This account of Day 10 is 2 days late, however I’ve an excellent excuse. On Thursday, Might 2, 2024, at round 10:15 p.m., Louisa Catherine Chiusano was born at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, the daughter of Charlotte Alter and Mark Chiusano. Louisa is the youthful sister of Rosie Chiusano, now almost two and a half. I went to the hospital final night and located Charlotte and Louisa doing nice. My spouse, Emily Lazar, and I are thrilled to have our second grandchild.
Day 11, when Hope Hicks took the stand, was a horrible one for Donald Trump, however you’ll have to examine that tomorrow.
For now, I need to supply my tackle Day 10, after I grew a tad involved. Not fearful or pessimistic; I nonetheless assume the percentages favor conviction. However the thought occurred to me through the lacerating cross-examination of Keith Davidson that it’s fairly attainable a number of members of the jury will determine to hold it.
These jurors wouldn’t essentially be secret Trumpsters. Based mostly on voir dire and watching them by binoculars (permitted so long as reporters don’t use them to give attention to the attorneys’ open laptops), nothing raises suspicions. Not that my “hyper-observational” strategy, as The New Yorker described my MO, would essentially yield insights about their inclinations. I briefly thought that one male juror had a MAGA haircut. (“It wouldn’t be prudent,” as George H.W. Bush favored to say, to inform you which one). However then I made a decision that this commentary was, properly, a bit hyper.
The morning opened with Decide Juan Merchan’s second contempt listening to. On Thursday, the choose held Trump in contempt of court docket on 9 of the ten counts supplied by the prosecution. This time, Merchan is contemplating 4 violations of the gag order from the final two weeks, every that includes Trump trashing witnesses and the jury, a critical no-no in legal trials.
One among my favourite recurring humiliations of Trump is that he should sit silently—with out posting nasty rejoinders or altering the channel—whereas hatred and mock of him pour forth, virtually at all times within the voice of his personal attorneys. This occurred throughout jury choice when protection attorneys satisfied the choose to dismiss potential jurors who referred to as Trump “the satan” or a “sociopath.” And we’ve now watched Trump endure two contempt hearings the place his attorneys insisted that he wasn’t violating the gag order by replying to vicious assaults from Michael Cohen, the previous Trump Group legal professional central to the hush cash/election interference scheme.
At the moment, the protection did so with 500 pages of reveals that that they had despatched to the choose, most consisting of Cohen going after Trump. Merchan, his watch, solely had the persistence for a sampling.
After Todd Blanche, the Trump lawyer on more and more skinny ice together with his consumer, learn Cohen’s tweet calling Trump “Von ShitzInPantz,” you could possibly hear stifled giggles within the courtroom. That changed into laughter—instantly shushed by the humorless court docket police—when the overhead video screens displayed a PhotoShopped fats Trump as a vivid orange superhero named “Tremendous Sufferer.” Orange was a theme. I particularly loved the picture of Trump in an orange jumpsuit subsequent to Nelson Mandela. (Trump not too long ago dubbed himself a “modern-day” model of the anti-apartheid hero) and the road: “Preserve messing with me Donald and I received’t ship something to your commissary.”
Trump is particularly delicate to criticisms of his companies, and he glared on the picture on the video screens of Barry Diller on CNBC’s Squawk Field with a chyron beneath: “Trump IPO is a rip-off.”
Blanche complained that Cohen makes use of his podcast, Mea Culpa, to take vicious photographs at his outdated boss and is purchasing a TV present primarily based on the trial.
“Everybody can say what they need on this case besides President Trump,” Blanche whined.
The choose was unimpressed: “They’re not defendants on this case. That’s a really important difficulty you’re overlooking.”
When Blanche continued, Merchan interrupted to remind him that Trump was the one approaching the microphones. “No person’s forcing him to speak to the press within the corridor. All the space has been arrange in order that your consumer, who’s a candidate for president, can train his political speech rights,” Merchan mentioned.
Blanche responded, “Decide, I agree with that.”
At that time, Trump glared at his legal professional. His orders are clear: Don’t give one inch.
The microphones to which Merchan referred are simply down the corridor from Room 1530 (the courtroom), the place—addressing the tiny press pool from behind a brief metallic barrier that fittingly resembles jail bars—Trump launches his morning fusillades in opposition to the choose (‘crooked”), the DA (“crooked”), and the trial (“rigged”). None of that is prohibited below the gag order.
You’ve got in all probability seen extra of these transient exchanges with the media than I’ve as a result of these of us with courtroom passes should stay seated for 5 to 10 minutes till Elvis (sorry, that’s Invoice Clinton, not this sociopathic carnival barker) has left the constructing.
