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Cairn Horn88

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Posted (edited)
5 hours ago, bolverk said:

 

I never read the book but distinctly recall reading the very long piece by the NYTimes and other reviews/essays about it, which included extensive quotes, including at least a couple of the ones you just provided. And, yes, the quote sounds exactly like something he'd say.

Living in Austin during the Bush presidency was a trip, especially his first term, because so many of his people still lived here and you'd see them out and about sometimes, For example, once I had to sit across the aisle from the Turd Blossom himself on a Southwest flight (I think to Dallas). You could just feel the twisted vibes coming off him while he had his nose buried intently in a bunch of papers, likely conniving some strategy to disenfranchise more Blacks in Cleveland or to discredit John Kerry. 

There was also a time when my ex-wife, my 4 or 5-year-old daughter, and I were grocery shopping. I think my wife was over in the produce section while the kid and I were in the deli section when we ran across Karen Hughes. She was squatting down, inspecting some cheese, and my daughter saw me stop and just stand there, scowling at the back of Karen's head. My daughter asked me what was wrong, and I told her that Karen was a very bad person.

After that, my daughter ran off to go find my ex, to whom she frantically said, "Mommy! There's an evil old woman over there trying to steal cheese!"

One of my worries during those years was that he and I would end up eating at the same restaurant. Hitler as a baby conundrum. Using a fork and targeting his eye. That worry was premised on my belief about where our country was headed, and, damn it, those concerns were well founded.

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Posted (edited)

Gametime:  Thursday morning

Todd Blanche, who is agitated, is seeking to set up a moment in which the jurors will have to choose whether to believe Cohen, who continues to say that during a relatively brief phone call, he both informed Trump's bodyguard of the teenage prankster and discussed the hush-money payment he planned to make to Stormy Daniels. It’s a really interesting moment, and that’s where we leave the trial for now. The jurors are excused for their lunch break.

Trump leaves the courtroom, his practiced scowl on his face, and winks at a reporter at the back of the room for no clear reason.

Todd Blanche, with a few minutes left to go before the lunch break, is emphasizing his point, raising his pointer finger as his voice hits a higher register. He is suggesting it is ridiculous that Michael Cohen might have simultaneously reported a prankster to Keith Schiller and talked to Trump about the hush-money payment.

Blanche is seeking to get Cohen to crack, but Cohen is holding firm. “You can admit,” Blanche says, that you lied. “No sir, I can’t,” Cohen responds, sticking to his story.

Blanche seeks to start scolding the witness on behalf of the jurors, saying, “This jury doesn’t want to hear what you think happened.” There is an objection and it is sustained.

Todd Blanche has initiated a long sequence of questioning about whether Michael Cohen received harassing phone calls from a 14-year-old prankster in October 2016. He appears to be hoping to suggest an alternative reason for Michael Cohen's call to Keith Schiller, Trump’s bodyguard.

Cohen had testified he made that call to inform Trump of how he planned to make the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. Blanche seems to want to suggest to jurors that Cohen lied about the call's purpose.

Earlier this morning, the jury was asked about scheduling matters for next week, a likely signal to them that the trial would end soon. Now they are hearing about harassing phone calls from a prankster who ended up being 14 years old. I genuinely wonder what they must be thinking right now.

As expected, Blanche has now suggested that Cohen was not, in fact, telling Trump about his plans to make the hush money payment to Trump but instead, simply reporting that he was being pranked by a teenager.

Todd Blanche has brought up a phone call that Michael Cohen talked about during direct testimony, when he spoke to Trump over Trump’s bodyguard’s cellphone. Cohen said that during this conversation, he told Trump that the payment to Stormy Daniels had been made. Blanche is trying to cast doubt on that account, saying it was the first time that Cohen had discussed this call.

Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, who has landed successful objections throughout the day, objects again, and asks to approach. The lawyers are now at the bench. Cohen is shaking his head, glancing at jurors. It appears that he began to crack a smile, but then he thought better of it. He accepts a new cup of water from a court officer.

After the sidebar conversation with the judge, Emil Bove, one of Trump's lawyers, returns to the defense table, sits down and whispers something to Trump. The former president shakes his head and grimaces.

Todd Blanche is now asking about an embarrassing episode for Michael Cohen, who used an artificial intelligence program to generate legal citations for his previous lawyer. The cases listed by the software were not real cases.

This made headlines, and was, as Jonah noted, embarrassing. But Cohen just explained what happened calmly, and I think it took some of the sting out of it.

And Blanche moves on quickly, barely pausing before moving onto another topic, which runs the risk of not punctuating the point for the jury.

Michael Cohen, now five hours into his cross-examination, has yet to lose control, even as Todd Blanche brings up a series of seeming slights and humiliations that Cohen suffered after Trump’s election in 2016.

