Almost end times for Trump trial spectacle but there's still room for fireworks: 3 things to watch

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

50% : The non-disclosure agreements (NDAs - pejoratively labeled "hush money" by much of the media) are legal.
50% : CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONTo summarize, then: Cohen was holding himself out as Trump's lawyer throughout 2017, he was available to work for Trump whenever asked, and he did in fact do lawyer work for him in 2017-18.
46% : The things that made Cohen an unsavory character are the things that Trump found useful about him.
45% : Ergo, Trump shouldn't worry too much about being tied to how they were recorded in the Trump Organization's books.
41% : Cohen has now admitted that it was agreed that he could represent himself in 2017 as the president's private lawyer, and he admits that he did legal work for Trump in 2017-18 - not a lot, but some.
39% : Hence, the more Blanche hammers Cohen, the more the jury may wonder why Trump kept him around for a dozen years.
30% : Retainers do not have to be in writing, so the fact that there isn't a written retainer does not settle the question of whether Trump retained Cohen as a lawyer after 2016.
29% : So sure, make the point that Trump did not get into such granular accounting details (especially once he was president and had far weightier responsibilities); but don't make it look like the defense is afraid of the NDAs as if they were illegal.
22% : It is undoubtedly true that, to convict Trump, the jury must believe Cohen's uncorroborated testimony that Trump knew - from the Trump Organization's then-CFO, Allen Weisselberg - the details of how Cohen was going to be paid.
16% : And even when Trump was president and Cohen was under investigation for tax and bank fraud by the Trump Justice Department, Trump was saying nice things about Cohen right up until he cooperated with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.
6% : Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, who is conducting the cross-examination, needs to do enough damage to Cohen's credibility - between Cohen's perjury and frauds, some ridiculous elements of his story (like why he covertly recorded Trump), and his obsessive bias against Trump - that the defense can argue to the jury that it would be irresponsible to convict someone based on Cohen's testimony.

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