Closing Argument for the Prosecution - The People of the State of New York vs Donald John Trump

 October 6, 2024

Six Counts- Depraved Indifference to Human Life

What is the value of a life? What is its worth? It cannot be determined in dollars and cents. It is not a commodity that can be traded. It is something that can truly only be measured in terms of its impact on others, those it touches, those it shapes. In the final analysis the value of a life, for good or bad, is judged by what it leaves in its wake.

You all know the catastrophic numbers of Covid 19. You all know that the landscape of this country was brutalized by this disease, raped and pillaged and far, far too often left for dead. You all know of the hospitals that were unable to serve their given purpose, the doctors and nurses left screaming cries of anguish, their hearts broken day after day at the helplessness they felt, at the smell of death that permeated their souls.You all know of the families that were forced to imagine the last breaths of a father, a mother, a daughter, a son, a husband, a wife. You all know that these men and women are gravely damaged, their spirits crushed, their tears a river of despair, their days filled with an almost unfathomable pain.

I come before you not to ask for justice for the nearly 600,000 who succumbed to a foe unlike any other this country has faced, a foe more powerful than the most brutal dictator, a foe more devastating than an atomic bomb. I do not seek retribution here for the countless millions who are collateral damage, who have lost a friend, a lover, a companion, a guide, a partner, a mentor, a child, a parent, a grandparent. That is not my role.

I am tasked only with making sure that six people, six residents of the State of New York, did not die without a voice. I am their voice and I have told you, in chapter and verse, of their final days upon this earth, their final words, their final looks of fear, of loneliness, of bewilderment. Their final moments and what surely were their last wishes.

I have told you of the days that came before Covid 19, that came when their world was a very different place, when they were free to love and laugh, to argue and complain, to spend their hours dreaming of the promise of tomorrow. I have told you of the lives they lived before it all came to a screeching halt. All because of one bad breath taken in, one errant touch. All because of something that happened that didn't have to.

They were neither young nor old, rich nor poor, black nor white. They were neither perfect nor imperfect, happy nor sad, knowledgeable nor uninformed. They were all of these things and more. They were not you, but they could have been. They were not leaders but they might have been. They were not destined for greatness but they should have been. We will never know what their future held in store for them because they have no future, only a past. Because they are dead today, they will be dead tomorrow and for all the tomorrow's to come. There is a finality to their existence that no wishing, no begging, no summation of a prosecutor of the State of New York can undo.

Donald Trump didn't care about any of these people. He did not give one thought to their welfare. He did not care about the hospital workers, the nursing home residents. He did not care about the lives that any of the almost 600,000 led. He did not care about their stories, about their days, about their worries, about their dreams. He did not care about how they lived. He did not even care if they died.They were faceless, nameless and, in his estimation, wholly unworthy of his consideration.

How do we know that? How do we know of his heartlessness, of his cruelty, of his depraved indifference to the very existence of those he was charged to protect. We know it from the words of the reporters to whom he revealed his knowledge of the horrible certainties of this disease and his admitted determination to do nothing about it. Even worse than nothing. He made a calculated decision to lie about the danger, to treat it as if it were a nuisance rather than the unstoppable force he knew it to be. We know it in his words challenging and belittling the pronouncements of science, of those within his own ranks who pleaded for sanity and reason. We know it in his endless capacity to mock those individuals who preached, who practiced respect for the power of the enemy and who pleaded and prayed for the President to be an equal and opposing power.  We know it in his mistreatment of those states, New York chief among them, from whom he withheld critical supplies, equipment and monies to battle the enemy. We know it in the maskless gatherings of thousands, all come to worship at the feet of this false God, all then taking the possibility of disease away with them from these sites. We know it in his demand for those in his administration, and those Republican governors, senators and congressmen to follow his lead in exposing the populations under their dominion to senseless danger. He even willingly enlisted his wife, his own children to take part in this Devil's play.

And for what reason did this occur? What benefit outweighed the incalculable harm? For there must have been something. God knows there had to be something. But we all know there wasn't. At least nothing beyond satiating one man's ego. Nothing more than an unwillingness to permit others to tell him how to run his country. Others to put his reelection at risk. Others to impede his coronation. Others to persuade him that the lives of those entrusted to his care were something more than worthless commodities, something greater than a dollars and cents calculation of the possible drop in value of a stock portfolio.

And so today, you are given the solemn responsibility of reporting back to the State of New York, to the United States of America, to the world and to Donald John Trump that this is finally the day of reckoning. Today is finally the time that the actions of this Defendant have consequences for him. That a man whose life has only been devoted to protecting himself, will be unequivocally informed that he has failed in that goal, even as he has failed to protect, to save the lives of the six in whose names we bring Mr. Trump to justice.

For in the end, his life can only be measured by the devastation he has left in his wake. And for this, I respectfully request, and the six lives that are no more, demand justice. Demand a verdict of guilty as charged.

Thank you.