It’s just Trump waving papers around. The judge in this case? My money says he’s a legal scholar.
How can that be???
I was busy with work today, but I followed the CNN updates.
I really think donald has hamstrung his attorneys by forcing them to assert that she made this whole thing up.
The DA has credibly shown that they had some sort of relationship - they were pictured together, she was in his contact list (simply as “Stormy”), and his assistant confirmed that she had been to his office.
And while it’s possible that she might appear to be a conniving sex worker, the prosecutor also showed how she was young (just 27, I believe) and got into her job as a product of a troubled childhood (no mention of a father, a mom who was gone “for days at a time”) and a need to make money (She said of dancing, “I could make more in 2 hours than I could in 8 shoveling manure”).
But she also went afield from her previous testimony on the subject. I believe that this was the first time that she suggested that she was traumatized by the experience, and had immediate shame for having done it (this also provided the grist for the mistrial claim, although I think the judge was on solid ground chastising the defense for not objecting more. Nevertheless, I think the judge was willing to restrict these sorts of statements as not being germane to the charges).
The defense could have tried to counter that by showing how she previously had been more casual about the encounter, and wasn’t asserting this trauma.
Instead, they couldn’t do that, because it would mean arguing, or at least implying, that this was a mutually fun tryst. I think when the defense simply attacks her, and tries to paint her as being part of a shakedown for money, it adds to her sympathy; the woman who might have turned off the jury because she seemed gossipy instead is reinforced as a victim of a powerful and dismissive man.
Even if the jury finds her to be loathsome (perhaps because they don’t approve of sex work), her effectiveness lies in bringing donald to that level.
Of course, none of that truly goes to the criminal charges. It doesn’t really matter if she was lying or telling the truth. What matters is that she was paid off to benefit the campaign, and that donald enabled the coverup of that scheme. To that end, I actually think the book excerpts that were introduced earlier in the day were more useful - donald wrote about the value of micromanaging the details of his finances (thereby reinforcing what his office workers had previously stated).
Nevertheless, I think Stormy Daniels was another important layer in the case against donald.
If I were a juror, one impression I’d get is that the DA is giving us every angle of this incident. Nothing is being withheld. And with that, I’d feel pretty strongly that the accusations actually happened. There’s just a wave of people and documents that reinforce the fundamental facts of the case:
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Donald didn’t want gossip about his personal life to get out in his effort to become the president
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People in Donald’s orbit paid to get exclusive rights to these stories to assist his campaign efforts
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Michael Cohen specifically paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels
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donald repaid this debt by signing checks for “legal fees”
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donald knew what he was doing
Today’s transcript gives us this exchange from a morning sidebar:
During the mid-morning break, Judge Juan Merchan called defense attorney Todd Blanche to the bench and ordered him to speak to former President Donald Trump about his “contemptuous” behavior during Stormy Daniels’ testimony Tuesday.
“I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually and that’s contemptuous,” Merchan said to Blanche, according to the court transcript. “It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that.”
Merchan said he decided to speak to Blanche at the bench because he did not want to embarrass Trump. “You need to speak to him. I won’t tolerate that,” Merchan said.
Blanche again said he would talk to Trump.
Merchan then described Trump’s inappropriate behavior.
“One time I noticed when Ms. Daniels was testifying about rolling up the magazine, and presumably smacking your client, and after that point, he shook his head and he looked down. And later, I think he was looking at you, Mr. Blanche, later when we were talking about “The Apprentice,” at that point he again uttered a vulgarity and looked at you this time,” Merchan said.
It does feel a bit hard to square the idea that she was seriously put off by the event, while also claiming to have playfully spanked him on the butt with a magazine.
Granted, we could imagine that, stuck for it, she could have decided to put on her “porn star” mindset for the body of the encounter, and dropped it as soon as she could.
Still, I’d suspect that the juxtaposition could throw off a juror or two. Simpler would have been better.
From what I’ve read, being a female porn star often means doing a lot of things you’re not comfortable with and pretending to enjoy it, sometimes bordering on nonconsensual. It can be a very cruel and exploitative industry and it’s not surprising that a number of women come out of it with lasting trauma. There was a fairly prominent actress who took her own life just a few weeks ago and it’s not hard to assume some of the things she was made to do on camera were a contributing factor.
Looks like we’re gonna need a 5XL.orange jumpsuit with a balloon seat.
