Jurors can’t trust ‘greatest liar’ Michael Cohen, Trump lawyer says — as scuffle breaks out between protesters outside hush money trial

Donald Trump cannot be convicted based on the words of his former fixer Michael Cohen — the “greatest liar of all time” — defense lawyers argued Tuesday at the end of a historic criminal trial against the former president.

“Have you heard about GOAT, like greatest of all time?” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche asked the Manhattan jury deciding the case, which stems from Cohen’s $130,000 payment on the eve of the 2016 election that kept porn star Stormy Daniels from telling her story about an alleged tryst with Trump a decade earlier.

“Michael Cohen is the GLOAT. He’s literally the greatest liar of all time,” Blanche added, calling the convicted felon  “literally like an MVP of liars” and the “human embodiment of reasonable doubt.”

Prosecutors shot back that it was Trump who chose their flawed star witness as his trusted right-hand man precisely because he was willing to lie and cheat — for his former boss, that is.

“We didn’t choose Michael Cohen. We didn’t pick him up at the witness store,” deadpanned Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass.

“The defendant chose Michael Cohen to be his fixer!” Steinglass then exclaimed, extending his left arm to point at Trump, 77, who was slouched deep in his seat at the defense table.

“He picked him for the same qualities that the defense now urges you to reject his testimony over,” Steinglass added.

Jurors heard the dueling narratives during closing statements in the case, in which Trump has pleaded not guilty to fudging business records by writing off the hush money reimbursement to Cohen as phony “legal expenses.”

Trump was actually trying to hide the Daniels payoff as part of a bid to cover up a “conspiracy to promote Trump’s 2016 candidacy by “unlawful means,” prosecutors allege.

While the lawyers summed up their cases inside Manhattan Supreme Court, tensions flared outside the building all day. Trump supporters and anti-Trump protesters got into a scuffle and had to be separated by police, while the 2024 campaigns for Trump and President Biden — the latter of which featured a fired-up Robert De Niro — traded insults at dueling press conferences.

Trump wore his customary navy blue suit, white dress shirt and red tie at the defense table as his lawyer Blanche attempted to tear apart Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case in remarks made to the jury of seven men and five women at the start of the seventh week of trial.

During Blanche’s sprawling three-and-a-half hour statement, he repeatedly attempted to drive home that Cohen was too untrustworthy and had lied too many times — including directly to the jurors — for them to convict Trump on his word.

“He lied to you repeatedly,” Blanche argued. “He lied many, many times before you even met him…He is biased and motivated to tell you a story that is not true.”

Prosecutors countered by claiming that the case against Trump does not hinge on jurors believing the admitted liar Cohen.

Cohen merely “provides context and color” to phone records, recordings and other evidence that suggests Trump was aware of the plan to “catch and kill” damaging stories before the 2016 election, they argued.

Cohen is “like a tour guide to the physical evidence,” Steinglass said.

Jurors don’t need to believe everything that Cohen testified to — but just need to consider “whether he has useful, reliable information to give you about what went down in this case,” the prosecutor said.

“And the truth is, he was in the best position to know,” Steinglass added. “He was in the best position to know because he was the defendant’s right hand.”

Steinglass also called Daniels’ racy testimony about having sex with Trump “cringey” — but said that her details about the night she claims she slept with the ex-president prove that she’s trustworthy.

“Her story is messy, it makes people uncomfortable. But that’s the point. That’s the display that the defendant didn’t want the American public to see,”  Steinglass said.

“In simple terms, Stormy Daniels is the motive,” the prosecutor added. “Mr. Trump would not pay $130,000, doubled after it was grossed up for taxes, to someone who he just took a photo with on a golf course.”

Steinglass also called out Trump’s team for going to “great lengths” to discredit the former porn star, claiming they “shamed her” and “demonized” her for being an adult film star, and tried to falsely suggest that her story has changed over the years.

But the prosecutor said Daniels’ memory of the topics discussed, and specific recall about details like what Trump had in his medicine cabinet are pieces of evidence that “ring true.”

“Those are the kind of details you expect someone to remember,” Steinglass said.

Blanche earlier in the day told jurors that Trump didn’t know about the alleged catch-and-kill payments, and argued that the records were not “falsified” because they cited legal services and Cohen was Trump’s lawyer at the time.

“The ‘scheme’ was to book a legal expense as a legal expense,” Blanche said, adding: “That’s absurd.”

Though the checks to Cohen were signed by Trump, the ex-president was “busy” running the country and did not always pay attention to what he was signing, Blanche argued.

Two other alleged payments made with the help of the National Enquirer to silence Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal’s story about an affair with Trump and bury a Trump Tower doorman’s phony allegation that Trump had a secret love child with a maid were not part of “conspiracy” to influence the campaign, but rather were a normal campaign practice of working with the media, Blanche claimed.

“Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate,” Blanche said.

He also accused Daniels and her lawyer Keith Davidson of capitalizing on the election to try to “extort” Trump.

“This case is about documents,” the lawyer said. “It’s a paper case. This case is not about an encounter with Stormy Daniels 18 years ago, an encounter President Trump has unequivocally and repeatedly denied ever occurred.”

“The evidence should leave you wanting more,” Blanche added.

Trump has repeatedly denied all the charges he faces and claimed he’s a victim of a political “witch hunt” meant to keep him out of office. He was joined in the courtroom for the first time during the trial Tuesday by his daughter Tiffany Trump. His sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and Eric’s wife Lara Trump were also there to support him.

His campaign held a press conference outside the courthouse blasting the case — following one from Biden supporters, including an impassioned De Niro, who warned that  if Trump is reelected “he will never leave.”

“I’m so angry that a New Yorker came along and hustled this country,” the “Irishman” actor said, as dozens of protesters and others looked on.

One protester heckled De Niro by claiming that he’s a “paid actor for the DNC.”

De Niro fired back, “You’re a f–king idiot.”

Anti-Trump protester Ricky Cavallero, 56, from the Bronx, claimed later in the day that he was assaulted by a Trump supporter.

“He’s lucky I don’t have a bicep, I would have knocked him out,” Cavallero told The Post.  “He slapped my glasses off my face. That’s straight disrespect.”

Cops quickly broke up the skirmish between protesters outside the courthouse, and no one was arrested, but witnesses say one woman who was caught up in the melee was taken away in an ambulance.

“She was hobbling a bit,” said a cop who flagged down the ambulance on Lafayette Street.