Trump trial: Biden calls Trump's remarks 'dangerous'

While defense lawyers have talked plenty about an Oct. 24, 2016, phone call between Michael Cohen and Keith Schiller whose purpose they question, prosecutors have emphasized the importance of two other calls directly between Trump and Cohen on Oct. 26, 2016.

The day Cohen wired money from Essential Consultants LLC -- the bank account for the Stormy Daniels hush money payment -- Cohen spoke to Trump twice over the phone around 8 a.m. Prosecutors argued that Cohen got the go-ahead from Trump to make the payment on that call before he crossed the street from Trump Tower to wire money from First Republic Bank.

One call was three minutes long, and the other was about 90 seconds.

"This is damning, right?" prosecutor Josh Steinglass said. "Half an hour before that, he is getting the final go-ahead from Trump."

Steinglass said the "objective of the nondisclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels was to keep her quiet.

"It's no coincidence that the sex happened in 2006 but the payoff didn't happen until October 2016, two weeks before the election. That's because the defendant's primary concern was not his family, but the election," Steinglass said.

Trump, sitting at the defense table, shook his head in response.

Prosecutor Josh Steinglass told jurors that Michael Cohen falsified bank records when he opened bank accounts for the shell companies related to Stormy Daniels’ hush money payment.

In his bank paperwork for both Essential Consultants LLC and Resolution Consultants LLC, Cohen provided a description of the businesses as consulting companies, though he only created the companies as a conduit for hush money payments.

“That was one big lie,” Steinglass said, telling jurors that Cohen used that description to prevent First Republic Bank from stalling the accounts.

Steinglass suggested that Trump was aware that the shell companies required falsifying bank records.

“He is a savvy businessman -- he has opened his share of bank accounts,” Steinglass said.

Steinglass said he would go through the other crimes that Trump furthered by falsifying business records in 2017 later in his summation.

Prosecutor Josh Steinglass told jurors that allegations from women in October 2016 posed a significant risk to Trump's campaign.

"This race could not have been closer," Steinglass said, arguing that Trump knew the allegations were "capable of costing him the whole election, and he knew it."

Steinglass replayed a video of an October 2016 Trump rally in Greensboro, North Carolina to demonstrate Trump's concern.

"It caused pandemonium in the Trump campaign," Steinglass said about the "Access Hollywood" tape.

Trump, at the defense table, looked at the evidence before shifting back in his chair. After shaking his head in disagreement, he whispered back and forth with his attorney Emil Bove.

Steinglass argued that Trump was particularly concerned about the Daniels allegations because they could undermine his response to the "Access Hollywood" tape.

"Stormy Daniels was a walking, talking reminder that the defendant was not only words," Steinglass said. "She would have totally undermined his strategy for spinning the 'Access Hollywood' tape."

Hitting back at the defense's suggestion that the "Access Hollywood" tape "wasn't a big deal to the defendant -- it was just another blip," Steinglass said, "You really can't understand this case without appreciating the climate in the wake of the 'Access Hollywood' tape ... it caused pandemonium in the Trump campaign."

More than an a hour and a half into his summation, prosecutor Josh Steinglass finally turned his attention to the Stormy Daniels hush money payment.

Steinglass resumed his summation by discussing the impact of the "Access Hollywood" tape, which prosecutors argued was the impetus for the Daniels hush money payment.

"It all began with this email from this Washington Post reporter named David Fahrenthold," Steinglass said, displaying the exhibit. Fahrenthold had reached out to then-Trump aide Hope Hicks with a transcript of the "Access Hollywood" remarks to ask for the campaign's comment.

Steinglass recapped some of Hicks' testimony, saying her "initial instinct was to deny the video's legitimacy." But once the campaign saw the video, "that strategy quickly shifted from 'deny, deny, deny' to 'spin.'"

Steinglass then played a video of Trump's reaction to the "Access Hollywood" tape in which he expressed his regret.

On Oct. 8, Steinglass says, there was a "flurry of activity" as Trump's campaign sought to spin the Access Hollywood tape. Michael Cohen asked then-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker about a RadarOnline article "about Trump being a playboy" and asked him to remove it, which he did.

"This is not catch-and-kill exactly, but they are purging the internet at the direction of the campaign," Steinglass said.