The 2 new contempt prices associated to Cohen stem from Trump saying exterior court docket on April 22, “When are they going to have a look at all of the lies that Cohen did within the final trial? He obtained caught mendacity within the final trial.” The subsequent day, the forty fifth president of the USA was at it once more: “Michael Cohen is a convicted liar, and he’s obtained no credibility in any way.” We’ll see whether or not Merchan believes these strains have been in response to a particular Cohen assault or unprovoked. If the latter, Trump will probably be fined $1,000 for every of them.
The choose indicated that probably the most critical contempt cost stems from Trump’s criticism concerning the jury in an interview with Actual America’s Voice, a MAGA cable and satellite tv for pc channel: “The jury was picked so quick—95 % Democrats. The realm’s largely all Democrat. You consider it as a—only a purely Democrat space. It’s a really unfair state of affairs, that I can inform you,” Donald mentioned of the New York Metropolis borough the place he lived for many years.
These feedback preview Trump’s political argument if he will get convicted. He’ll bash the jurors as biased Democrats, query their integrity, and weaken religion within the legal justice system much more than he has already.
Merchan believes that’s a flagrant violation of his gag order, which explicitly bars attacking jurors.
“He spoke concerning the jury. He mentioned the jury was 95 % Democratic,” Merchan barked from the bench, maybe not recognizing that he was inadvertently spreading Trump’s calumny. “The implication was that this isn’t a good jury.”
When Blanche, the protection legal professional, tried distinguishing between “the jury” that Trump attacked and particular person “jurors” whom he spared, Merchan batted away the lame distinction.
Then Blanche, an skilled white-collar legal protection lawyer, tried to argue that commentators have been allowed to touch upon juries, so why couldn’t Trump? Merchan thought this foolish excuse—which gave the impression of one thing that the 77-year-old defendant himself got here up with—was even weaker than the one Blanche used within the first listening to on the gag order. In that one, Trump re-posted contemptible (in each senses of the phrase) right-wing content material.
After that first listening to, Merchan dominated there’s no distinction between posting authentic venomous content material and re-posting another person’s. Now, he reiterated that to keep away from the gag order, Trump needed to be responding to particular assaults.
Blanche argued that “the defendant wasn’t responding to something specifically,” simply months and years of assaults from Cohen and others. Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo replied that the gag order had solely been in place for just a few weeks and thus didn’t cowl months or years of mutual vitriol and was not interfering with Trump’s proper to marketing campaign.
Trump has additionally trashed Stormy Daniels, who’s on the witness record. This led Blanche to complain that Trump must be allowed to answer President Joe Biden’s remarks on the White Home Correspondents Dinner final month. Blanche quoted Biden’s quip, “Donald had had just a few powerful days currently. You may name it stormy climate.”
The choose was incredulous, “Are you saying that he [Trump] can not reply with out saying, ‘Stormy Daniels’?” Merchan mentioned. “He can definitely reply to President Biden.”
“The defendant is doing every little thing he can to make this case about politics,” Colangelo summarized. “It’s not. It’s about his legal conduct.”
There’s one rely the place Trump may skate. Merchan didn’t appear to care about Trump saying final week that he hoped David Pecker could be “good” to him on the stand. The choose might not have but learn the complete textual content of Trump’s feedback about Pecker. I discovered the road—“It is a message to Pecker: Be good.”—to be threatening, not complimentary. (See Joe Pesci’s “Be good!” scene in On line casino.) We’ll see if on additional inspection, the choose agrees.
As I wrote in my Day 9 report, it’s unlucky {that a} former president being held in contempt of court docket is just not a lot larger information. Think about if Richard Nixon (pardoned earlier than any trial) had been discovered responsible of contempt. It could have generated “Saturday Night time Bloodbath”-level protection. This period will probably be remembered for its numbness. A world-class deviant is “defining deviancy down” within the memorable formulation of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
The contempt debate has private resonance for me. In 1969, I used to be a 12-year-old child on Chicago’s North Aspect, bursting out the entrance door each morning to select up the Solar-Instances on our porch. That yr introduced massive protection of the Chicago 8 conspiracy trial that grew out of the disturbances on the 1968 Democratic Conference, and I reveled in a minor connection to it: Yippie chief Abbie Hoffman was sleeping within the spare bed room of household pals who rightly suspected the FBI tapped their cellphone. Their overdue cellphone payments have been mysteriously paid.) The title of the trial was modified to the Chicago 7 when Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panthers and utterly harmless, was severed from the case. Decide Julius Hoffman (unrelated to Abbie) infamously ordered Seale sure (to a chair) and gagged (with a material) for disrupting the courtroom. He sentenced Seale to 4 years in jail for contempt, a call overturned on enchantment.
Merchan received’t order Trump sure and gagged, even when he begins shouting within the courtroom. And he’s unlikely to jail him or impose my most popular punishment, selecting up trash in an orange jumpsuit. However as he summoned the jury again into the courtroom, it was clear the choose’s persistence with the protection was sporting skinny.
