Tweet Share Share Comment As with all things in Trump world, just when you think there is no lower behavioral place to go, new depth-defying plunges occur. Thursday’s defense summations in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against Donald Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization is just the most recent example.
While this latest plunge only further assures an extremely negative result for Trump’s finances, going forward, it portends a unique and especially serious problem for holding the former president accountable for his criminal conduct in the 2020 D.C. election interference trial.
I have not been shy in calling out Trump’s New York legal team for tactics that are as patently unprofessional as they are self-defeating—including making baseless claims about the supposed political nature of the proceedings and personally attacking the prosecutor, the judge, and his law clerk. So, counsel’s similar rants in Thursday’s summations were nothing new, although, as a courtroom veteran for more than four decades, the strikingly incompetent Alina Habba’s attack on her adversary counsel for drinking Starbucks in court was a real standout. Beyond its complete irrelevance, was it an amazingly hypocritical complaint about courtroom decorum or is Habba an avid Dunkin’ fan?
What is new is the decision to have Trump address the court directly and hurl the multifaceted lies straight to the judge’s face. While that tactical choice was most likely made by the client and not counsel, it surely removed any doubt that the ultimate result would be as bad as possible, placing Trump’s financial holdings in grave danger.
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That brings us to the potential impact the Trump “defense strategy” will have in the far more significant cases on the horizon, most immediately the D.C. Jan. 6 election interference trial.
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Unlike the New York civil case, the D.C. prosecution will be a jury trial, with 12 regular citizens sitting in judgment of the former president. While the New York case’s fact finder, Justice Arthur Engoron, is extremely capable—at least to the degree humanly possible—of putting aside Team Trump’s histrionics, those occupying the D.C. jury box will have no such experience.
In this regard, it must be understood that in criminal trials when something improper is said in the jury’s presence by either counsel or a witness, the judge will pronounce it “stricken from the record” and instruct the jurors to “disregard” it. Repeated violations can be met with warnings of contempt or actual contempt citations. While in almost all circumstances these steps are more than sufficient to ensure the trial proceeds smoothly and properly, what the New York civil litigation has made crystal clear is the fact the Donald Trump’s behavior—and that of at least some of his defense lawyers—cannot be controlled in the standard way.
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Unlike Engoron, Judge Tanya Chutkan, the D.C. judge overseeing the Jan. 6 election interference case, has a jury to protect. However impressive and experienced she is, Chutkan will have an extremely difficult time insulating the jury from variations of the kind of blatantly inadmissible statements and improper behavior defendant Donald Trump seems to have insisted on in New York.
In all high-profile cases, judges must spend meaningful time both in the jury selection process and as the trial proceeds to make sure the jury is isolated from media coverage about the case or its participants. Most ironically, in this trial, expected to be the most publicized in history, Chutkan will likely have to spend even more time protecting jurors from a graver threat to their independence and impartiality—the improper things that can be expected to be said and done by the defense in the four corners of her courtroom.
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Based on what we have witnessed in the New York civil case, it is all too predictable that in the best opportunity to finally hold Donald Trump responsible for his criminality, there will be any number of times when the unique but entirely appropriate limitations Chutkan will be forced to impose on the conduct of the trial will be the basis for Trump lawyers asking for a mistrial and demanding her removal from the matter. The more times this happens, the more problematic things will become.
The D.C. case against Donald Trump is overwhelming. He has no real defense, in fact or in law. Given the shameful nature and character of his defense of the New York civil litigation—a matter both less significant and involving actual defenses (however weak)—his D.C. defense strategy may be to do everything he can to improperly impact jurors and cause a mistrial.
Of course, as I observed in the beginning of this piece, Trump almost always goes even lower than one might reasonably expect. That realization is surely keeping both judicial and law enforcement authorities up at night.
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The Chaos in Trump’s New York Civil Trial Portends Bad News for Jack Smith
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Tweet Share Share Comment As with all things in Trump world, just when you think there is no lower behavioral place to go, new depth-defying plunges occur. Thursday’s defense summations in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against Donald Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization is just the most recent example.
While this latest plunge only further assures an extremely negative result for Trump’s finances, going forward, it portends a unique and especially serious problem for holding the former president accountable for his criminal conduct in the 2020 D.C. election interference trial.
I have not been shy in calling out Trump’s New York legal team for tactics that are as patently unprofessional as they are self-defeating—including making baseless claims about the supposed political nature of the proceedings and personally attacking the prosecutor, the judge, and his law clerk. So, counsel’s similar rants in Thursday’s summations were nothing new, although, as a courtroom veteran for more than four decades, the strikingly incompetent Alina Habba’s attack on her adversary counsel for drinking Starbucks in court was a real standout. Beyond its complete irrelevance, was it an amazingly hypocritical complaint about courtroom decorum or is Habba an avid Dunkin’ fan?
What is new is the decision to have Trump address the court directly and hurl the multifaceted lies straight to the judge’s face. While that tactical choice was most likely made by the........
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