But there’s a principle in law that the actions of an agent are presumed to be taken on behalf of the person who hired the agent. If I owned a rental property, and hired a property management firm to handle the day-to-day aspects of running the property, I’d still have at least some legal exposure if that firm started taking actions that are illegal under the law. I’m expected to do enough due diligence to ensure that they are acting properly.
Habba is a lawyer, hired by Trump as both his lawyer, and his spokesperson. She went on TV and talked specifically about his legal issues, and in doing so, attacked a witness. This is exactly the sort of thing she was hired to do (represent him in public, represent him on legal issues), so it’s hard to argue that this was just a spontaneous act on her part that Trump could never have predicted. It was incumbent on him to give her at least some modicum of instruction to avoid actions that might have violated a legal order he was under.
Speculating here: if Trump himself kept it deliberately vague whether she was his spokesperson, there’s a case to be made that she acted with apparent authority.
Though she’s not his lawyer in this case (possibly not his lawyer in any capacity at the moment, after the awesome job she did in civil fraud case)
IANAL and maybe this kind of thing happens all the time, but it seems like a difficult thing to prove or even to get into court. Like what is the mechanism where the judge or his officers can interview some random person not associated the case to see if they were in fact acting as the defendant’s agent when they made those statements?
I imagine it would instead be handled by pointing out to the defendant that the gag order does cover his agents as well him personally, and reminding him he’s facing jail if he violates the order again.
And his lawyer then advises the court that his client did not give any instructions to Ms Habba to comment in the matter. To disprove that, there would have to be extensive hearings in the court, calling people as witnesses, and so on. That could derail the trial, which is the purpose of these proceedings.
The longer the trial goes on, the greater the chance that a juror falls ill or asks to be excused because a pressing family matter came up.
There is a cost-benefit analysis: would going down this complicated contempt path actually help bring the trial to its normal conclusion, or would the contempt issue displace the trial? My guess is a judge, no matter how exasperated, will focus primarily on the trial.
Ms Hanna is not counsel on this matter, and is not an accused, the two normal bases for a court to assert personal supervisory jurisdiction via contempt.
She also has 1st Amendment rights.
Applying the gag order to her would be a considerable expansion, and could be more subject to a successful appeal than an order that only applies to the accused, Trump.
As far as the court is concerned she is. She is not part of his legal team in this trial. To assertain that would require either subpoenaing her and asking her if she is any of those things, or sending an officer of the court to go interview her. Is that even a thing? Can a bailiff or whoever go interview some random person?
Trump and Habba should both spend the weekend in jail* for violating the gag order. As a so-called “lawyer” it seems like she ought to know better, even if he doesn’t.
* Autocorrect wanted to change “jail” to “Jacksonville”. Which may also be sufficient punishment.
the judge in the civil trial did include the lawyers in the gag order. i don’t believe the judge specifically mentioned them in this one. should it be brought to the judge’s attention, he may then specifically mention the lawyers in the order and perhaps fine ms habba under the spokesperson part that is existing…
as i mentioned above, here are the exhibits that were entered during mr. mcconney’s time on the stand, showing the notations taken during a criminal conspiracy.
mcconney was able to establish that weisselburg’s handwriting was on exhibit 35. thus not needing weisselburg to testify at this trial. mcconney’s handwriting is on exhibit 36. these 2 documents are basically the smoking gun of this scheme.
I don’t understand why the court had to hear what Trump did with Daniels. It isn’t illegal to go to bed together, it may be illegal to sort of force someone, but surely that is beyond limitations.
The case, as I understand it, is falsification of records. Trump could have run out on a restaurant bill, gotten his lawyer to pay, paid back and filed that restaurant bill as legal fees. What was on the menu would not matter.
My understanding is that it is to show that the story is sufficiently embarrassing in its details that he would want to block so as to not harm his campaign.
The tryst between Daniels and Trump is the story Trump wanted to bury because the election was just weeks away and the salacious details of the story would be powerful. On the heels of the Access Hollywood tape, Trump knew another scandal could wipe out his chances of beating Biden.
That’s why he paid the money: to influence the upcoming election.
But then he falsified business records to make it a deductible, legitimate business expense.
The latter was the misdemeanor. Doing it to accomplish the former made it a felony.
SOME level of detail helps Daniels establish the truth of the affair and the necessity of Trump burying the story.
I think it has to do with the details of the events. Remember, this all came about after the Access Hollywood tape came out. He was trying to brush “grab them by the pussy” off as “locker room talk”, that didn’t really represent his actual feelings. He was just “talking tough” to try to impress someone.
But then this comes along, and his creepy and overbearing behavior shows that “grab them by the pussy” wasn’t just a brag; it was pretty much how he did things in reality. That’s why he was so desperate to cover it up. So the jury needed at least some of these details to understand the mindset he was in at that time.
Did we need all the details we got? Maybe, maybe not. But just “They had sex” by itself wouldn’t have made the full point that needed to be made.