Cross examination could be limited (and always is to some extent). But he can’t testify and avoid any cross examination.
NM - I keep forgetting this isn’t the Pit.
I would guess (not a lawyer) that a lawyer present might object to the UFO question over relevancy. But I totally did not attend law school.
I’m not entirely sure that TFG’s ‘hair’ on a windy day would be irrelevant.
Nexus: Stormy.
QED
So he’s filing a lawsuit contending that the gag order is unconstitutional. But the only reason he ever comes up with for that is that he is popular (Republican candidate, beating Biden by a lot). Should be an interesting argument that laws don’t apply to popular people.
But but NO FAIR! Trump is Special!
In other words, he wants the Supreme Court to stall this case until after the election too.
Random thought:
If I ran CNN, I’d never have a courtroom sketch artist on as some kind of erstwhile trial expert again.
Ugh.
What they do is fascinating, but their particular brand of expertise doesn’t automatically translate to the kind of cogent analysis I’d prefer to hear.
The truth is that Trump’s lawyers don’t want him to testify because he’s an idiot and he’ll just make a fool of himself. Neither being good for his cause.
Obviously.
But if he insists on testifying they can’t stop him and they need to control the damage as best as they can.
I haven’t seen any mention of this (from the CNN interview with the sketch artist), there was a text from Dylan Howard to an immediate family member “At least if he wins, I’ll be pardoned for electoral fraud.” OUCH… that’s gotta hurt.
Sounds like an argument that will be shot down forcefully until it makes it to the Supreme Court!
Where they’ll proceed to sit on it as long as they possibly can? And then when they do have to hear it they’ll proceed to ask a whole bunch of questions that aren’t relevant to the issue at hand?
Does the “hush money” trial have to stop in its tracks while this lawsuit (not motion?) is heard? I would think the “hush money” trial still goes on per normal, and Trump’s complaint is heard in another forum later (?).
This will not slow down the trial.
After that tape, the scheme to pay Daniels happened, which lead to false business records to reimburse Michael cohen.
That tape was the trigger event.
Per cnn:
Hicks was visibly nervous, and she mostly avoided eye contact with Trump while answering questions from prosecutors for more than two hours. When prosecutors finished with their questions and Trump’s attorney took the podium, Hicks began crying and appeared to become overwhelmed; she finished her testimony after a brief break
When cross-examining Hicks, Trump attorney Emil Bove elicited testimony that Trump was also concerned about what his wife would think. Trump asked for the newspapers not to be delivered to his residence the day the story published, Hicks testified.
“I don’t think he wanted anyone in his family to be hurt or embarrassed by anything that was happening on the campaign trial. He wanted them to be proud of him,” Hicks said
Hicks took the jury inside the chaos within Trump’s campaign scrambling in response to the Washington Post story on October 7, 2016. Hicks first learned about the tape when the reporter emailed her for comment for his story that day.
“I was concerned,” Hicks testified about her thinking. “I was concerned about the contents of the email. I was concerned about the lack of time to respond. I was concerned we had a transcript without a tape. There was a lot at play.”
Hicks forwarded the email that included a transcript of the audio to several Trump campaign staffers including Kellyanne Conway.
“FLAGGING,” Hicks wrote in the email, with two notes: “1) Need to hear the tape, to be sure. 2) Deny, deny, deny.”
“Strategy number two was going to be a little more difficult,” Hicks said, chuckling on the stand.
“He said that didn’t sound like something he would say,” Hicks testified, noting Trump asked to see the actual tape. Once Trump saw the tape, however, he was upset.
Hicks said that “in that moment” she was not concerned about the impact this would have on female voters, but said it crossed her mind maybe a few hours later or the next day.
“He didn’t want to offend anybody,” Hicks said of Trump. “I think he felt like it was pretty standard stuff for two guys chatting with each other.
Hicks testified that Trump told her about the hush money payment after Cohen gave a statement to The New York Times, saying that Cohen paid the money to Daniels of his own volition.
Colangelo sarcastically asked Hicks if it seemed like Cohen’s character to just pay Daniels for Trump “out of the kindness of his heart.”
“I’d say that would be out of character for Michael,” Hicks responded. “I didn’t know Michael to be an especially charitable person or selfless person.”
Trump’s legal team continued its trial-long assault on Cohen’s credibility Friday, going after everything from the way he handled his cell phones to how he would go “rogue” during 2016 campaign.
During cross-examination, Trump’s attorneys asked Hicks to confirm that Cohen was not looped in on campaign strategy and did things that were not authorized by the campaign.
“He liked to call himself a fixer, or ‘Mr. Fix it’ – and it was only because he first broke it that he was able to then fix it,” Hicks said, laughing.
In particular, the fallout from the tape and the effect on the campaign.
The way that they scrambled to play damage control afterward puts a lie to the idea that Trump’s reason for paying for Stormy’s silence was unrelated to the campaign. You have to convince the jury of this and that goes a long way toward it.
And things can have more than one purpose. I might throw a $1M dinner for President Trump because I want him re-elected and because I like to eat lobster. It’s still a campaign contribution, I would think. I can’t imagine the jury would think that the campaign issues played no role in paying off Stormy.
And one of the legal analysts (Elie Honig?) said that the intent to defraud the electors by squashing the infidelity story need only be a ‘substantial part’ of Trump’s motivation – not the entire motivation, not the majority of the motivation – just … substantial.
Which doesn’t feel like a ridiculously high bar to me.
Mmm. Lobster.