That was one heck of a fast trial. I would have expected the trial to continue for many weeks if not a month or two. Trevor had the defense dream team, and the money to pay them. He could be facing 20 years like EH. What “trick” do they have up their sleeves? Unlike EH, Trevor has $1-2 billion.
The Theranos situation was much more complicated than Nikola. Not any less fraudulent, but much more complicated, and in particular Elizabeth Holmes' trial also covered a bunch of stuff related to whether she personally defrauded patients, doctors, and customers -- charges on which she was acquitted but was a big part of the trial. If the prosecution had only been looking for a conviction on financial fraud it might have been faster. Nikola was a much smaller company with no products or customers., and fewer people to try to spread the blame around.
Trevor Milton's defense made no sense because there was nothing to say. The facts of the case were mostly undisputed. The strategy they came up with was basically "yes, my client repeated lied about the state of their development and created fake demos of trucks that never existed while insisting they were real, but probably nobody took that seriously, and if they don't take the lies seriously they aren't really fraud"