Blanche is making clear that Cohen was less than candid when he said he didn’t want a job, as he walks through all the people to whom Cohen complained about being left behind. But it underscores a theme that’s been true for awhile — one I wrote about first in 2018 and repeatedly since — that Trump went out of his way to abuse Cohen.

Todd Blanche seemed briefly to have closed the loop here, as he raised his voice and noted that Michael Cohen had said he wanted to be chief of staff. “That was for my ego, yes,” Cohen admitted, and it appeared as if Blanche had landed a blow. But now Cohen is reiterating that he wanted to be Trump's personal attorney. This is the most direct combat we’ve seen between these two, and it’s not clear who is getting the better of whom.

It will be interesting to see how Michael Cohen squares his testimony that he did not want a White House role with the evidence he is responding to, which suggests he did. We saw a bit earlier that when Cohen is under pressure, he can split hairs, playing semantic games about past vs. present.

Cohen responds: “I wanted a hybrid position, one where I would have the access to President Trump but not be a White House employee.” It’s a helpful answer for prosecutors, underscoring, as they have said, that Cohen was bent on being close to Trump.

Trump, who has had his eyes closed through much of this trial so far, is now glaring at Cohen.

The theme of this line of questioning is that Michael Cohen was again rejected, this time for a job, and is seeking payback.

And that Cohen lied about this desire under oath.

Cohen has been standing firm in his testimony, refusing to give in to Todd Blanche. This appears to be frustrating Blanche, who just moments ago rubbed his forehead after one of Cohen’s answers.

Todd Blanche is now asking Michael Cohen if he wanted a job in the Trump White House. Cohen testified to the House in 2019 that he didn’t want one. But other witnesses, like Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels's former lawyer, have testified that Cohen was interested and sad he was being left behind. Blanche will try to frame this as another lie from Cohen.

“You really wanted to work in the White House, correct?” Blanche says, turning up the temperature. Cohen denies that he did: “No sir.” Blanche says that Cohen specifically wanted to be White House chief of staff, and Cohen again denies it.

Blanche is now asking Cohen about texts in which he discussed the possibility of being White House chief of staff. The texts themselves could be seen as someone merely kibbitzing, though they also undercut something Cohen has testified to previously.

Though none of the texts were definitive, there were a lot of them, and they do clearly show that Cohen was at least interested in the idea. When Reince Priebus was finally named chief of staff, Cohen told his daughter he was disappointed, Blanche shows. Cohen admits here that he was disappointed.

Todd Blanche, the defense lawyer, just tried a line of questioning that didn’t seem to land, having to do with whether Michael Cohen sought a letter in 2018 requesting leniency from federal prosecutors. Cohen says he told his lawyer that he “wasn’t interested” in such a letter, so “let’s not even talk about it.” It didn’t seem as if Blanche got the answer he expected during that exchange. He moved on.

This appears to be a reference to the fact that Cohen didn’t have a formal cooperation agreement with the Southern District of New York's prosecutors when he pleaded guilty in 2018, because he was unwilling to disclose everything he knew about any possible wrongdoing. He would have had to do so in order to get the letter. It seems like Blanche may have wanted to point out that Cohen wanted to keep some things hidden even as he pleaded guilty.

Todd Blanche is questioning Michael Cohen about his efforts, which began soon after he went to prison, to have his sentence reduced based on his cooperation with prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert Mueller. Blanche will almost certainly ask Cohen about using his testimony in this trial to seek an end to his current supervised release.

It’s not clear that the jury is going to hold it against him that he tried to shorten his prison sentence and supervised release.

Susan Hoffinger, a prosecutor, prepared the jury for these questions, so they already know that Cohen has sought to use his cooperation to aid his own situation.

Todd Blanche, perhaps realizing that Michael Cohen has met with many sets of prosecutors and his testimony about their conversations can become a bit confusing, seeks to have Cohen himself clear it up. “Help the jury understand that,” he says. “There’s two separate prosecutors?”

Cohen confirms that he met with both the special counsel’s office in Washington, during the Russia investigation, and Manhattan federal prosecutors, in the office where Blanche once worked.

And now, Blanche adds a third set of prosecutors with whom Cohen spoke: those in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the prosecutors here at this trial, who are New York state prosecutors.

Justice Merchan begins the post-break session by saying there will be no court next Wednesday after all, because the jurors will not be free to convene then. This suggests the case may stretch past Memorial Day weekend.

After a brief break, the prosecutors are arguing that Todd Blanche, early in his questioning, asked questions that seemed to suggest that Trump's indictment was still sealed on March 30. The indictment was unsealed that evening, after The Times broke the news. The unsealing allowed the district attorney’s office to confirm that this news, of incredible public interest, was true.

Prosecutors ask Justice Merchan to explain this sequence to the jury. Merchan agrees that the jury should be advised, and that the question is how he should do so.

He decides that Blanche can do it in his own questioning. But one of the prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo — urged on by another prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, who is whispering loudly to him — says that it it should come from Merchan because the questions were misleading.

