Rebecca Roiphe, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and current New York Law School professor, told The New Republic's Greg Sargent this week that she believes prosecutors have almost cinched their case against former President Donald Trump.
Appearing on Sargent's Daily Blast podcast, Roiphe said that the one "fault line" in the case is solidifying Trump's involvement in the scheme to create false records to cover up hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
Roiphe then drew upon her experience working at the Manhattan D.A.'s office to discuss the precedents set by similar prosecutions in the past.
"In my experience prosecuting this statute, there are almost never is direct testimony, or at least there are plenty of cases that we brought where there was no direct testimony as to that point," she said. "The defense of, 'It was all these other people doing it on my behalf without my involvement in it at all' is a weak defense. So let's just say, even if there were no testimony, common sense is when underlings are doing something like this... they're not freelancing."
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With this in mind, she noted that prosecutors have been using former Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen's testimony to simply underline the documentary evidence that they have obtained showing "micromanager" Trump's awareness of the scheme to falsify records.
All of this leads Roiphe to believe that prosecutors are in a good position heading into closing arguments.
"I think they're very close," she said. "I think what they have to do is present their final argument to the jury in a way and in the same order that they built the case... which is to start with their strongest pieces of evidence, which are documents, and then to build from there."
