If Donald Trump is convicted and loses the election, “The Cry” could change into shorthand for why.
It’s paying homage to how “The Scream” was seen as ending Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential marketing campaign though the reality was extra difficult.
To stipulate: Trump’s destiny on this trial relies on the jury’s evaluation of the proof, not on an emotional second that nobody apart from Hope Hicks (doubtless in a e-book) can absolutely clarify.
And Trump might lose to Joe Biden for a lot of causes, although it appears to me that it might hurt Trump to need to admit in a debate that as a convicted felon within the state of Florida, he can’t vote for himself for president.
The felon-nominee will bitch and moan about Democratic jurors in his hometown of practically 75 years. However polls present that conviction is a nasty search for a big variety of Republican voters, to not point out Democrats and—crucially—independents.
No matter her rationalization, Hicks watermarked probably the most devastating a part of her testimony in opposition to her previous boss. It’ll be simple for the jury, which sits just some ft away from the witness stand, to do not forget that the weeping got here not at some hard-to-remember second however shortly after Hicks strongly advised that President Trump was mendacity to her in 2018 when he stated that Michael Cohen paid off Stormy Daniels “out of the goodness of his coronary heart” and with out his data.
Trump’s denial of data is contradicted by his social media posts and by his deposition in a civil case involving Stormy Daniels, during which he confirms reimbursing Cohen. We’ll doubtless hear about that admissible civil case inside the subsequent few days.
Within the meantime, the prosecution ended its direct examination of Hicks and despatched the jury residence for the weekend with a bang: first-hand affirmation that Trump was motivated by issues in regards to the impending 2016 election.
Day Eleven started with Decide Juan Merchan reminding the protection group earlier than calling within the jury that the “order limiting extrajudicial statements” (i.e. gag order) solely utilized outdoors the courtroom.
Trump has been saying on the marketing campaign path that the choose was shutting him up. Now, Merchan was taking pains to set the document straight. He instructed Trump from the bench that he, as a defendant, has the correct to testify about anybody, together with (although he talked about no names) Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, and prosecution witnesses. I assume that implies that if he’s dumb sufficient to assault jurors to their faces, he’s entitled to do this, too.
However I puzzled: May Trump take this as an inadvertent invitation to make speeches from the witness stand? We’ll see. I more and more suppose he’ll testify if solely to shake issues up, drama-king model.
With the jury again, the protection started the day with continued cross-examination of Douglas Daus, who works within the DA’s workplace’s high-tech evaluation unit.
Daus was a extremely credible witness all through. He was an Iraq Conflict veteran who, with Michael Cohen’s consent, obtained and analyzed the metadata of Cohen’s two iPhones. As a result of he was the one assigned to validate what was on the telephone, the prosecution obtained to play for the jury (not for the final time) the tape of Trump and Cohen speaking about hush cash (“So pay with money,” Trump may be heard saying), an vital piece of proof.
On cross, Emil Bove, one among Trump’s attorneys, first made it appear as if he was suspect as a result of he was doing customary work for a district lawyer. Then he completely bored the court docket (together with Trump, who caught some shut-eye) with loads of technical jargon (e.g., “artifact from CP1”) designed to make it appear as if he knew what he was speaking about as an alternative of establishing an inconceivable conspiracy idea.
He did this by focusing, Johnnie Cochran-style, on the chain of custody of the telephones and Cohen’s astonishing 39,745 contacts, 30 instances greater than even well-connected folks possess. Daus defined how there was no proof of the telephones or the audio recordings on them being manipulated in any means. However missing an entire document of the chain of custody, he admitted in Bove’s phrases, “presents dangers.”
Bove left the extent of the chance to the creativeness of conspiracy-minded jurors, although he used innuendo in his inquiries to deliver the FBI and Cohen below suspicion.
I’m instructed by attorneys that affordable doubt in regards to the chain of custody will not be sufficient to discredit that proof, a lot much less the case. However Bove did rating by pointing to a nano-second hole within the audio of the important thing tape, the type all of us get when one other name is available in. However as a result of Cohen didn’t put Trump on maintain to take the opposite name, there isn’t any document of it.
Because the prosecution made clear on redirect, there’s additionally no document of Cohen, the FBI, or anybody else “manipulating or tampering with audio recorded on the telephone.”
The subsequent witness was Georgia Longstreet, a paralegal with the DA’s workplace, whose job it was to watch and log Trump’s social media accounts, together with the video assertion he made after the Entry Hollywood tape, the place he admitted to saying “silly issues” and form of apologized earlier than launching into an assault on the Clinton’s. This testimony provided the primary likelihood to current jurors with numerous movies and social media posts embarrassing to Trump, like “YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” final 12 months on Reality Social.
Neither aspect has launched a witness listing, so we have been all shocked when Hope Hicks strode into the courtroom, clad in a sensible black swimsuit and searching greater than somewhat like Ivanka Trump, who helped her get a giant job on the Trump Group when she was solely 4 years out of school. By the subsequent 12 months, she was the communications director for a presidential marketing campaign.
My tackle her tears is that she retains her gratitude for all the pieces Trump has accomplished for her within the final decade. However when that gratitude and her shut relationship with Trump got here into battle together with her oath to inform “the reality, the entire fact and nothing however the fact,” the oath gained—and the comprehensible ache adopted.
“I’m actually nervous,” she stated, adjusting the microphone on the witness stand. However the nerves didn’t stop her from being a compelling, interesting, and in the end devastating prosecution witness.
Hicks described Trump as a boss who permitted each Tweet and press launch, testimony that corroborated David Pecker’s testimony depicting Trump as a “micromanager.” This can make it tougher, although hardly not possible, for the protection to say that he didn’t know that the checks to Michael Cohen have been cowl for paying off Stormy Daniels.