Merchan tells prosecutors that they can draft a version of an order that the judge himself would give if Blanche’s corrections end up being insufficient.

Earlier in his testimony, Michael Cohen made Robert Costello, a lawyer who approached him in 2018 when Cohen was under investigation, sound as though he were an emissary from the Trump team, seeking to keep Cohen loyal to the president. Blanche just sought to complicate that picture, asking Cohen if Costello told him he had the option to cooperate with law enforcement instead. Cohen's reponse to this was not clear.

Our reporting shows that Costello’s role was complex, and that Cohen did accept legal advice from him during that time.

We’re coming up on about an hour and 45 minutes of cross-examination this morning. We're near the time that Trump’s surrogates have typically been going outside to speak to the public, slamming the case and trial.

A key question the jurors will have to answer for themselves is on what date — if at all — they believe Michael Cohen began telling the truth. Was it this week, when he started testifying in this case? Or before then? Todd Blanche is demonstrating that Cohen told lies, big and small, over a long period of time and for various reasons.

At the same time, prosecutors have and will demonstrate in closing arguments that Trump has told lies, big and small, about a number of people and issues in this case.

Jurors might also need to consider a more philosophical question: can a liar sometimes tell the truth?

Michael Cohen appears less sad now, and he seems to be fighting back a bit. He tries to explain the disparity Todd Blanche has been harping on involving whether he sought a pardon. Cohen says a pardon was dangled, and he asked his lawyers, “Is this really something that they’re talking about? Can you find out?” But Blanche, using a quiet voice, is continuing to focus on what he says were Cohen’s lies about this episode.

Blanche may have successfully made Cohen come across as dishonest. But he has yet to succeed in the goal of getting under Cohen’s skin.

Todd Blanche seems to have seized on another lie: Michael Cohen had testified years ago that he had never asked for a pardon, but testifies here today — as he did in a deposition — that he did, in fact, direct his lawyers to explore the possibility of a pardon.

Trump squinted as Cohen as he answered questions about the pardon and shook his head a bit at Cohen’s response.

Blanche says that Cohen has explained the distance between the two statements in different ways. At one point, under oath, he said that he had not explored a pardon, his lawyers had. At another point, also apparently under oath, he said that that the seeming disparity stemmed from a semantic distinction between the past and present tenses.

Blanche is pushing Cohen on whether he played semantics about whether he sought a pardon from Trump or not. Cohen admits he asked his lawyers to explore the possibility, although he testified before a House panel that he would never have accepted one. Cohen points out — correctly, as we broke the story — that Trump was dangling pardons to people connected to the special counsel's investigation into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia.

Todd Blanche is now going over the complex financial transactions that allowed Michael Cohen to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels, perhaps the closest he’s gotten to the subject matter of this particular case all day.

He notes that Cohen hid those transactions from his wife, apparently seeking to call into question whether Cohen was really as concerned about his family — and his wife — as he suggested when explaining his federal guilty plea.

Blanche just asked Cohen about a number of different events, including an exchange of public statements with Michael Avenatti, one of Stormy Daniels's lawyers, and conversations with his wife. He ended by asking Cohen if he had deleted his communications with his wife around that time, and Cohen seemed genuinely stumped. Then Blanche asks if Cohen, around this time, had taken to deleting his texts more generally.

The defense is trying to suggest that Cohen has a history of manipulating the types of phone records that prosecutors have used here to bolster their case.

This line of questioning also has the effect of reinforcing that Cohen has been routinely deceptive and focused on concealment.

Throughout his cross-examination today, Michael Cohen has remained even-keeled on the witness stand. He appeared mildly frustrated a few moments ago and just shook his head after he answered one of Todd Blanche’s most recent questions.

He notes that Cohen hid those transactions from his wife, apparently seeking to call into question whether Cohen was really as concerned about his family — and his wife — as he suggested when explaining his federal guilty plea.

And as expected, Todd Blanche moves to connect Michael Cohen having lied in his federal sentencing, when the outcome affected him personally, to his testimony here. “Do you have any doubt in your mind that the outcome of this trial affects you personally?” Blanche asks.

Todd Blanche is dragging out of Michael Cohen a lack of remorse. Cohen has talked publicly about wanting to right the wrongs he committed while working for Trump. Blanche is getting him to acknowledge he doesn’t think he should have been charged.

Blanche asks Cohen about blaming a lot of people for the conduct for which he was convicted. Cohen freely acknowledges he has.

Tension was missing from Todd Blanche’s questioning of Cohen on Tuesday. But here, today, the room feels tense to me. This is a compelling question-and-answer session, and the jurors appear to be responding, paying close attention.

So many House Republicans have gone to New York to support Trump at his trial that it’s gumming up the works for G.O.P. priorities on Capitol Hill, including some of their most partisan plans.

