Lawyers for Bill Cosby called his chief accuser a pathological liar who wanted a big payday, and urged a jury on Tuesday to acquit the 80-year-old of sexual assault charges they said were based on “flimsy, silly, ridiculous evidence”.

The first big celebrity trial of the #MeToo era was poised on Tuesday afternoon to be handed to the jury, as both sides summed up their arguments. The defense declared that Cosby himself was the victim of an elaborate scam.

Cosby’s lawyers, Tom Mesereau and Kathleen Bliss, insisted that Cosby’s main accuser, Andrea Constand, consented to a sexual encounter at the star’s home in suburban Philadelphia in 2004, then leveled false accusations against him so she could sue him and win a settlement.

Prosecutors will deliver their closing argument on Tuesday afternoon, with the jury expected to begin deliberations on the same day.

The fallen TV star was accompanied for the first time in his retrial by his wife of 54 years, Camille Cosby, who sat in the gallery at Montgomery county court, Pennsylvania.

Camille Cosby had been absent as the prosecution built its case that Cosby long maintained a sordid double life that involved sexually preying on women.

Constand, 45, alleges Cosby knocked her out with three pills he called “your friends” and molested her in January 2004. Her account was bolstered by the testimony of five other women who took the stand and said Cosby had drugged and assaulted them, too, including one woman who asked him through her tears: “You remember, don’t you, Mr Cosby?”

Cosby denies the charges of aggravated indecent assault, which each carry a maximum of 10 years in prison. He declined to testify. The original case ended in a mistrial last year.

Bliss argued that Cosby was an innocent man caught up in the “emotion and anger” of the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct, which gained traction last year over accusations of widespread abuse of women by film mogul Harvey Weinstein.

“When you join a movement based primarily on emotion and anger, you don’t change a damn thing, which is why each single case must be examined on its merits,” Bliss told jurors.