Hicks recounted how David Fahrenthold of The Washington Publish emailed her that the Publish had realized of what would change into often called the Entry Hollywood story. He included a full transcript of Trump caught speaking to Billy Bush about having the ability to “seize ’em by the pussy” amongst different disgusting feedback.
Whereas the tapes have been deemed by Merchan as too prejudicial to confess into proof, the transcript—after a lot debate in entrance of the choose— is an exhibit. It was not learn from at the moment however flashed briefly on the displays. I didn’t see “pussy,” however I used to be capable of shortly learn: “And I did attempt to fuck her. She was married.”
When Hicks introduced the transcript to Trump, “He stated that that didn’t sound like one thing he would say.” In different phrases, Trump lied to her, which grew to become clear later within the day when the tape itself was obtained. Jurors may suspect that Trump is a liar based mostly on their familiarity with Trump over time. However this was the primary time they heard proof of it in court docket.
They usually heard proof that his mendacity is contagious. After Trump lied to her, she instructed her communications staffers to “deny, deny, deny.” In different phrases, to “lie, lie, lie.”
After the tape aired, she testified that Paul Ryan, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and plenty of others jumped ship, and plenty of Trump staffers thought the marketing campaign was over. “The tape was damaging. This was a disaster,” Hicks stated, noting that the story was so huge it pushed a Class 4 hurricane out of the headlines.
She confirmed reveals exhibiting that Trump was additionally very involved within the final weeks of the 2016 election about The Wall Road Journal story detailing catch-and-kill with the Karen McDougal story, and the jury noticed video of Trump on the marketing campaign path worrying aloud that the a number of accusations of sexual misconduct launched after the Entry Hollywood tape may trigger him to lose.
Hicks apparently knew nothing about Cohen’s payoff to Stormy Daniels on the time, however when the story broke within the Journal in early 2018, she and Trump had a fateful chat about it within the White Home
In a uncommon piece of excellent information for the protection, she testified that Trump was fearful about his spouse: “He needed me to verify the newspapers weren’t delivered to her residence that morning. He was fearful about how this is able to be seen at residence…I don’t suppose he needed anybody in his household to be damage or embarrassed. He needed them to be happy with him.”
“President Trump actually values Mrs Trump’s opinion. He actually respects what she has to say. And I believe he was involved about what her notion of this is able to be.”
However this testimony was undercut by what the jury heard subsequent:
Hicks testified that when the payoff to Stormy Daniels grew to become public in 2018, she and President Trump mentioned the matter within the White Home, and Trump instructed her that Michael Cohen had paid the porn star “out of the kindness of his coronary heart and by no means instructed anybody about it.”
“I’d say that may be out of character for Michael Cohen,” Hicks instructed the jury. “I didn’t know him to be an particularly charitable particular person or selfless particular person,” she stated. On the contrary, “Cohen was “The form of one that seeks credit score.”
A clueless Trump smiled when she later defined that Cohen’s moniker as “Trump’s fixer” got here from him. He was a fixer “solely as a result of he broke it in order that he might repair it.”
After all, this simply made her testimony doubting Trump’s “goodness of his coronary heart” line much more highly effective.
The subsequent half I’m quoting in full from the transcript:
Q. Did he say something in regards to the timing of the information reporting concerning—
- Oh, he—sure.
He needed to know the way it was taking part in and simply my ideas and opinion about this story versus having the story—a special form of story earlier than the marketing campaign [election] had Michael not made that cost.
And I believe Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was higher to be coping with it now, and that it might have been unhealthy to have that story come out earlier than the election.
Q. Thanks.
MR COLANGELO: No additional questions.
The protection will presumably argue that any rational candidate wouldn’t need the story of a fling with a porn star to return out earlier than an election.
However the prosecution has constructed a story for the jury that consists of: Trump’s frenzied response to the Entry Hollywood tape; Trump’s admissible marketing campaign speeches the place he overtly worries that the accusations of misconduct from a number of ladies in October will price him 5 to 10 % of the ladies’s vote; Cohen’s sense of urgency in making a dummy company and checking account and wiring the $130,000 to Keith Davidson all inside a 24-hour interval; and the testimony of Pecker, Davidson and, quickly, Cohen.
With Hicks’ testimony, the motive and legal intent essential for conviction have been reaffirmed by somebody who labored carefully with Trump, nonetheless admires him, and heard that motive expressed on to her, not as rumour testimony.
Trump could have needed to spare Melania however his first precedence was interfering within the election.
No surprise the prosecutor stated, “No additional questions.”
It was now time for Bove’s light cross-examination. For a minute or two, he requested a subdued Hicks about her background.
He talked about her first job with the Trump Group and requested, “Actual property host and leisure, that was your portfolio there?”
“Sure, she stated.
Then, because the transcript displays, she started softly crying.
This induced some temporary confusion within the courtroom over what we have been listening to.
After murmuring “Sorry” 3 times, Hicks requested, “May I simply have a minute?”
Bove requested a break, and the choose requested, “Do you want a break?” Between sobs that I might now hear from the second to final row of the courtroom, she stated, “Sure, please.”
After the break, Hicks principally regained her composure, and Bove’s simple cross continued in unmemorable vogue earlier than really fizzling out.
Hicks, who had not seen Trump in 18 months, exited the courtroom by strolling simply three ft to the correct of her previous boss. She regarded straight forward; he regarded away.
Trump ought to have been considering this however has by no means proven any familiarity with Shakespeare:
“Et tu, Brute?”
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