With Representatives Andy Biggs of Arizona and Anna Paulina Luna and Mike Waltz of Florida all at the trial, the House Oversight Committee has been forced to postpone its planned vote to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. Today’s vote has been pushed back from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. to allow members to return to Washington from New York.

Todd Blanche is now demonstrating for the jury that Michael Cohen lied under oath for different reasons. By his own admission, it wasn’t only to demonstrate his loyalty to Trump. He lied also, Cohen admits, because the stakes affected him personally.

As Blanche continues to hammer home what Cohen says were his lies to a federal judge, a prosecutor objects several times. The judge sustains the objections. The objections may have been made because Blanche had already asked a version of the same questions.

That admission could cause some problems for the prosecution. Blanche has already shown vividly through Cohen's podcast clips that this case affects Cohen in a deeply personal way and that he’s desperate for revenge against Trump. This may cause jurors to wonder whether Cohen might be willing to stretch the truth to get it.

Todd Blanche continues to press his complicated point, about what Michael Cohen has said about his previous guilty pleas. Blanche notes that Cohen was asked if he lied because the stakes affected him personally. Cohen says yes. Blanche then asks if that is still true. Cohen says yes, again, but his voice breaks a little. He looks tired, and shifts his body briefly on the stand. His voice sounds husky.

One — or several — falsehoods under oath can last a lifetime.  Blanche is taking what Cohen has said were lies to a federal judge and seeking to impeach the other testimony he has given under oath, including to Congress. And of course, he seems likely to move on to trying to impeach Cohen's testimony at this trial soon.

Todd Blanche has now, on a couple of occasions, listened as Michael Cohen has explained, in long form, some of his prior actions, before asking him, sharply, if he was “finished.” Finally, he seems to get annoyed with Cohen, and snaps, “Please don’t make a speech.”

Michael Cohen is a disbarred lawyer, and he does not always speak precisely, as lawyers are trained to do. Todd Blanche took advantage of that throughout this most recent line of questioning. Now, he finally arrives at the moment that prosecutors sought to prepare this jury for: That Cohen said under oath at Trump's civil fraud trial that he had lied to a federal judge. It’s unclear whether prosecutors’ attempt will stay in the jurors’ heads, or whether they’ll find this convincing.

This could be compelling — or confusing. It's really hard to know how jurors, including the two lawyers on the panel, are taking it. They look engaged, but there are no other obvious signs of the impression Blanche is making right now.

Todd Blanche is using Michael Cohen’s sweeping claims of widespread corruption — in which Cohen has accused not just Manhattan federal prosecutors but the judge in his case of being out to get him — against him. He is also using his previous testimony that he didn’t commit the crimes to which he pleaded against him.

Todd Blanche is seeking to show the jury that Michael Cohen has not fully taken responsibility for his crimes and still blames a range of people, quite implausibly, for being corrupt. The irony is that by showing that Cohen lashing out at the judge and prosecutors, Blanche is making him sound a lot like his former boss, and Blanche’s current client, Donald Trump.

This is a delicate moment for Michael Cohen, and the prosecution. This case largely rests on Cohen tying Trump to knowledge of how the false business records at the center of the case were structured. Todd Blanche is creating a portrait of Cohen as an indiscriminate liar who changes his story situationally.

Todd Blanche is now focusing on Michael Cohen’s guilty plea in August 2018, and gets Cohen to say that he “never denied the underlying facts” of the plea, and that he simply thought he shouldn’t have been charged. Blanche then asks if prosecutors pressured him to plead guilty, and Cohen says his lawyer conveyed that he had only 48 hours to decide.

Blanche uses the language of the law. When Cohen pleaded, he was asked whether anyone had “threatened or induced you to plead guilty.” Blanche links that to Cohen saying his lawyer told him his wife was under threat, and suggests that when Cohen said no to that question, he lied. Cohen agrees that he did.

Blanche is now gaining some steam with his cross-examination, noting that Cohen has said under oath that he accepted responsibility and then later undermined that outside of court.

This is very similar to what tripped Cohen up when he was questioned about his federal guilty pleas at Trump’s civil fraud trial. He was led into saying he had lied about one of the pleas itself. But earlier in the trial he clarified that he thought he had not been charged, but was not objecting to the underlying facts. Ever since, Trump’s lawyers have accused Cohen of perjury in that moment.

Todd Blanche is now asking about the F.B.I. search of Michael Cohen’s phones and his apartment, hotel room and office in April 2018, and the investigation into taxi medallions that Cohen had. Cohen walks through his partnership with a man who cooperated with the investigation, coherently. The jurors are paying close attention to Cohen right now.

Cohen is coming across as knowledgeable and articulate about the arcane corners of the New York City taxi industry. He even provided what he said was the exact number of the medallions that allow taxis to operate here.

This is a strange and seemingly irrelevant cul-de-sac, as Blanche invites Cohen to explain how the taxi medallion business works. The question in my mind listening to this right now is: Why do I care?

