How Trump lost the winnable trial: The two HUGE mistakes Donald's bombastic lawyers made in his hush money case as his 'deny everything, attack everyone' strategy finally backfires

Donald Trump squandered a 'winnable case' where he could have got a hung jury or escaped with only a misdemeanor, legal experts argue.

The former president was found guilty by a jury of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the so-called 'hush money' trial in New York.

Trump covered up $130,000 in payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to hide extramarital affairs and now faces the unlikely possibility of jail time.

But veteran lawyers argue District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case had weaknesses despite 200 pieces of evidence and weeks of witness testimony.

Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, detailed in analysis for the New York Times how Trump's defense was undone by two critical errors.

The first was using a defense that amounted to 'a haphazard cacophony of denials and personal attacks' instead of a tightly woven narrative.

Trump has used this deny everything, attack everyone strategy for years on TV, social media, and his boisterous and vulgar campaign rallies.

But Mariotti said it was ill-suited to a courtroom and torpedoed his chances of winning, or at least fighting the case to a draw he could call a victory.

Mariotti explained the prosecution case hinged on the testimony of Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer and 'fixer' who was the only evidence that Trump knew of the plot to falsify the records.

Trump was in the White House by the time the fake records were created and could have argued Cohen and Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg cooked up the scheme on their own while he was busy being president.

Cohen's credibility is shot, he is known to hate Trump, and he pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and charges of bank fraud, tax evasion and campaign finance violation.

'You don’t need to be a lawyer to see how this could be a powerful legal defense,' Mariotti wrote.

Trump's lawyers did try to do this, but the trial lasted weeks with a dizzying array of witnesses and pieces of evidence for the jury to keep up with.

Todd Blanche, who made the defense's closing argument, even addressed it - but his speech to the jury last three hours.

'The problem is that the defense made so many other points, and fought so many other things, that it failed to focus the jury on the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case and instead tried to fight everything and everyone, even when it gained little by doing so,' Mariotti wrote.

'The defense needs its own story, and in my experience, the side that tells the simpler story at trial usually wins.' 

Team Trump's second fatal mistake, Mariotti explained, was sticking to Trump's usual 'deny everything' policy.

Mariotti wrote that if he was running the defense he would have had Trump admit his affair with Daniels.