Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

Wish you into the Confield

Keep Autechre out of this, please.

elseQ

A loud noise as Emil Bove’s large binder falls off the lectern. He grabs it and refocuses. “That drop was catastrophic for my binder,” Bove says, and hands it to his colleague Todd Blanche. There is laughter in the courtroom.

“So you extracted sums of money from Charlie Sheen?” Mr. Bove asked.

“There was no extraction,” Mr. Davidson said.

Mr. Bove tried again: “You got Mr. Sheen to pay?”

Mr. Davidson refused to answer this time.

“That settlement would be confidential and I wouldn’t it discuss it here,” he said.

You could be making this up or it could be true. Either way, I believe it

Trump Watching Movie On iPad During Trial Without Using Headphones https://t.co/WCHZCuB9rP

— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 2, 2024

that should get the death penalty

oh wait lol

point still stands

Trump left the courtroom, squinting strangely at Lawrence O’Donnell, the MSNBC host, as he did.

"read these words, Donald"

"you can't read them, can you"

I heard Lawrence O’Donnell talking about the back of Trump's head in the courtroom as a "meticulously buffed souffle". lol, he's got lyrics!

Some roffles today -- the penny has dropped somewhere on the defense side that because up to now they've barely agreed to anything being introduced as evidence, the prosecution has been merrily calling witnesses on the technical side to confirm various things (video comments from Trump, recordings of Cohen and Trump, etc.) and making hay with that because they end up talking about it in more detail. One of the defense guys today got sidetracked into a tendentious cross-examine basically asked a phone recovery expert the equivalent of things like 'what is a phone anyway' and all the instant press reaction was 'the jury is bored, this is making the trial even longer -- ie, keeping Trump THERE more than he wants to be -- and we're all laughing in the overflow room.' And so per NYT:

Something interesting happened right before they left: the defense lawyers suggested they might want to agree to allow something into evidence, which they hadn’t previously done. As a reminder, the defense in this case barely consents to those types of agreements, which is why we are seeing all these custodial witnesses, whose purpose is to enter evidence through their testimony. But as we saw with the last witness, having someone enter exhibits on the stand draws more attention to them. As we’re about to talk about the “Access Hollywood” tape, it may be that the defense lawyers want Trump to give them permission to agree to allow some of this evidence in, so a spotlight doesn’t shine too brightly on it....

As predicted, the defense agrees to let a particularly damning piece of evidence — a Washington Post article publicizing the “Access Hollywood” tape — in without a witness being questioned about it. The agreement, called a stipulation, was just read aloud to the jury and the judge had reason to explain the concept to the jury for the first time.

This clearly all comes from Trump's 'never admit anything, deny deny deny' stance combined with whatever delusional state of self in his brain has probably convinced himself that certain things DIDN'T happen. How strange that isn't working for him here!

BF Borgers

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/03/trump-media-auditor-borgers-suspended-permanently/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky

https://i.imgur.com/M4SkMAX.png

I still believe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi-H6ohY37k

Aight.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/03/business/trump-media-accounting-firm-charged-fraud/index.html

“Trump Media looks forward to working with new auditing partners in accordance with today’s SEC order,” Trump Media spokesperson Shannon Devine told CNN in a statement.

hahaha good luck with that

Apparently Hope Hicks testimony was pretty devastating to the defense. One summary I saw said she described a conversation in November 2016 with Donald where he said he wanted to deal with the Stormy Daniels or Karen McDougal story (not clear to me which one) quickly, because it would hurt his chances in the election. This is just absolutely perfect testimony for the prosecution because it is direct evidence that Trump's intent in the scheme was not just to avoid getting caught having an affair but to help his campaign. Supposedly Hicks realized the significance right after she said it and started crying on the stand. Why do I not get to see this?

One particularly smooth-brained journalistic take I've been seeing lately is that the defense is gonna try to claim that he was trying to shield Melania from the Stormy Daniels story by burying it. And that this is supposed to play well with the jury by painting him as a concerned family man. Is it just me, or does "I didn't want my wife to find out about me fucking a porn actress" not actually all that great, from a "family" angle? Especially when it happened just after Melania had given birth to Barron? I mean, how fucking stupid do you have to be to think that's something that could ever reflect positively on Trump? Stupid enough to get a job with the New York Times or Politico, I guess.

I absolutely think that is what the defense is going to do. They don't really have any other options. The crime is not the hush money payments, it is that the hush money payments were illegal campaign contributions because the payments were made to help Trump's campaign. So the prosecution has to prove that the intent of the payment was to help the campaign. If he made the payment for another reason, such as to keep his wife from finding out, there is no crime.

My understanding is the evidence is overwhelming that the payments were made and Trump knew about/directed them. So the main defense is attacking the proof of intent.

