"There's nothing wrong with trying to influence an election," Mr Blanche said. "It's called democracy."

Oh look, the defense is equating two things that have the same outcome while ignoring the context.

Capaigning and spin are certainly things that have an impact on an election and could be called influencing if the term wasn't already used to describe malicious behavior like Russia trying to influence the election.

It is like someone calling conjecture about bigfoot a theory in a scientific setting. No, that isn't what the word means in this context.

The public disclosure "would have been devastating to his campaign, so at Trump's direction Cohen negotiated a deal", Mr Colangelo told the jurors.

Are you supposed to use "Mr" instead of "Mr." now, or is that just a style thing that BBC does?