Trump's Troubles

What does that matter? Both judges I cited lost control of their cases IN THE COURTROOM. Ito never recovered. It remains to be seen how Merchan recovers.

 

He hasn’t lost control over his courtroom.

 

He is neither. If anything he demonstrated his "incompetence" by leaning over backwards to protect the defeated indicted former president. If Trump were any other criminal defendant he would have been jailed by now for contempt based on his multiple flagrant violations of Merchan's gag order.

 

See VA’s post above and transcripts of Stormy’s testimonial circus yesterday.

 

He never would have made the jury in the first place. He would have been rejected after the first question.

 

No but your orange hero has.

 

He took control of his courtroom, he didn’t lose it.

 

Nikki officially dropped out of the race a long time ago. She does not campaign and yet gets nearly 22% of the vote in deep red Indiana. Tired of trump

 

He never lost control of the courtroom, they don't understand how a trial works. The judge stated that some testimony came in that shouldn't have, but that's on Trump's defense team for failing to make contemporaneous objections. It is not Merchan's responsibility to limit testimony where Trump's lawyers failed to make a timely objection. Until the judge brought their omissions to their attention when denying their motion for a mistrial, they were asleep at the wheel for a good part of it. AFTER they were told they were screwing up, then they started to object and a significant number of their objections were sustained.

The ONLY times I've ever seen judges exclude testimony or evidence without a timely defense objection is when what was about to come in was so fundamentally prejudicial there was concern the case may come back on ineffective assistance of counsel grounds.

Calling Judge Merchan incompetent is a laughably inept assessment.

 

Lawyers make me laugh at times. When I had my business in the 80s I ran into my lawyer at a Braves game in Atlanta. He asked me "Hows business" I answered "No current issues" he said Now that we have discussed business we can both write this off as a business expense. I don't know about him but I didn't take his advice. Every time I see shady business that involves a lawyer I think back to that so called business meeting.

 

That’s exactly what I was saying. And for someone who likely has never been a part of a trial, much less an advocate, it’s not very credible to read that the judge “lost control of the courtroom.”

 

While I happen to think it's the weakest case against Trump so far the State has presented very credible evidence that Trump falsified business records, that his primary motivation for paying Michael Cohen was to suppress adverse publicity that could have affected the election and that the expenditures to Cohen weren't reported as campaign expenditures.

As as the documents case is concerned, there is credible evidence that Trump possessed classified documents to which he was not entitled, that he lied to a court regarding the disposition of said documents and if/or when the case does go trial the government will have very strong evidence against the defeated former presidency including photos, documentation and the testimony of witnesses (former employees) that helped Trump conceal the documents.

 

Ironically part of the problem was the failure of Trump's own attorneys to object to Stormy's testimony. On more than one occasion Merchan entered and sustained objections on their behalf and also struck the salacious details of Stormy's testimony.
Hush-money judge denies mistrial and says Trump's lawyers should have raised more objections to Stormy Daniels testimony

 

Sigmund’s head would explode

 

Birds of a feather/game recognize game, whatever

 

I think the documents case is the strongest. And remember, for the Trumpeteers who love to scream witch hunt, that case is predominantly based on Trump’s illegal (and literally outrageous) conduct after being caught with the documents - he lied about not having them, he swore under oath he didn’t have them, he appointed a lawyer to do an audit to prove he didn’t have them but covertly moved the documents to another state before the lawyer arrived in site to do his job, mishandled the stolen the documents in multiple locations, and deliberately and contumaciously disobeyed subpoenas for the documents, and more. Of all the cases, that one epitomizes Trump’s complete and total disregard, of not outright disrespect, for the laws that he swore to uphold.

 

Additionally, as many hyper-opinionated witnesses do, Stormy took it upon herself to go on harangues and narratives that exceeded the scope of the question. It’s incumbent in the lawyers to ask the judge to stop her and order an answer to the question with no more narrative.
Regardless, for all those “we got an airtight appeal” folks, the Judge gave a curing instruction to the jury to disregard parts of her testimony. Those instructions cure the “prejudice”, if any, that Trump might have suffered (and make appeals on the issue very, very difficult to overcome).