I was thinking the exact same thing while reading @rocking_chair’s excellent summaries (and thank you for your service!). What do you mean, you didn’t gin up a fake retainer agreement? Are you fucking stupid or something? I mean, this is a literally a guy who gets his tax returns audited EVERY YEAR. Create a plausible paper trail, you idiot.*
* Thank goodness he didn’t.
This may also be true, but I believe it’s pretty well established now (Cohen by himself is rather suggestive) that Trump does not, in actual fact, hire “the best” people or, should he hire such and if his current defense team is any indication, they are not allowed to exhibit their abilities to their fullest.
Such people appear wary of entering or remaining in his employ.
Interesting tidbit. Now that the transcript for today has hit the news. The usual dramatic readings have started.
The cross started with Blanche asking cohen if he called him (as this is a family board) ahem, “crying little poop”. Which got objection! Sustained. And sidebar.
The 2 pages of transcript has the judge telling Blanche that it isn’t about him, why did he make it about him, and that it doesn’t matter if the witness doesn’t like him.
From what I heard read on the last word, msnbc, the judge basically told Blanche to make the questions about the defendant. Uff! That is just… uff.
From yahoo news:
Blanche drew an immediate objection as he launched his cross-examination and was quickly admonished by the judge.
“Mr. Cohen, my name is Todd Blanche,” Blanche told Cohen and then added, “You went on TikTok and called me a ‘crying little s—.’”
Judge Juan Merchan called the lawyers to the bench to for a discussion out of earshot of the jury and others in the courtroom.
“Why are you making this about yourself?” Merchan began. Blanche tried to argue he was seeking to show Cohen is biased.“It doesn’t matter if he has bias towards you; it doesn’t matter,” Merchan said. “The issue is whether he has bias towards the defendant.”
He added, “Just don’t make it about yourself.”
Blanche resumed his questioning — which for about two hours bounced among topics and didn’t once address any of Cohen’s testimony during the direct examination by prosecutors.
Their letterhead must be spectacular.
Does it seem likely that they will rest on Thursday and then have three days to cobble together a closing statement?
There will very likely be re-direct by the Prosecution after the Defense is done. Maybe a re-cross after that. Whenever Cohen is done the Prosecution will rest. Then the Defense will have a chance to call witnesses or could immediately rest. Then closing statements.
Wait. The defense expects to take all or most of Thursday finishing Cohen’s cross-examination? Sorry, I read that as defense expecting to finish the defense by the end of Thursday’s proceedings.
The defense hasn’t even started the defense. We are still in the prosecution stage.
I expect it to be something like…
Blanche: Your Honor, if I may…?
Merchan: {sigh} Yes, Counselor?
Blanche: Acquittalsayswhat?
Merchan: What?!
Blanche: Thank you, Your Honor. The defense rests. Mr. Trump, you are free to go.
Merchan: No he is not! The defendant will sit back down!
Okay, I think there’s a little confusion here.
The prosecution goes first. It calls witnesses, and questions them on direct examination. After the prosecution has finished with a witness, the defense gets to cross-examine the witness. That’s what was happening with Cohen on Tuesday; the prosecution had called him for direct and when the prosecution was done with Cohen, Blanche for the defense cross-examined him. Blanche hasn’t finished yet. The prosecution might subsequently re-cross the witness, depending on what the witness said in response to the cross-exam. When both parties have finished with the witness, the prosecution calls its nest witness, and the process goes on.
When the prosecution is all finished, the defense gets a turn. It doesn’t have to, but it can call witnesses, and question them on direct examination. The prosecution will get the chance to cross-examine the defense witness, and so on.
When both parties are done with all their witnesses, documents, video and audio recordings, and anything else, then closing statements are made and the matter goes to the jury.
Right now, the prosecution hasn’t finished, and the defense hasn’t even started. If the prosecution said last Friday, “We might be finished be the end of next week,” it was referring to the prosecution’s case. It was not referring to the case as a whole. The defense still has yet to make out its case.
Hope that’s clear, though I’m not sure it is. And of course, New York may do things slightly differently. I’m a lawyer, but I’m not an American lawyer.
I dunno. My FIL was (on a MUCH smaller level) a very successful wheeler-dealer - but also the most dishonest person I’ve ever met. I won’t go into his many ethical and moral shortcomings. Very tight with a penny in business dealings, but appeared generous when he wished to. IMO, his MO was to surround himself with people who depended on him - or felt they benefitted from his largesse. I believe one of the sources of our distance from him was that we didn’t NEED him and weren’t willing to kiss his ass to curry favor.
He had an impressive roster of ostensibly loyal ass-kissers in his little very local empire. People are weird.
One interesting benefit to this case (and the E Jean Carroll case and the documents case), being so high profile and being dragged out and delayed in every conceivable way, is that it’s given a lot of us a good opportunity to get a much better understanding of how this all works.
By that I mean, I’m sure most of us have a general idea about what happens, but I think a lot of us probably couldn’t give much more detail about it than we’d expect out of a high school kid. At least those of us that didn’t grow up on a steady diet of Judge Judy and Law & Order. With these cases, not only are we hearing detailed analysis of every single thing that happens, all the delays mean we get lots of time to talk about it and make sense of it.
Personally, I always find it interesting when something happens, everyone (be it one or both sides) gets mad and then we find out it’s totally normal and happens all the time, we just never hear about it. Like a restriction imposed by the court (ie gag order) being lifted while an appeal plays out. We’re angry that Trump pulled a fast one, but then we find out this is exactly how it’s supposed to work. Granted, Trump is clearly exploiting them for the specific purpose of creating delays, but it’s still interesting to learn about them.
It reminds me of a quote that I heard during Covid. I can’t find the actual line, but it was essentially “this is normal, you’ve just never seen science happen in real time” as a reply to people that tried to discredit the medical community every time they hit a bump in the road and had to modify their approach.
I’ve had the same feeling, but from the other side. As a lawyer, I’ve sometimes been surprised by the reactions on this board to ordinary procedural steps.
This is so true. I’ve certainly learned a lot about US politics and the legal system from this site.
And I would also like to echo others about thanking @rocking_chair for all of the incredible effort to transcribe this stuff.
@rocking_chair is cutting and pasting from cnn’s coverage (and adding occasional commentary), and they have noted it as such.
Yeah. I imagine it is similar to just about any worker/employee just saying, “Well, that’s just the way it is always done!” Especially striking how different the idea of “due deliberate haste” is within legal and extra-legal settings.
With what experience I have with jury duty, I expect a very long cross would not go over well. I suspect the jury suspects that Cohen has to be about the last witness for the prosecution and depending on how long defense goes that they might be done soon. Even with the best will sitting there quietly and listening all day sucks. If the cross is long, scatter shot, and/or seemingly pointless I wouldn’t be surprised if it backfired on the defense with the jury saying “Yeah, he’s a piece of shit, but his testimony was consistent with the documents.”
I just saw a clip of Biden challenging Trump to two debates. ‘Pick the dates, Donald. I hear you’re free on Wednesdays.’ 
That’s been one thing. Another is that some posters don’t understand the role of the judge, with comments that the judge should just reject some of Trump’s filings and the NYAG or Carroll shouldn’t have to even rely to that stuff. No, the judge is independent, but not able to act immediately. The judge has to hear from both sides and make sure they understand each side’s perspective. Only then can the judge decide.
Aye, but that’s more effort than I’m willing to put in. rocking_chair’s work is definitely not going unappreciated.