So was Trump’s. As standard, he’s upset about the way in which his attorneys are dealing with the case, although he doesn’t present it within the courtroom. As a substitute, Trump is making an attempt to sound chipper. On Wednesday, he posted on Fact Social, “Opposite to the FAKE NEWS MEDIA, I don’t go to sleep through the Crooked D.A.’s Witch Hunt, particularly not at this time. I merely shut my stunning blue eyes, generally, pay attention intensely, and take it ALL in!!!”
When he opens his eyes and walks out throughout breaks, his expression is much less defiant than a examine in frustration, as if he’s resigned to this non permanent destiny. On the finish of the day he shot MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell a grimy appear like the one he despatched George Conway’s route final week.
Mid-morning, Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass resumed his direct examination of Keith Davidson, the Beverly Hills lawyer who represented each Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. He was pre-butting what would occur on cross-examination.
After testifying that the discharge of the Entry Hollywood tape on October 7, 2016, had “super affect” on the marketability of the Stormy Daniels story, Davidson instructed a story of rising frustration with Cohen over why the urgency Cohen expressed on an virtually hourly foundation was not matched by precise supply of the cash.
“I consider he [Cohen] was not telling me the reality” about “delays in funding” the hush cash, Davidson testified. After I first heard this, I questioned why prosecutors needed to re-emphasize that Cohen lied to Davidson. Then I noticed that it bolstered the chronology they have been constructing of Trump and Cohen freaking out over the Entry Hollywood tape, Trump being too low-cost to pony up, and Cohen frantically organising a brand new firm and drawing on his house fairness mortgage to make the cost.
Within the negotiations, Cohen demanded “a lot increased liquidated damages” than Davidson supplied—$1 million for each time Daniels (signing as Stephanie Clifford) breached the contract by speaking about her relationship with Trump. Davidson agreed to it regardless that he thought it unenforceable.
Daniels and Cohen signed the contract on October 28, 2016, and Davidson on October 31, per week earlier than the election. Solely Cohen and Davidson retained copies, with Davidson writing by hand within the area reserved for the pseudonym “David Dennison,” the actual title of Donald Trump.
4 days earlier than the election, The Wall Road Journal uncovered how American Media Worldwide, the Nationwide Enquirer’s dad or mum firm, used “catch and kill” on the McDougal story. Cohen instructed Davidson that “the boss was very upset, and he threatened to sue” McDougal. Just like the response to the Entry Hollywood story, this goes to Trump’s motive for signing off on the hush cash to Stormy Daniels.
After Trump received, Davidson texted Dylan Howard, an government at AMI, what he referred to as “gallows humor”:
“What have we finished?”
Howard replied: “Oh, my God.”
On the stand, Davidson blandly testified, “There was an understanding that our actions might have in some methods assisted the presidential marketing campaign of Donald Trump.”
This bolsters the prosecution’s argument that the members of the conspiracy (together with Trump) supposed to affect the election, an vital ingredient of the DA’s case.
Nonetheless making an attempt to pre-butt, Steinglass requested about what occurred after the election, when Cohen regularly referred to as Davidson.
On December 9, Davidson was holiday-shopping at a “surprisingly adorned” massive field division retailer with an “Alice in Wonderland” motif of outsized characters (becoming, I assumed) the place “you felt small.” Cohen referred to as and unloaded:
“Jesus Christ, Are you able to fucking consider I’m not going to Washington after every little thing I’ve finished for that fucking man,” a reference to his not being supplied an administration job. “I’ve saved the man’s ass so many occasions.”
Cohen instructed Davidson, “That man is just not even paying me the $130,000 again.”
I used to be fairly certain we’d hear extra about that assertion on cross-examination. However I didn’t predict what else Davidson would say on cross about Cohen’s way of thinking a month after the election—that Cohen was “despondent” and Davidson feared he “would kill himself.” Cohen had delusions of grandeur. He thought he ought to have been thought-about to be Trump’s legal professional common or White Home chief of workers. When Cohen testifies, we’ll study if Trump supplied him something. Both method, Cohen was extraordinarily dissatisfied.
As a child fascinated by American presidents, I discovered concerning the assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881. The murderer, Charles J. Guiteau, was routinely described in historical past books as a “dissatisfied office-seeker.”
Trump’s protection attorneys received’t make reference to Garfield, whom Trump remembers solely as a cat. They don’t have to. The jury discovered that Cohen had an enormous private motive for looking for revenge in opposition to Trump, and it landed.
On direct, Davidson defined that when the Stormy Daniels story broke in 2018, he wrote an announcement within the actress’sname denying the affair. On this second of pre-buttal, the jury started to study that this glossy lawyer was additionally a talented liar. It turned out that in the event you knew learn how to decode the denial, it wasn’t actually a denial in any respect however simply a part of what Davidson cynically referred to as the standard “cat-and-mouse interplay with the press.”