Trump could just get on the stand and testify that he made the payment because he didn't want Melania to find out. This might help him in the case to a limited degree, but would subject him to cross examination and would be disastrous for many other reasons.

how did she have time for this

One particularly smooth-brained journalistic take I've been seeing lately is that the defense is gonna try to claim that he was trying to shield Melania from the Stormy Daniels story by burying it. And that this is supposed to _play well with the jury_ by painting him as a concerned family man. Is it just me, or does "I didn't want my wife to find out about me fucking a porn actress" not actually all that great, from a "family" angle? Especially when it happened just after Melania had given birth to Barron? I mean, how fucking stupid do you have to be to think that's something that could ever reflect positively on Trump? Stupid enough to get a job with the New York Times or Politico, I guess.

I expect there will be a big fight over jury instructions on this point. For instance, a jury instruction might tell them if they have to find he did this primarily or solely to influence the election. It's obvious to me the evidence is overwhelming, but you never know what a jury might do with the instructions.

how fucking stupid do you have to be to think that's something that could ever reflect positively on Trump?

This is a criminal trial on multiple felony counts. If the defense can convince the jury that Trump's sole intent behind all those payments and shady maneuvers was to prevent Melania from knowing about his affair with a porn star, then the jury could return a not guilty verdict on all counts. They dgaf if it reflects positively on Donald. He'll seek to wriggle out any way he can.

Elon Musk won against the British caver who rescued the Thai football team. I wouldn’t be certain that Trump getting found guilty is a sure thing.

was that actually a jury trial?

I thought the Pecker testimony had devastated that "did it all for the sake of his marriage" defense strategy, not that it means it has - I've just seen people saying it has.

but yeah it's gonna come down to what exactly the jury is supposed to determine, it does feel like the prosecution has done their homework though in framing this to fit exactly what they're accusing him of, while the defense is just trying to challenge and "what if" everything which I don't think juries respond favorably to

obviously there could easily be a hung jury or some sort of mistrial but I'd be absolutely stunned at this point if they returned a not guilty verdict

I wonder if a normal defendant in this situation would let his lawyers argue this crime should only be charged as a misdemeanor. But Trump's maximalist approach won't allow his team to concede anything.

Even if he makes loads of dosh out of this, Todd Blanche will eventually, or probs already is rueing the day he left a good job to make Trump his only client. It must be such a high stress job dealing with this child every day in such a serious court case!

The farting alone...

I'm far from a legal expert but yeah I thought their best shot was not to argue the facts of the case (which are probably irrefutable, since Trump is not very good at covering his tracks) but rather just say, of course I wanted to hide it for the sake of my wife, I wasn't really thinking about the election, this is just how I do everything. idk if it's a solid case but if the accusation is that this was done as a campaign thing you might be able to score some points that way.

the defense for the trial I was on did pretty much the same thing Trump's lawyers are - challenging everything, trying to throw doubt on every aspect of the prosecution, making it sound like everything was some grand conspiracy against his client. and he actually did have a few solid arguments in there. but none of us really considered any of it because it was so clear that the defense was just throwing shit at the wall while the prosecution very much had their ducks in a row.

wait, can they call melania to the stand? maybe she knew about the stormy lady all along. then it was definitely all about the election.

i mean it obviously was about the election...

wives can legally ignore subpoenas to testify against their husbands

So this comes down to his intentions? I thought the crime was where the money came from and he was using it inappropriately?

Multi xp the ‘Pedo trial’ was in front of a jury. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593.amp

One difference I guess is Musk was a less toxic figure in the public imagination compared to now.

also (very unfortunately) the caver's lawyer was l. lin wood, who did win not-dissimilar cases a long age ago but latterly became very much a total crackpot unable to put a good case together: last year he retired from practice rather than face disbarment over his activities pursing trump's 2020 election fraud case -- my impression is that the caver was pretty badly advised but also deeply unlucky in his choice of representation and strategy

(and of course musk could pay for excellent lawyers, and unleashed them)

musk's "I was obviously joking" argument was pretty watertight iiuc. the jury returned the verdict in like 10 minutes. the trump trial is nothing like that.

why aren't you guys talking about the judge threatening trump with jail?

He should stop threatening it and actually do it.

because nobody believes the judge would actually make good on his threat

^^^

I mean, the judge is the one who will have to live with the death threats that come daily for probably the rest of his life if/when he decides that, so I'm not saying that he shouldn't do it, as he's the one that took the job, but I think he's trying to avoid it as long as he can until he can't realistically do it anymore or until (he hopes, incorrectly) Trump stops.

An aneurysm would stop him.

Wouldn't a couple nights in jail play into Trump's messiah shit? 'They're actually coming after you, but they have to get through me first!'
that's his whole schtick now

I feel like it'd help w/ his base (which, who cares), but he'd act like such a petulant baby, talking about the trials and tribulations of his 3 years in max (after a 2 day county stay), and quite ironically, it might be the first time anybody who votes R giving a fuck about conditions in jail

like he probably would never shut up about it