Defense Lawyers to Begin Closing Arguments in Trump’s Criminal Trial

Former President Donald J. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial will enter its final stage Tuesday as defense lawyers and prosecutors deliver their closing arguments in a last attempt to sway the 12 New Yorkers who will decide his fate.

First the defense and then the prosecution will spend hours weaving disparate strands of evidence into a cohesive story that they hope will resonate with the jurors. To mold their dueling accounts, each side can draw from a deep well of evidence: testimony from 22 witnesses, reams of emails and a surreptitious recording of Mr. Trump coordinating a secret payoff.

To persuade the jury, the prosecution and defense will begin with different versions of the same basic set of facts: Mr. Trump’s fixer, Michael D. Cohen, struck a hush-money deal with a porn star in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. The undisputed facts concern that $130,000 transaction; Mr. Cohen paid the porn star, Stormy Daniels, to silence her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.

Pretty much everything else is up for debate.

Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Trump directed Mr. Cohen to pay Ms. Daniels and approved a criminal scheme to reimburse Mr. Cohen, disguising the repayments by saying that they were made for legal services that in fact were nonexistent. Their case is backed by the testimony of Mr. Cohen himself, as well as Ms. Daniels, several other witnesses and phone records, text messages and emails.

But the defense has cast Mr. Cohen as a liar, suggested that he acted alone in paying Ms. Daniels and argued that he was never even reimbursed for the payment. Instead, they have said, Mr. Trump repaid him for actual legal services. Mr. Trump also says he never had sex with Ms. Daniels.

Todd Blanche, the lead defense lawyer, is expected to deliver the closing argument and to assert that the case hinges on Mr. Cohen, whose testimony provided the only evidence that Mr. Trump had direct knowledge of a plot to falsify the reimbursement records. He will cast Mr. Cohen as a jilted ex-employee who is obsessed with Mr. Trump and would profit from his conviction.