Blanche is hopefully building to some questions about the actual case at hand.

Part of Todd Blanche's strategy seems to be repeating the word “lie” in every other sentence. If you’re a bored juror right now, you are hearing lie, lie, lie, lie. Even if you’re having trouble following the substance of Cohen's various lies, you are hearing an overall picture of dishonesty.

The risk for the defense here is that the jurors are reminded during closing arguments that Trump hired this self-acknowledged liar and made him his lawyer, and hold Trump accountable for that.

So far today, Todd Blanche has yet to ask Michael Cohen about anything in connection to the actual case that's on trial.

Trump's lawyers have focused on impeaching the credibility of the prosecution's two biggest witnesses, Stormy Daniels and Cohen. Susan Necheles’s cross-examination of Daniels was largely focused and had an arc. Blanche’s cross-examination of Cohen has been all over the place.

Todd Blanche is now having Michael Cohen recall the lies he told to Congress about how many times he spoke to Trump about a possible Trump Tower project in Moscow. Blanche’s goal is to show the jury Cohen is opportunistic even under oath. However, these were lies that Cohen has said he told to protect Trump.

Even though Cohen has said he was lying to protect Trump, that’s not what Blanche is focused on here. “You knew you were lying, correct?” Blanche says. “Yes,” Cohen responds.

Todd Blanche, referring to Michael Cohen’s many instances of testifying in the past, in courts and in Congress, asks him if he swore an oath when he testified. It seems as if Blanche is warming up to call Cohen’s past testimony into question, in hopes of casting doubt on his testimony at this trial. Trump’s lawyers have accused Cohen of lying under oath, as recently as in Trump’s civil fraud trial late last year.

Prosecutors had done a kind of controlled-burn of this territory on Tuesday, walking Cohen through many of his previous lies.

Michael Cohen is asked if he responded to a post on Truth Social, Trump's social media platform, in which Trump attacked Cohen and Stormy Daniels. He responds: “I’m not on Truth Social, sir.” But when asked if he responded elsewhere by calling Trump “dumbass Donald,” he agrees that he did.

Keep in mind that the prosecution used earlier witnesses to introduce Michael Cohen to the jury as an outsized personality. And Cohen has not been shy on the stand about his hatred of Trump. These clips, while entertaining, might not come as a huge shock to the jury.

While the clips may not shock the jury, they do underscore why prosecutors repeatedly implored Cohen to stop talking before — and during — the trial.

Todd Blanche asks Michael Cohen if he believes his podcasts and media interviews played a role in Trump's indictment. “I took some credit, yes,” he says

Unlike on Tuesday, when Trump had his eyes closed and appeared to be dozing through much of Cohen's cross-examination, he is now paying close attention, as clips play of Cohen describing how much he hates Trump and wants him to rot in prison.

Todd Blanche plays a second clip of Michael Cohen from his podcast, in which he says he hopes “that this man ends up in prison,” and “revenge is a dish best served cold,” and “you better believe I want this man to go down and rot inside for what he did to me and my family.”

Cohen's New York accent — he is from the Five Towns, on Long Island — is very pronounced in the podcast clips.

Michael Cohen’s voice sounded truly bizarre in that podcast clip celebrating Trump's indictment on March 30 last year. Giddy, high-pitched, and he was speaking so fast that if you didn’t know better you’d think the tape had been artificially sped up.

It also offered jurors a completely different version of the Cohen they are seeing on the witness stand, where he has remained calm and deliberate with every word.

We are now hearing a recording of Michael Cohen celebrating Trump's indictment on his podcast. His voice is loud, over-energized, enthusiastic to the point of seeming off-putting.

Some of the jurors peered up at Cohen, almost seeming a little embarrassed.

Cohen’s face sinks as he hears that clip of his voice. Blanche asks him if that was the first time that he had said he wanted Trump to feel what Cohen himself had felt when he was prosecuted. Cohen says that he had expressed that sentiment before.

In the overflow room, laughter is heard as Justice Merchan shoots down Todd Blanche, Trump’s lawyer. Blanche asked for a sidebar and got a dismissive “no” from Merchan.

We’ve now had 10 objections in less than 20 minutes.

Todd Blanche began questioning Michael Cohen about his texts with an investigator with the Manhattan district attorney's office, Jeremy Rosenberg, who was reportedly suspended for his interactions with Cohen. Blanche was going to ask Cohen about those texts, but Susan Hoffinger, one of the prosecutors, stood up and asked for a mid-cross voir dire, so she could question Cohen about the evidence in the middle of his cross-examination.

When she established that the texts had been taken out of context, she called for a sidebar. Her objection was sustained, so Blanche may be prevented from doing what he was trying to do with these texts. Now, he’s starting another attempt.

Cohen says that he learned that Trump was indicted before the indictment was unsealed in the courtroom, when The New York Times broke that news in 2023. He says Rosenberg alerted him to that article.

