’t convict someone based on the words of Michael Cohen,” said Blanche, who immediately objected to the prosecutor.

Sentencing is the domain of the judge. And no one really believes that Trump faces jail time, except the writers of the Trump campaign’s press releases.

It meant that Tuesday morning had some of the rhetoric of a Trump rally, much to the ire of Judge Juan Merchan. He walked past Blanche and pointed out that as a former prosecutor he should know better than to use such language.

“You know that making such a comment is highly inappropriate. It is simply not allowed. Period,” he said.

“It’s hard for me to imagine that this was in any way coincidental.”

After lunch, the judge instructed the jury to put all thoughts of prison and punishment out of their minds when they begin their deliberations on Wednesday.

Trump denies 34 cases of falsifying company data.

The trial is in its final stages, with both the defense and prosecution getting a chance to tie together the threads of evidence from 22 witnesses in their closing statements on Tuesday.

The court has heard from witnesses and from words in his own books that Trump has a tendency to micromanage, casting a sharp eye over invoices, balance sheets and checks.

Likewise, those who know him well say it is inconceivable that he had no say in how the closing argument was written.

Some aspects were very Trumpy. Others were more subtle.

Nowhere was it clearer than when Blanche repeated again and again that Cohen, a disbarred lawyer with a conviction for lying and who is the prosecution’s star witness, was not exactly trustworthy.

He was the MVP of the liars, he said, before turning to that most Trumpian of rhetorical devices: the nickname.

“Michael Cohen is the GLOAT: the biggest liar of all time,” he said, pausing for effect.

The structure of his argument also matched his client’s “deny everything” approach: Trump didn’t sleep with Stormy Daniels; there was no catch-and-kill agreement for damaging stories; Trump had nothing to do with the documents in question, which were invoices written by Cohen, or vouchers prepared by accounting staff, or automatically generated checks; and don’t believe anything Cohen said.

After all, Cohen was the only witness who directly linked Trump to the plan to pay Cohen back for the $130,000 hush money he gave to Daniels.

Much of the prosecution case, Blanche argued, was the normal work of a candidate running for election.

“Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people working together to help someone win,” he said.

Likewise, there is nothing illegal about nondisclosure agreements, he added, using Trump’s dictum that anything drafted by lawyers is legal by definition.

During all this, the jury listened attentively. They are likely to begin their deliberations on Wednesday, deciding for the first time in history whether a former president is guilty of criminal charges.

They looked like they knew their responsibilities. They followed Blanche’s arguments and his PowerPoint sliders and watched their monitors intently.

For the suspect it was a friends and family day. Daughter Tiffany made her first court appearance and took a front row seat next to sister-in-law Lara and brothers Eric and Don Jr.

For his part, Trump focused more closely on the arguments than in previous days. He turned to his right to get a better look at how Blanche would deliver the knockout lines he was hoping for.

Blanche knows better than anyone that his job has been to maintain the balance between the audience of twelve who will decide his client’s guilt or innocence, and the audience of someone sitting next to him.

And the client-in-chief allegedly heard his lawyer repeatedly refer to the prosecutor as “the government.” Forty times even.

“So I’m going to talk about what I expect the administration to talk about, which is a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election,” he said at one point.

Blanche is a former federal prosecutor. In that role he indeed represented the government.

But in the New York Supreme Court, the plaintiffs represent “the people of the State of New York.”

Some observers suggested the slip was a hangover from Blanche’s past in a different kind of court. But it also fits better with Trump’s rhetoric of witch hunts and persecution.

‘Why is the corrupt government allowed to make the final argument in the case against me? he asked on Truth Social a day earlier, apparently unaware that prosecution always comes last.

‘Why can’t the defense go last? Great advantage, very unfair. Witch hunt!’

It reminds us all of how the defense began, and how Blanche set out a linguistic benchmark in his opening statement

“We will call him ‘President Trump’ out of respect for the office he held from 2017 to 2021,” he told the jury. “And as everyone knows, this is the office he now heads. He’s the Republican candidate.’

Trump has frowned and scowled the entire time from his seat at the defense table. And his words echo in the courtroom via audio recordings, or in his books, or even in messages dripping with pastiche sent by others.

In a text message shown to the jury, the Australian-born editor of the National Enquirer jokes about plans to “make Australia great again.”

“Trump supports everything they do,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said dryly.