The talking heads are saying that the cross was difficult to follow due to the scatter shoot way it was done.
The direct went chronologically through cohen’s time with trump, through the scheme, and the aftermath.
The cross so far is bouncing between name calling, finger pointing, accusations, and money making.
If they’re not scoring points, the defense might stop early so the State doesn’t have the weekend to regroup.
ETA : A good cross exam is supposed to be nasty, brutal and short.
From the cite I keep referring to, there is a defense expert. Although this is just guessing on my part at this point.
Meanwhile, I thought Cohen did superb.
I liked how, in disclosing his legal troubles, the DA was able to get in references to the Russia investigation and the civil fraud trial.
If I’m a juror, one thing that is undoubted is that donald Trump is sleazy and corrupt. Just consider the things that he was focused on even as president. Just look at the people he surrounds himself with.
And I liked how, on cross, Cohen freely acknowledged, without any reservations, his disparagement of Trump. He owned it (“that sounds about right.” Hilarious!), and thereby diffused it.
Cohen hates Trump. Okay…but does that mean that Cohen was lying? He seems completely open at this point.
And the defense tried to score points by showing that he cooperated with the government to get better treatment! Thats laudable behavior!
It doesn’t undermine anything he said - if anything, finally deciding to come clean and cooperate with the feds should make this more reliable: it forever burns any bridge he had with Trump, and yet it if it’s untrue he’s facing criminal penalties from the government. Who would do that?? The only reasonable interpretation is that he’s telling the truth.
The only defense, perhaps, is that this wasn’t criminal (I mean, that seems to be the political talking point) - because the facts of what happened seems pretty definitively proven, in my opinion.
The million dollar question, though, is who - if anybody - the defense calls as a witness. I’m guessing they get that opportunity next week. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t call anybody, but that’s because they may not have anybody with any helpful testimony to choose from.
I’m sure someone thinks they are scoring points… and sadly he thinks he is the best lawyer in the world.
Seriously! They are going to have an expert that can’t testify to anything?!
Uff da…
The Defense said that they expect to take the entire day Thursday. Of course in reality they can certainly end early. The Prosecution is plenty ready. There will be no surprises in the Defense that they need to counter. It’ll just be to clarify a few loose ends.
That’s the thing that kills me after a lot of the testimony from Trump’s employees. How many of them are still gushing about how “great” it was to work for him, how it was an “honor” or the “best time of their lives”. Even Cohen has made similar comments, even after being screwed over by Trump.
These people saw what he was like, up close, for years, and they still seem to love him. It boggles the mind. I could understand sticking with a well-paying job despite finding out the boss is a piece of shit, but this ass kissing shit? It makes no sense to me.
Already answered — withdrawn
It does to me. Not in a good way, but it makes sense. It’s like praising your enemy on the battlefield: you beat a great person, you’re a great person yourself. Something of the reverse with Trump, if you work for a great (if perhaps evil) person, you’re still great, even if you were abandoned along the way. If you worked for an evil schlub (which is our interpretation), your ego takes the hit.
One thing I found interesting, and to -me- counterproductive in the defense was the focus on Cohen ignoring the Prosecutor’s advice on engaging/insulting Trump. Sure, it puts forward their “Cohen is lying to get revenge” line of thought, but at the same time, it pretty much proves that Cohen ISN’T acting as a pawn of the “Biden Crime Family”. My read though is that their audience will be carefully fed the first line of thought by Fox and kin, and the second line of thought will be carefully expunged from all media friendly to Trump.
I don’t know if there’s any way Cohen can get this into an answer, but it seems like an obvious counter to me: “You’re saying that I want him to go to jail because I hate him, but that’s not right. I don’t want Trump in jail because I dislike him. I dislike him because I think he did things that should land him in jail.”
So Cohen testified that he pleaded guilty to criminal charges relating to this payoff. As I understand it, if the DA shows that donald falsified records to try to hide this payoff, that’s sufficient for a guilty verdict (in other words, the underlying crime doesn’t have to be one Trump committed).
So then I’d think the only remaining question is whether Trump knew the records were false. Cohen has testified that Trump personally approved the repayment structure, and there is copious evidence that Trump micromanaged his money. There is also no rebuttal to that evidence (at least so far).
Absent some shocking rebuttal, I just don’t see how the jury doesn’t find him guilty.
Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of cult brainwashing going on here. I guess i just don’t understand people who can fall for that kind of thing.
It feels to me like they spent the whole day asking, “You’re lying, aren’t you?”, only to keep getting the answer, “No, he’s actually just that bad.” After a while, the utter failure to find a smoking gun just emphasized the fact that the defense has nothing. If they had something of substance, they would have no need to spend hours just badgering the witness in hopes that he’d screw up and blurt out something exculpatory.
Found a dramatic re-enactment of the questioning:
The defense could call Trump. After all, he knows everything that happens in his business, since he’s a great businessman, right?
I pray to all gods great and small that the defense calls Trump to the stand. I dare them. I double dare them. Let Trump testify one more time.
Those are my attorneys.
I’m not so sure that that’s a good idea, because he would do himself more harm than good.
No matter how much he had been coached by his lawyers, he would find a way to take their softball questions, and turn them into one of his after-court rants about migrants, the Biden crime family, the so-called conflicted judge, election interference, not being able to campaign, and so on. He wouldn’t answer the questions; he’d just editorialize.
And when it was the prosecution’s turn, they would eviscerate him on cross. Not that that would be a bad thing, and I’m sure we’d all be ready with popcorn.
I’m sure that he wants to testify (his definition of it anyway), and his lawyers are trying to think of ways to keep him from doing so, to keep him from damaging the defense’s case. They know that this whole case, all the testimony, etc., is for the jury, and that is of utmost importance. Trump thinks it’s for the court of public opinion.
You know, it occurs to me we could have a verdict by the end of next week.
Comme c’est excitant! (How exciting!)
Given that it’s Trump, I think we should say “two weeks”
ROFL, fair cop!
Trump reminds me of the 9/11 Truthers who wander in here from time to time. They think they have things all figured out and they’re going to hit us with that one fact that think blows the whole thing wide open and the response of the board is generally “we’re not buying”. So they rant and rave and most of all repeat themselves ad nauseum until they hear the sound of the ban hammer swinging. To me, that’s Trump. All he thinks he needs to do is get up on the stand and drop science and we’ll all suddenly understand that the only reason this is happening is because of the Biden crime family or the judge’s conflict or etc. But even if the judge would let him just rant and rave uninterrupted for as long as he would like, the jury is going to remain unconvinced simply because Trump is absurdly obviously guilty and nothing he ever says will change that.
I stand by my prediction that the jury is going to come back after about five minutes and they will ask the judge if there is a degree of guilt guiltier than guilty.
Something occurs to me: the repayments to Cohen were done as monthly checks of $35,000 that were falsely described as legal services.
The key, it seems, was that there was no legal retainer agreement - these were repayments.
But, if they had simply written up a retainer agreement, calling for Cohen to be paid a monthly flat rate as Trump’s personal lawyer, they would have established the paper trail needed to make this look legitimate. That, alone, could have established reasonable doubt about the prosecution’s case.
Criminals make the dumbest mistakes.