IN CLOSING: The prosecutor in Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial made his final argument yesterday that the former president was at the head of a conspiracy to sway the outcome of the 2016 election with a payoff to a porn star.

  Trump is accused of falsifying business records, accounting for them as legal fees to hide his payment to Stormy Daniels for her silence about a sexual fling 10 years earlier. “The defendant didn’t actually pay a lawyer, he paid a porn star by funneling money through a lawyer,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said.

  His five hours of summation to the jury followed 2 ½ hours from the defense in which lawyer Todd Blanche called the prime witness Michael Cohen, “The GLOAT,” the greatest liar of all time. Cohen had made a living lying and scheming for Trump and went to prison for it. “He. Lied. To. You,” Blanche intoned.

  Acknowledging Cohen’s credibility flaws, Steinglass said, “We didn’t choose Michael Cohen to be our witness. We didn’t pick him up at the witness store.”

  Steinglass said, “The defendant chose Michael Cohen to be his fixer because he was willing to lie and cheat on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Mr. Trump chose Mr. Cohen for the same qualities that his attorneys now urge you to reject his testimony because of.” 

  The prosecutor said Cohen’s testimony is backed up by the documents in evidence, including a handwritten plan for repaying Cohen the $130,000 he fronted for the Daniels payment … a document Steinglass called “the smoking gun.” Steinglass said, “Those documents tell you everything you need to know. … You don’t need Michael Cohen to connect those dots, but as the ultimate insider he can do just that.” Nine of the payment checks were signed by Trump himself.

  The defense and Trump have always said the payments to Cohen were for legal services. Blanche dismissed the charges as “a paper case” And said, “The bookings were accurate, and there was absolutely no intent to defraud.”

  Most of Trump’s adult children and their spouses were at the trial yesterday. Missing were Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, and former First Lady Melania Trump, who has never appeared at the Manhattan court. Trump called it “a dark day in America.”

  Actor Robert DeNiro during an appearance outside the Manhattan courthouse said Trump should go to prison. “The fact is whether he’s acquitted, whether it’s hung jury, whatever it is, he is guilty, and we all know it,” the actor said. 

  Judge Juan Merchan is expected to give the jury their instructions this morning, followed by the start of deliberations.

THE WAR ROOM: Israel used American-made bombs in the strike that killed 45 Palestinian civilians near Rafah on Sunday, The New York Times reports. The paper says remnants of an American GBU-39, which is supposed to be more accurate, were found at the scene. The US has been urging Israel to use more of this type of bomb to limit civilian casualties.

  Despite those dozens of deaths, the Biden administration said the Rafah bombing did not cross the “red line” Biden announced this month, when he said the US would suspend delivery of offensive weapons to Israel if it went into “population centers” in Rafah.

HOME RUN: The record books of Major League Baseball were given a big shakeup yesterday when MLB decided to merge with the history of the segregated Negro Leagues.

  Josh Gibson replaces MLB’s career leader with a .372 batting average, pushing aside Ty Cobb with .367. Gibson’s .974 hitting percentage in 1937 becomes the season record, dropping Barry Bonds to fifth with his .863 percentage in 2001.

  Professional baseball was segregated until Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

THE OBIT PAGE: Bette Nash, who was believed to have been the longest-serving flight attendant with a career of nearly 70 years in the air, died earlier this month. Nash began her career in 1957 at age 21 with the now-defunct Eastern Airlines when all the attendats were women known as “stewardesses,” a flight between New York and DC cost $12, and you could smoke on an airliner.

  Nash ultimately became a fixture on the DC/Boston route, which American airlines nicknamed “the Nash Dash.” She was 88 and never officially retired.

THE SPIN RACK: Pope Francis apologized for using the Italian slur “frociaggine” in a private meeting during a discussion about admitting openly gay men into seminaries and priesthood colleges. “Frociaggine” translates roughly to “faggotry” and Francis said there was already too much if it in the seminaries. — Harvard announced that it will no longer take positions on matters not “relevant to the core function of the university,” such as its statements of empathy for Ukraine after the Russian invasion, and for the victims of the October 7th Hamas attacks in Israel. A university report said, ‘issuing official empathy statements runs the risk of alienating some members of the community by expressing implicit solidarity with others.” — Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr on a recent podcast denounced the removal of statues glorifying Confederate leaders. He said that removing the statues is “destroying history” and that there were “heroes in the Confederacy who didn’t have slaves.”

BELOW THE FOLD: South Korea sent out chemical warfare response teams when balloons drifting over the border from North Korea began dropping unidentified plastic bags. As many as 260 balloons floated over the border, dropping their payloads when they reached southern airspace.

  On closer inspection it was found that the North was bombing the South with garbage … bags filled with cigarette butts, plastic water bottles, used paper, and shoes, and possibly even human waste. The North said it was retaliation for the South “scattering leaflets and various dirty things” over its border.

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