I expect a weekend in jail. 100 quatloos on it.
And I bet that if it happens there will be multiple direct threats against the judge and/or the judge’s family.
For all the bluster he’s spewing:
“I won’t tolerate” etc. The judge has shown he will put up with endless bullshit from Trump.
He’s not sending him to jail whatever happens, whatever the jury says.
I have heard it said that contempt of court can be an open-ended confinement: if a judge is so inclined, the contemptor can be held in jail until they display contrition for their bad behavior. It seems unlikely that this judge would go that route, confining Individual-ONE basically for the rest of his life because contrition is not in his emotional capacity, but it is kind of fun to think about. If he were jailed, with no sign of a prospect for release, I wonder how that would affect his presidency.
Daniels’ version of the story is that she was a naive twenty-seven year old who was taken advantage of by a much more powerful older man. By 2006, Daniels had nearly a decade of sex work under her belt having started with stripping and moving on to adult movies. I have a difficult time believing Daniels didn’t have an inkling of what Trump wanted when he invited her to his hotel room to talk business. Not that any of that matters when it comes to Trump’s fraudulent behavior.
I can’t say I’m surprised that Trump is attempting to skirt the gag order and this is going to be interesting. Habba represents Trump in two different capacities: She’s both his legal representative as well as his political spokesperson. It’s going to be difficult for him to argue that he didn’t direct Habba to attack Daniels, but I’m not confident Merchan will jail Trump over this. I think he’s got to jail Trump or he should just admit the court has no power to control the defendant.
It seems like it would be difficult to prove that Trump caused Habba to say that, wouldn’t it? Short of a witness or some type of evidence (ie text message) to confirm that he directed her to make those statements, ISTM it’s perfectly believable that she could have made them of her own volition.
The MeidasTouch comment above “When you pay a spokesperson, you are “directing them” to make statements on your behalf” seems like a stretch. Don’t get me wrong, if Merchan is going to call that a violation of the gag order, I’m not going to talk him out of it, however, I don’t think you can consider everything she says to be caused by him simply because she’s his paid spokesperson.
Having said that, can Merchan expand the gag order to include her? Especially considering she’s not part of this case? What about other people in his orbit?
I’m not convinced that this is Trump trying to skirt the gag order, although I agree it is going to be interesting. I think this is Trump trying to violate the gag order in the mildest and (barely) plausibly deniable way possible to call Merchan’s bluff. If he wins, he makes Merchan look the fool. If he loses, he becomes a martyr and has to spend his lunch-time in time-out.
Wasn’t Tuesday Habba’s first time for attending this trial? That was simply to demonstrate that she was still Trump’s attorney. This looks to be specifically orchestrated by Trump to force Merchan to act. More chaos.
Isn’t that literally the point of a paid spokesperson? She’s a proxy.
Yeah. The whole notion of Trump’s cutouts plays a pretty prominent role in this trial.
But to what extent is he culpable for what she says, particularly if it’s kept deliberately vague whether she is speaking on his behalf or not?
“Yeah, but, Judge, you didn’t say I had to tell my proxies they had to stop saying the things I previously wanted them to say!”
Trump is a seven-year-old boy. He’s gonna play the “I’m not touching you!” game until the judge stops the car and climbs into the back seat with a belt.
Yes, but for the 20th amendment to apply, the presidential candidate has to have “failed to qualify”. If Trump were elected, even if cooling his heels in Rikers, it would be hard to argue he has “failed to qualify”, enabling his new VP to be acting.
For the 25th Amendment to apply, the Vice-President and a majority of the cabinet have to issue a declaration that the President is unable to carry out their duties. Would Trump’s new VP do that? Presumably Trump would pick a VP candidate who has personal loyalty to him, so hard to see that happening. If the VP doesn’t invoke the 25th, Trump has full presidential powers.
And even if the VP and cabinet do invoke the 25th, president Trump can contest it and it goes to Congress. It then takes two-thirds votes of each house to declare that he’s unable to act. In the current political climate, I can’t see that happening. Trump has too much support, especially in the House, for a two-thirds vote in both houses. (It would be the new Congress that is faced with the issue, but I don’t think that new Congress will have a significantly smaller pro-Trump alignment, and will have at least one-third pro/Trumpers in each house.)
So that would then raise the supremacy clause issue: can a state criminal conviction mean the president is in Rikers?