Welcome to the news hour. In New York City today, both the prosecution and the defense

made their final case to jurors in the criminal hush money trial of former President Donald Trump.

Prosecutors reiterated the allegation. money trial of former President Donald Trump.

Prosecutors reiterated the allegation that Donald Trump falsified business records

to conceal news of an alleged affair that could have harmed his chances of becoming

president.

For their part, Mr. Trump's defense team

argued the charges are baseless, that no laws were broken,

and that the prosecution's case relies on the testimony

of an untrustworthy witness.

William Bringham has been following the trial from New York and joins us now.

So William, per New York law, the defense offered its closing arguments first, and

Donald Trump's team has long argued that these

charges are baseless. Overall how did they try to persuade the jury to vote not guilty?

Jeff Trump's lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, leaned into what you just referred to before, which is that while we all call this the Hush Money case, it's really about this falsification of business records that are meant to cover up the

hush money payment to Stormy Daniels that was made by Michael Cohen and Todd Blanche really leaned into that telling jurors

this is not a hush money case this is a paper case and he argued that Donald Trump

had nothing to do with creating any of that paper. That's the 34 charges here that are 34

different invoices, ledgers, checks, and check stubs that are central to this case. And Blanch argued there's no clear evidence

that Donald Trump created those, orchestrated those, knew anything about those.

There's no evidence that he did that with the intent to conceal anything and certainly no evidence that he tried to do that to to win an election.

He argued that the National Inquirer scheme, this whole catch-and-kill scheme that was set up back in 2016,

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