A team of six reporters broke that story. Five of us are covering the trial for The Times: Kate Christobek, Ben Protess, Willy Rashbaum, Nate Schweber and me.

Blanche’s point here seems to be that Rosenberg, the investigator, did something inappropriate, alerting Cohen to the fact that the indictment had been handed up. But we broke that news widely before the indictment was unsealed; Cohen was certainly not alone in having learned it.

For those of you keeping score at home, we’re now on our third sidebar already.

The jurors, who have been attending this trial since the week of April 15, are staring ahead or out into the courtroom during the latest sidebar. On Tuesday, as Blanche delivered a fairly meandering cross-examination of Cohen, they started to seem bored.

Todd Blanche, leading the cross-examination for the defense, came out of the gate firing on Tuesday, with a furious accusation — involving a profane insult he said Cohen had directed at him online. (The prosecution objected and it was sustained.) Today, in the early going, he is much less intense.

We just got a hint as to what the long sidebar may have been about: scheduling issues. The judge just told the jurors that, if they are OK with it, court may be in session next Wednesday, despite the fact that the trial is usually off on Wednesdays.

This suggests that the prosecutors and the defense were quibbling over the calendar. The defense sought to delay the trial many times before it started, and Trump has complained that it was going too fast.

Michael Cohen has been called back to the stand. He ambles past the defense table, as we wait for the jury to be brought in.

A very long sidebar is finally over. We do not know what it was about, but the jurors were summoned almost 18 minutes late this morning. When the transcript is sent later in the day, we'll find out what was discussed.

Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, leans over after the sidebar and whispers something to the former president, covering up his mouth so no one can see his lips move. Trump nods once at the end of their short conversation.

Outside in the hallway, before entering the courtroom, Trump seemed to potentially violate the gag order that forbids him from talking about prosecutors in the case, other than Alvin Bragg. He made what sounded like a reference to Matthew Colangelo, one of the prosecutors here, saying, “a lead person from the D.O.J. is running the trial,” and baselessly adding, “So Biden’s office is running this trial.” Colangelo used to work at the Department of Justice, and Trump has used similar language to describe him in the past.

It’s not clear, given what Trump said, that prosecutors would be able to show that it was a clear violation of his gag order. We will watch to see whether they seek to push the issue. Justice Merchan has warned Trump that he could go to jail if he violates the order again, but he is unlikely to act unless prosecutors press him on the matter.

The lawyers and the judge are having one of the longest sidebars that have taken place during this trial, if not the longest. Their voices are louder than usual, though the words they're saying aren't clear.

Although Trump has a large group of supporters sitting behind him, he is nearly alone at the defense table as most of his lawyers participate in the sidebar. Susan Necheles, the longest-serving lawyer on his team, is at the table but seated at a distance from him.

The overflow courtroom down the hall from the courtroom where the trial is taking place is at capacity, every seat taken. As the trial moves towards its conclusion, interest seems to be peaking.

Court officers are currently explaining, yet again, the courtroom's no-cellphone policy to the people here with Trump.

 

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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Stupid non-lawyer question. If the defense doesn't call a single person to the stand, isn't that kind of a message to the jury that they have no defense?

In reality, I guess they couldn't find someone willing to perjure themselves?

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1 minute ago, Red Five said:

Stupid non-lawyer question. If the defense doesn't call a single person to the stand, isn't that kind of a message to the jury that they have no defense?

In reality, I guess they couldn't find someone willing to perjure themselves?

Not necessarily. Often times the prosecutor and the defense would call many of the same witnesses. The defense can either insert its case into cross-examination of the witnesses in the prosecution's case or it can recall the witnesses after the prosecution rests. It isn't clear in this case that Trump is going to have any other witnesses, so his legal team may just be going with the former strategy. 

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it happens more often than you'd think.  the defense can still be a number of different things: "that stuff you said i did doesn't meet the statute." "that guy that is the lynchpin to the whole thing just misremembered the conversation." whatever. those sorts of defenses don't lend themselves to witnesses for the defense.  

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9 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

He's so rich and going to win all of his court cases, but the head of the RNC needs your money

 

Maybe it's just me, but if your campaign fundraising message begins with "We're here in court [to support our 4x indicted, 90+ felony candidate]", it seems like probably not the best thing.

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Posted (edited)
15 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Not necessarily. Often times the prosecutor and the defense would call many of the same witnesses. The defense can either insert its case into cross-examination of the witnesses in the prosecution's case or it can recall the witnesses after the prosecution rests. It isn't clear in this case that Trump is going to have any other witnesses, so his legal team may just be going with the former strategy. 

A lot of the time, if there is a possibility that the defense will not put on a case of it's own (relying instead on cross of the state's witnesses, alone), the opening focuses heavily on the state's burden of proof and reiterates that the defense does not have to prove a goddamn thing in order to acquit.

