Shannon Bream and Lydia Hu inside court: Trump's lawyers begin closing argument

Trump attorney Todd Blanche is using a visual with the jury that appears aimed at making this case as simple as possible.  At the top of the screen it says “Invoices – sent by Cohen” with an arrow pointing to the next heading “Vouchers – Accounting Department” and then an arrow to the final heading “Checks – Accounting Department”.   The obvious aim is to create a path for these payments that never directly involves Pres Trump.  Of course, he signed them at some point, but the argument is that he never directed these payments along their path.

--Shannon Bream, “Fox News Sunday” anchor and chief legal correspondent

Blanche is boiling the case down to its essence. Telling the jury this case is about documents. “it is paper case.” It is not about an encounter with Stormy Daniels. He is making this case simple – saying with respect to documents, you only need to make two determinations. First, whether documents contain false entries. Second, whether president acted with intent to defraud. Blanche says, he’s starting here because you don’t need to go further. Blanche is setting the table to drive home the point that documents were not falsified. If a juror agrees, there is no need to consider whether there was an intent to commit an underlying crime.