NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump’s attorney on Tuesday told the jurors in his hush money trial that they “should want and expect more” evidence to convict the presumptive Republican nominee.

Defense attorney Todd Blanche said prosecutors managed to show that Mr. Trump wanted to win an election — not carry out some evil plot — and that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made a huge blunder by making the “greatest liar of all time” his star witness.

“He’s literally like an MVP of liars,” Mr. Blanche said of Michael Cohen.

Mr. Cohen is the Trump attorney turned accuser who says he paid Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, hush money to protect the 2016 presidential campaign and received a series of Trump-signed checks in 2017 as reimbursement.

Mr. Blanche said Mr. Cohen was the only person who claimed Mr. Trump had direct knowledge of the payments and concealment scheme, yet Mr. Cohen has a track record of lying to Congress and even his family.

In more than four hours of closing arguments, prosecutors tried to rehabilitate Mr. Cohen’s reputation. They also tried to connect gaps in a case that included weeks of evidence but hadn’t been sewn into a tidy narrative. To prove a felony, they must demonstrate that Mr. Trump falsified business records with intent to violate another law, though they don’t have to specify whether it was federal election law or some other state law.

Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said many people don’t care whether Mr. Trump had sex with Ms. Daniels, whose story about a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump in 2006 prompted the $130,000 payoff.

The problem, he said, is that Mr. Trump and his orbit conspired to quash the story and criminally conceal the scheme.

“A handful of people sitting in a room can decide what information gets into voters’ hands,” said Mr. Steinglass, painting a portrait of an illegal conspiracy.

Mr. Trump, who will face President Biden in November, is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records with intent to cover up another crime, which prosecutors said had to do with election or tax laws.

He sat quietly during closing arguments, though he looked at his attorneys during major objections.

Jurors watched patiently as attorneys made hours of arguments from a lectern with a microphone. The defense’s closing lasted roughly three hours.

Mr. Steinglass’ voice was animated and blunt as he retraced efforts by Trump allies to suppress unflattering news stories, culminating in the Daniels payment. Mr. Blanche used PowerPoint slides and stalked around the well of the courtroom, his voice dropping out of range of the mic at times.

Mr. Blanche said the state’s evidence showed little more than standard business practices and that Mr. Trump thought he was paying Mr. Cohen’s legal fees when he signed a series of checks at the White House.

“President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period,” Mr. Blanche said.

Mr. Blanche hit Mr. Cohen early and often as untrustworthy.

He said the worst lie was told right in front of jurors. Mr. Cohen claimed to have had a phone call with Mr. Trump in which the former president approved the Daniels payment, though defense attorneys showed evidence that the call was placed to Mr. Trump’s bodyguard to complain about a young prank caller.

“That was a lie,” Mr. Blanche said of Mr. Cohen’s testimony, punctuating each word. “That is per-jur-y.”

Mr. Steinglass, in a creative turn, said the call could have covered both topics.

He said handwritten notes from Trump Organization employees are the “smoking guns” because they outlined the $130,000 payments plus other expenses as described by Mr. Cohen.

He said it undercut Mr. Blanche’s claim that Mr. Trump was simply paying legal expenses to Mr. Cohen in 2017.

Summations demanded all-day attention from the jury and blew by the court’s typical closing time of 4:30 p.m. On Wednesday, state Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan will instruct the jury on the law so deliberations can begin in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.

The case will be in the jury’s hands, and there is no telling how long it will take to reach a campaign-altering verdict.

Mr. Trump insists that Mr. Bragg is targeting him at the behest of Mr. Biden.

“It’s going after Joe Biden’s political opponent because he can’t do it himself,” Mr. Trump said in the courthouse hallway. “They should have brought this case seven years ago, not in the middle of a presidential election.”

Mr. Blanche started the closing arguments by trying to undercut prosecutors’ claims that Mr. Trump and his tabloid friends were part of a “catch and kill” plot before the 2016 election. He noted that National Enquirer executive David Pecker was eager to run salacious stories and that Playboy model Karen McDougal leveraged her story of an affair with Mr. Trump to get magazine jobs, not publicity during the campaign.

He said Ms. Daniels took advantage of the “Access Hollywood” audio, in which Mr. Trump spoke crudely about women, to extort Mr. Trump on the cusp of the 2016 election, only for Mr. Pecker to say he wouldn’t be part of any payment.

Mr. Steinglass said Mr. Pecker bent over backward to protect Mr. Trump’s 2016 bid, tantamount to an illegal campaign contribution.

“Extortion is not a defense to falsifying business records,” he said.

Mr. Steinglass played a recording of Mr. Trump proposing to reimburse his tabloid allies in cash for killing the McDougal story. The prosecutor said it showed a “cavalier” attitude toward using money to hide information from voters.

Mr. Blanche repeatedly said jurors should not believe Mr. Cohen, particularly his claim that Mr. Trump was looped in on the Daniels payment plot and reimbursement scheme. He said Mr. Cohen paid Ms. Daniels himself to get kudos from his boss.

Mr. Cohen remained Mr. Trump’s attorney in 2017, so legal fees would have been a normal expense and logged correctly by Trump Organization employees, Mr. Blanche said.

“The bookings were accurate, and there was absolutely no attempt to defraud,” he said.

Mr. Blanche said the state’s math around the payments didn’t make sense. Prosecutors said Mr. Trump paid Mr. Cohen $420,000 in 2017 to cover the Daniels payment, a bonus for Mr. Cohen and payments for tech services from the Red Finch company — plus a “grossing up” of the amount to account for taxes.

Mr. Blanche said the idea that Mr. Trump paid Mr. Cohen $420,000 when he owed him $130,000 “is absurd.”

The defense said Mr. Cohen’s admission that he stole $30,000 of the $50,000 paid to satisfy an invoice from Red Finch ruined his credibility. Attorneys said Mr. Cohen had a financial incentive with books and podcasts telling of his dream about sending Mr. Trump to prison.

Mr. Steinglass said prosecutors didn’t get Mr. Cohen from “the witness store” and had to work with him, for better or worse, as the central player alongside Mr. Trump in the alleged scheme. He said Mr. Cohen has a right to be angry with Mr. Trump.

“To date, he’s the only one who paid the price for this,” he said. “When it got bad, the defendant cut him loose, dropped him like a hot potato.”

He said the defense revealed itself by slamming Mr. Cohen’s theft of Red Finch money while saying the checks were payments for general legal services.

“They can call him a thief or claim this wasn’t really a reimbursement, but not both,” Mr. Steinglass said.

Trying to blunt claims of a wide conspiracy, Mr. Blanche said Mr. Trump disclosed the payments to Mr. Cohen on IRS and ethics forms, so he wasn’t trying to conceal them from tax authorities. Influencing coverage and burying unflattering stories was “standard operating procedure” for campaigns, he said.

“Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people who are working together to help somebody win,” Mr. Blanche said. “This is not a crime.”

• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.