As far as I know, Trump's defense did not open this way.  It's not a prerequisite to resting after the prosecution's case, but in terms of jury expectations, it's best to prepare them for that possibility.

(as with many of my quotes of dcbc, I know you know this, just elaborating for the peanut gallery).

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Hey Boebert. It's because Trump is the criminal defendant. He's the one on trial. That's why.

But if y'all would like to talk for awhile about gagging her too, that would be ok with me.

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38 minutes ago, texasdago said:

Was thinking of the comments above re: Rush Limbaugh.  I used to gobble up books and the drivel by Limbaugh, O'Reilly and their ilk.  Good God I was dumbass back then.  If there's one thing I can say Cheeto did that was a positive for me is he snapped me out of it.  When he came along, I was like, WTF y'all?  Are we not seeing this?  He caused me to reevaluate a LOT!

Joking Another Period GIF by Comedy Central 

This gif pretty much sums up my reactions to much of the world since 2015.

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On 5/15/2024 at 8:55 AM, Red Five said:

Getting the words "convicted felon" before his name will be nice. 

"My opponent, convicted felon Donald Trump...."

Or in a series of ads. "Not only is he a convicted felon, but he was also found liable for rape." 

Why be so nice about it when the other side just flat out makes shit up and preaches it as gospel? Yes, he was only found liable for rape in a civil case, but fuck that. Call him a convicted rapist. That's only inaccurate in the technical, legal meaning of the words.

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Posted (edited)

[Programming note:  I'm going away until June 3rd.  I've hit up @bolverk to see if he's interested in carrying on.  Enjoy the spectacle next week.]

 

 

Thursday afternoon, Cohen continued:

There is no trial tomorrow, giving prosecutors a long weekend to plan their next moves. The defense spent a whole day casting Cohen as a liar and elicited admissions that he had lied under oath during past cases, allowing them to cast some doubt on aspects of the story he’s told at this trial. But prosecutors will have three days to prepare for a crucial re-direct, in which they will seek to build Cohen back up and refocus the jurors on the most important elements of their case.

Blanche had until today been the weakest of the three lawyers at Trump’s table on cross-examination. But he elicited testimony from Cohen on the second day of cross-examination portraying him as a liar who engaged in shady practices with people he dealt with across the board.

Justice Merchan stops early, as Todd Blanche says he’s moving to another area. Aides to Trump who are sitting two rows behind him, Karoline Leavitt and Boris Epshteyn, exchange knowing glances.

Todd Blanche is now getting Michael Cohen to admit he lied to reporters in early 2018 and also secretly recorded conversations with reporters about Trump’s involvement in the hush-money payment.

Blanche is emphasizing and underscoring the time period that Cohen recorded reporters — early 2018. Based on his previous lines of questioning, it seems as if he is preparing the jury to catch Cohen in another lie or misleading statement.

Todd Blanche is now trying to undermine the close relationship Michael Cohen said he had with Trump himself. He is asking whether Cohen did legal work not only for Trump, but also for his family and the Trump Organization. Then Blanche notes that Cohen did not have a legal retainer to do this work.

This is the first time today that I remember Blanche going straight at the prosecution's argument. Prosecutors have said that Trump's reimbursements for the hush money were fraudulently disguised as legal services, even though Cohen had no legal retainer. The point Blanche is seeking to make is: Cohen did legal work for years, and never had a legal retainer.

Blanche is also trying to minimize the fact that Cohen had no retainer agreement with Trump, suggesting New York ethics rules don’t require it.

We’ll have to wait for redirect to see how prosecutors might counter this. One thing they may do is point out that the invoices said that Cohen was paid pursuant to a legal retainer.

Todd Blanche is now showing the hush-money contract that Michael Cohen struck with Stormy Daniels. He gets Cohen to agree it’s a “perfectly legal contract.” He’s raising his voice to emphasize this point — to try to make the jury feel like this arrangement was business as usual.

This is a line we’ve heard before from the defense. Blanche hammered it home during his opening statement, where he said that nondisclosure agreements were typical among the wealthy and famous and that they were not illegal.

Todd Blanche is questioning Michael Cohen again on his interactions with reporters when he worked for Trump. Blanche is now asking about negotiations he had with the ABC News reporter John Santucci regarding the Stormy Daniels story.

 

Todd Blanche, the defense lawyer, is asking Michael Cohen how he can have specific memories of phone calls that he conducted eight years ago. Cohen responds that the reason he remembers them is because he’s been talking about the conversations for six years.

Blanche digs in, asking if Cohen has been talking about the specific phone calls he has been testifying about for six years. Blanche is pouring disbelief into his tone, acting as if Cohen's testimony is ridiculous. Cohen is staring at the lawyer, his mouth downturned.

Trump has his eyes glued on Cohen this afternoon. This has been rare for Trump throughout this trial.

