No. of Recommendations: 18
If you are interested in a career in law, maybe as a criminal defense lawyer, you'd have to conduct a pretty extensive search to find a better example to learn from about what NOT to do in court than what occurred in New York City in Trump's hush money / campaign finance fraud trial on May 9, 2024. Lawyers for the defense shot themselves in the foot repeatedly all day.
It's important to remember the context of the witnesses called to testify. Stormy Daniels was continuing her testimony that began earlier in the week. Her actions and Trump's actions specifically towards her were and are NOT the core focus of the trial. Daniels was called to testify by the prosecution because Trump refused in public and in the course of the trial to stipulate that he had an "affair" with Daniels. For the purposes of his TRIAL, it doesn't matter what the "affair" constituted. Only that Daniels had one take (something happened) and Trump had the opposite take (nothing happened). Yet he paid Daniels $130,000 to not take her story public. From a criminal trial standpoint, the smartest thing Trump could have done would have been to stipulate that something DID happen between consenting adults and eliminate any reason for the prosecution to call her to testify.
But for political reasons (then and now), Trump cannot admit the event occurred. And he wouldn't allow his lawyers to stipulate to the event but instead demanded they DENY the event took place, thus impugning the integrity of the prosecution's witness... Triggering two and a half days of testimony and cross-examination. Here's where the Trump lawyerin' brain trust really showed their stuff.
On May 9, in the course of grilling Stormy Daniels about a variety of tweets, Daniels managed to trick Susan Necheles (Trump's lawyer assigned to cross-examine Daniels to avoid a man-versus-woman dynamic in front of the jury) into explicitly referring to her own client as the "orange turd." Not once. Not twice. But three times. If derogatory language about your defendant is involved in a legal point you insist on making in front of the jury, it's a REALLY GOOD idea to have the WITNESS bring up that language and say it. It's a REALLY BAD idea for the defense counsel to introduce derogatory language about their own client. Psychologically, doing so is very likely to convey to the jury that the defense ACCEPTS that language for describing their client.
On at least two other occasions on May 9, Susan Necheles attempted to harangue Daniels about different tweets, claiming that Daniels explicitly said X and Y. Twice, Daniels calmly and simply denied Necheles' assertation, saying "No." Twice, Necheles made a big production of bringing up the alleged tweets on the big flag screen TVs placed in front of the judge and jury to drill into those tweets to prove her point... ....Only to find that those exact tweets proved Daniels was correct and did NOT say what Necheles alleged. Necheles did this TWICE.
After Daniels concluded her testimony, Trump's lawyers again filed a motion with the judge to dismiss the case, stating Daniel's testimony was "prejudicial" and prevented the jury from reaching a fair conclusion. This prompted a lengthy sidebar between the judge, the defense counsel and the prosecution, presumably with the jury dismissed to a break room. In that sidebar, Judge Merchan lectured Trump's attorneys that he didn't want many of the details that came up in Daniel's testimony introduced either. Merchan further told Trump's attorneys that "hey, if you were paying attention, you noticed I sustained the vast majority of your objections, yet at some point you went silent and didn't raise any objections to some of the most off-topic responses from the witness. It isn't my job to do your job. More importantly, YOU OPENED YOURSELF to this testimony by denying the claim of the said sexual encounter then aggressively cross-examined the witness. That allows The People to defend their witness and ask a much wider range of questions."
Some commentators believe Trump's lawyers are trying to sow the seeds for a later mistrial on grounds of ineffective counsel but that Marchan likely sees that ploy as well and is actively attempting to thwart it. In general, failure to object DURING a trial isn't an absolute block on filing for appeal on that issue but when the defense fails to object on (say) five to seven points then later attempts an appeal based on those elements, appellate courts will not be very tolerant and will likely reject the appeal.
If that weren't enough, the final witness for May 9 was a personal assistant of Trump at The Trump Organization and testified to Trump's micromanagement of even the most trivial of expenses he incurred. At least, expenses that should be trivial for a billionaire. One example involved a $695 picture frame from Tiffany's that was under consideration for a picture of Trump's mother. Did Trump need to approve that? ABSOLUTELY. And make sure he got his 15% discount. Another example was a yearly membership fee at a private country club costing about $6995 per year. Could we pay that to keep the membership lit or do we need to ask DJT? ABSOLUTELY we need to ask DJT and see if they can give me a discount for the next couple of years while President cuz I won't be able to visit the club and while you're at it, see if I can skip paying the mandatory meals fee.
Again, those bills had nothing to do with the actual charges involved with the alleged crimes but those stories meshed perfectly with prior testimony from Hope Hicks about Trump's micromanagement of EVERYTHING around him. The testimony cemented the prosecution's core case that a) Trump was AWARE of the scandal within the campaign, b) Trump APPROVED the payoff scheme to avoid cratering his 2016 campaign, c) Trump APPROVED the fraudulently mis-directed allocation of the payoff cost through The Trump Organization's books and d) Trump APPROVED each of the deferred payments to Michael Cohen.
WTH
