Cohen’s still the star witness in the sense that he’s the one most jurors are likely to be familiar with already. (They probably never heard of Pecker before being seated for the trial.) The jury is therefore primed to pay greater attention to Cohen’s testimony, even if that isn’t something the prosecution necessarily wants. As others have remarked in this thread, the prosecution is probably accounting for this by using more reliable witnesses to lay the groundwork for their case. The prosecutors will then get Cohen to confirm this trustworthy testimony, which will hopefully make him seem credible enough for the jury to accept whatever new evidence of his is not corroborated by other witnesses.
One thing that is giving me a degree of hope so far (entirely subjectively) is that all the jurors seem to be paying attention to what is being revealed. Granted, we aren’t getting to see any of it, but there are multiple reports of jurors paying attention, or seemingly interested in what’s going on, and no reports of them being dismissive or disinterested so far.
Which reduces (not eliminates) the chance of a deep MAGA nut going against any evidence. I know, I know, we’ve discussed in detail that the ones best equipped to judge those chances were the professionals there in court, with the questions at hand and a chance to dismiss, but given the situation the nation is in, allow me some minor relief, please.
You might be right. What got me is that I thought Pecker’s main purpose was to just lay down a foundation in order to bolster Cohen’s testimony. But the Trump defense team didn’t really do anything to meaningfully attack Pecker’s credibility. Nor is Trump attacking Pecker as he commonly does with witnesses. Dude must know where the bodies are buried.
I think this is another good example of just how bad Trump does when he’s got a case that goes to court. This was supposed to be the weakest criminal case against him, but even before the star witness appears things look very, very bad for Trump. It’s a combination of overwhelming evidence, Trump’s general demeanor in court, his micromanagment of his defense team, and a baffling lack of any ability to actually put on a defense.
Those catches that he kills don’t just disappear.
Agree. Prosecutors are skilled at edifying the testimony of questionable witnesses with corroborating evidence. FWIW, on MSNBC someone said Cohen is not the “star witness,” but he is an “eye witness.” If he was all the prosecution had, they would never have brought it to trial. As we’ve already seen, they have lots.
I think Trump is banking on the Supreme Court giving him immunity for anything he did before he was president, anything he did while president, as well as anything he did after being president, including into the future indefinitely, including any state criminal cases.
Because he’s just that stupid, and does not understand the basics.
Yes. It’s not really “catch and kill”
It’s more like “catch and put the details in my locked filing cabinet”
Is there much to this opinion, that cross-examining Trump on acts unrelated to the charges he faces might ‘chill’ his right to testify?
I completely agree. I’ve said before, Trump’s on a suicide run. He’s got the pedal to the metal and he’s either going to be elected president or he’s going to crash in a spectacular fashion.
Not only does he know where the bodies are buried, he knows who, how, why they became bodies.
In mr pecker’s testimony he mentioned many times that cohen wanted his “trump” files or box (s).
From cnn:
Trump kept asking for it and pushing cohen to get it.
Pecker testifies that Michael Cohen was insistent about getting all of the content AMI had on Trump.
Pecker says he told Cohen it was boxes of old news articles and old files. But Pecker says Cohen insisted Trump wanted the boxes.
Cohen called Pecker constantly in September 2016 to get the boxes to his office, Pecker says.
As to why Cohen wanted the documents, Pecker says: “The boss said if I got hit by a bus or if the company got sold, he didn’t want someone else to potentially publish those stories.”
Boxes. Trump likes boxes. With documents.
I’m not so sure that Cohen is the liability that the defense wants to portray.
For one, he’s well spoken. He’s been all over left-leaning media these last few years, and he has no problem articulating what he has seen and experienced; he’ll effectively answer questions that the DA asks.
And I don’t think the defense will be able to score too many points when they cross him.
“Didn’t you go to prison?” “Yes, for doing these crimes that are the subject of this case, and at Trump’s direction.”
“Weren’t you convicted of lying to Congress?” “Yes, but I was lying about Trump’s involvement with Russians. I lied to protect him.”
“You are just jealous and bitter because Trump didn’t keep you in his inner circle.”
“I decided I was more loyal to America and my family than to Trump. The biggest mistake I made was being his lawyer.”
I mean, really, most important witnesses in criminal cases are going to be other criminals, or at least the unsavory sort who associate with criminals. Building a case out of that is precisely a prosecutor’s job.
To address this:
We all know that donald is going to appeal if he loses. That’s a given (although it should be noted that an appeal of a criminal conviction does not delay sentencing).
One issue that he can certainly raise on appeal concerns the admissibility of “other bad acts”.
The law does not allow the prosecution to introduce evidence of other wrongs in order to show that the defendant has a propensity for crime, or that he’s a bad guy.
But it can be introduced for other reasons.
Here, the judge decided that, if donald testifies, certain other bad things can be asked about (such as his defamation loss). The judge decided that these go to Donald’s credibility (which would be a permissible reason to allow it in).
An appellate court will likely be presented with the argument that this was a mistake, and therefore denied donald a fair trial.
I, personally, don’t think this will be successful. This issue with allowing prior transgressions for certain purposes, but not others, has a ton of case law behind it. I have little doubt that the DA thoroughly briefed the issue, and the judge based his decision on sold case law.
But it is an area of review (and this was the reason that Harvey Weinstein had his New York conviction overturned on appeal: some evidence of other bad acts was going to be used if Weinstein testified, but the appellate court deemed it improper).
I’ve heard some legal analyst say that Justice Merchan has likely taken that into account. i.e. The Justice knew the case was in motion and which way the wind was blowing so he made the decision on what Trump could be questioned on based on that. I can’t help but admit that I’m out of my depth here when it comes to legal knowledge.
On the surface, it does seem unfair that a defendant can be grilled for something completely unrelated to the case at hand. Just because Trump has been found liable for fraud doesn’t mean he committed fraud this time. Were I the prosecution, I’d consider taking some of the questions off the table.
I want him to answer, “What was the nature of your relationship with Ms. Daniels”? Totally in bounds.
There is no way that he’ll testify.
That’s correct, but that “completely unrelated” point is sometimes difficult to determine. The prosecution’s case theory is that paying off Daniels wasn’t an isolated episode. They want to put in the other two “catch-and-kill” stories, and the Access Hollywood issue, to show that Trump had a pattern of behaviour that was putting him in jeopardy of losing the election, and that Daniels similarly needed to be bought off, before the election.
It is only inbounds if the questioner (defense attorney) asks him about her or he blorts out stuff about her. The prosecutor will only be able to cross-examine him, if he testifies, which means he can only ask questions related to his testimony.
For instance, if his attorney asks “How do you feel about this trial?” and Individual-ONE rambles on about being persecuted and Biden did this to me and Hillary should be locked up, and “No more quesoions, your honor,” there would be precious little to cross-examine him on. If Stephanie does not come up in direct, the DA cannot ask about her.
Thanks for the correction
Did Pecker say that he was keeping the documents to help insure that he didn’t get “hit by a bus”?