Todd Blanche is drawing out Michael Cohen about his relationships with reporters over the years. Blanche gets Cohen to admit that he serially recorded reporters without their knowledge, including our colleague Maggie Haberman. Blanche also gets Cohen to say that he sent a recording of somebody else to Haberman as she was reporting a story.

Todd Blanche is trying to get Michael Cohen to say that while working for Trump, he gave statements to reporters without checking in with his boss. Cohen is refusing to concede this, and says that he would always talk to Trump about every story.

Blanche is trying to establish the idea for the jury that Cohen was a rogue agent who did things without consulting with Trump — for example, the hush-money payment.

In particular, Blanche noted that Cohen often frustrated campaign officials with statements he made to the press during the 2016 campaign. Cohen parries that by saying Trump had told them that Cohen reported to him.

Michael Cohen is now speaking directly to the jury about his longstanding relationship with journalists.

Todd Blanche is going back in time, asking Cohen about positive stories he had planted, not just about Trump but also about himself.

He says that reporters would often call him or the Trump Organization asking for comment. He said he would immediately go to Trump’s office and they would come up with a crafted response that he would take back to the reporter.

Cohen adds that it was his routine to advise Trump about these matters, because if the resulting story was not to his liking, “it would cause him to blow up at me” and “it would probably be the end of my job.”

To recap, right before the lunch break, Todd Blanche extracted one of the most helpful bits of testimony from Michael Cohen that he’s gotten from any witness on cross-examination so far. During that exchange, he sought to create reasonable doubt that Cohen had accurately and truthfully recounted a conversation he said he had about Stormy Daniels with Trump on his bodyguard's phone on Oct. 24, 2016.

Blanche is now driving home that Cohen threatened to turn the Secret Service on a prank caller who said they were 14 years old.

Todd Blanche, the defense lawyer, immediately picks up with an earlier line of questioning about the grand jury indictment of Trump becoming public. The prosecution objects to a follow-up, and the judge tells the lawyers to approach.

 

The atmosphere outside as the trial nears its conclusion is increasingly circus-like. Shortly after noon on Thursday, a U-Haul truck stopped in front of the courthouse. A Trump supporter who has been a regular at the courthouse then released dozens of large, pink, phallus-shaped mylar balloons bearing pictures of Justice Merchan, Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Trump in Washington.

But Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case that's on trial here, has supporters outside the courthouse, too. One of them, visiting from Maryland, caught one of the balloons and remarked that it actually resembled Trump.

 

To catch you up during the lunch break: The cross-examination of Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer and fixer, continued, as Todd Blanche, one of the defense lawyers, sought to highlight his past lies and his 2018 guilty plea to federal charges. The proceedings were interrupted numerous times by legal objections from prosecutors, making it slow-going for spectators and, perhaps, jurors.

Trump's high-profile Republican supporters continued their steady march to the courthouse, with Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida among those who appeared in court. Gaetz went so far as to post on X this morning, “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President,” referencing Trump’s 2020 shoutout to the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group. So many members of the House traveled to the Manhattan courthouse today that the actual work of Congress in Washington has been stalled.

This afternoon’s testimony will be the last for the week before the trial resumes on Monday.

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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17 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

What is she even talking about?  Everyone knows what crime he's accused of committing.

Is she just saying that he's committed so many crimes that he's not sure which one this is?  

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14 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

What is she even talking about?  Everyone knows what crime he's accused of committing.

Is she just saying that he's committed so many crimes that he's not sure which one this is?  

Just one of the talking points that is, obviously, not true. "Every legal analyst in the history of the world agrees that no crime was committed here!"

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4 hours ago, 4th&Five said:

 

Well the new John Grisham soft-core adaptation certainly looks like it has potential.  

Will somebody please help me convince myself that we are still in a reality on Earth.  I am freaking the fuck out right now.  

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8 hours ago, texasdago said:

Was thinking of the comments above re: Rush Limbaugh.  I used to gobble up books and the drivel by Limbaugh, O'Reilly and their ilk.  Good God I was dumbass back then.  If there's one thing I can say Cheeto did that was a positive for me is he snapped me out of it.  When he came along, I was like, WTF y'all?  Are we not seeing this?  He caused me to reevaluate a LOT!

High Five Sacha Baron Cohen GIF by filmeditor

Iraq snapped me out of it, but yeah, I don't want to think about how much Limbaugh, etc. I listened to in the 90s.

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In an Uber with a boomer driver listening to Fox News Radio.  Apparently Cohen was pantsed today and the entire case is blown and Bragg should just give up now.  Jury clearly ready to acquit etc etc. Defense may not even need to bring a witness. 

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Some more detailed and narrative discussion of Cohen's testimony from Lawfare.

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/michael-cohen-on-the-stand-part-i

Including an indication that the only defense witnesses may be an expert and Trump himself.

And more on his cross.

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/michael-cohen-on-the-stand-part-ii

 

 

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