For example, Davidson claimed that when Daniels wrote in her ghosted assertion, “Rumors that I obtained hush cash from Donald Trump are false,” she—and Davidson—weren’t mendacity as a result of the “consideration” settlement she signed made no particular reference to hush cash. And when she mentioned she had “no sexual and/or romantic relationship” with Trump, she was, uh, telling the reality, or at the least a part of it. The encounter was neither romantic nor a relationship, and the “and/or” was a beneficial loophole.
Davidson exuded smug delight when explaining that “no sexual and romantic relationship” was technically true.
Daniels used a variation of the loophole on Jimmy Kimmel Reside. Later, she repudiated her repudiation, then not too long ago modified her story to recommend maybe her liaison with Trump was not totally consensual. All in all, as both Stormy Daniels or Stephanie Clifford, she’s going to make a horrible witness if she’s referred to as.
Within the meantime, dealing with Stormy introduced Davidson and Cohen into nearer contact. When she recklessly fired Davidson as her lawyer in favor of the well-known (however in the end legal) Michael Avanatti, Cohen and Davidson solid a a lot nearer connection than Davidson conveyed throughout his first day on direct.
By this time, I used to be starting to assume they have been two peas in a pod and that Trump may profit from what might be referred to as “The Sleazy Lawyer Impact.” Cohen and Davidson have been simply sleazy attorneys making an attempt to get some cash out of Trump.
This was the theme of Emil Bove’s blistering cross-examination: Davidson is mainly an extortionist by commerce. Bove was a lot better at this time than when he tousled cross-examining David Pecker final week and needed to apologize to the jury. He additionally obtained fortunate as a result of Davidson proved to be a a lot worse witness for the DA than Pecker, whose gentle solutions on the stand made his testimony appear credible sufficient.
Bove started by establishing an important level for the protection: Davidson admitted he had by no means met Trump and had no first-hand information of his enterprise data. “Every thing you recognize about President Trump comes from both TV or Michael Cohen, proper?”
Davidson mentioned sure, however that was certainly one of his solely straight solutions of the afternoon. A lot of the remainder of the time, he mentioned, “I don’t recall” about incidents he clearly recalled and performed lawyerly phrase video games that will need to have aggravated the jury.
When Bove mentioned, “I’m not right here to play lawyer video games with you,” the prosecution’s objection was sustained. However Davidson took the bait. “You’re getting truthful solutions, sir,” he mentioned sharply. “When you’re not right here to play authorized video games, then don’t say ‘extract.’”
It turned out that extracting settlements and utilizing leverage to the hilt was the well mannered method of describing Davidson’s normal enterprise practices. As Bove established, the correct time period is extort. Right here the louche tabloid world Trump has inhabited for half a century got here alive within the courtroom with lurid tales that took jurors far past tales of a Playboy “Playmate of the Yr” and porn star.
Davidson smugly denied even worrying concerning the line between correct negotiation and extortion, which wasn’t plausible on its face and performed even worse for him when it turned clear that he must reply for his sleazy regulation apply.
Bove then walked Davidson by a collection of controversies involving troubled celebrities, all of which made Davidson look unsavory and responsible of some sort of extortion, even when he was by no means prosecuted for it. He had his regulation license suspended for 90 days, turned the goal of a Tampa police report, and, in a unique case, an FBI sting operation.
Davidson appears to have had a sub-specialty in intercourse tapes. In a single extremely publicized case, he “extracted” massive cash out of Hulk Hogan in trade for not airing intercourse tapes. In one other, he labored with a “intercourse tapes dealer” named Kevin Blatt to get $75,000 out of pro-Nazi actuality TV star Tina Tequila.
Davidson represented a leaker on the Betty Ford Clinic who satisfied TMZ to provide her $10,000 in trade for suppressing a narrative about Lindsay Lohan’s dependancy.
“You’ve represented some shoppers who you helped receives a commission by Charlie Sheen, proper?” Bove requested.
“I’ve represented a number of shoppers who had claims in opposition to Charlie Sheen,” Davidson answered fastidiously.
“And who you extracted sums of cash from Charlie Sheen on behalf of, appropriate?”
“There was no extraction,” he answered fastidiously. “We asserted that there was tortious exercise dedicated and legitimate settlements that have been executed.” Eye roll.
Bove pressed Davidson about Stormy Daniels saying to him, “If he [Trump] loses this election, all of us lose all fucking leverage.” Later, when Daniels retracts her declare, he and Cohen focus on “settlers regret” and namecheck Larry Flynt, the late Hustler writer. within the course of.
All of this laid the groundwork for the protection to argue that Trump was simply the harmless sufferer of skilled extortionists.
Issues went a lot better for the prosecution on Friday, and I’ll report that to you tomorrow.
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