May10

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Trump Legal News: The Trial (Day 14)

The beat goes on. Or maybe it's the beatdown. Here are the big stories from Day 14 of Donald Trump's criminal fraud case:

• We Have a Winner?: The main witness on Thursday was Stormy Daniels, back for a second day of testimony. The defense continued to work hard to portray her as a con artist and extortionist. As we have pointed out, this is actually irrelevant. The question is not whether her story was true or not, it's whether Trump paid her off to keep her quiet, and why he did so. In other words, what is going on here is that Team Trump is trying for some jury nullification, hoping the jury will be guided by their sense of what is right/fair and what is wrong/unfair, and the law be damned. That might just say something about the strength of Trump's legal arguments.
  
  It would appear the strategy backfired. We are not lawyers, and we were not in the courtroom, but Norman Eisen is, and was. He writes that: "The risk when you swing for the fences on cross-examination is that unless you make contact, you very visibly strike out in front of the jurors. From my perspective sitting just 10 feet away from the jury box, that happened repeatedly here." In other words, Trump's lawyers encouraged sympathy for the witness, while also (inadvertently) suggesting to jurors "Hey, we don't really have a case here."
  
  
• No Mistrial...: Trump's legal team once again asked for a mistrial because of the steamy nature of Daniels' testimony. Judge Juan Merchan once again declined.
  
  
• ... And No McDougal: Presumably fearing that they are treading on thin ice with all the sexy talk, the prosecution announced yesterday they will not call Karen McDougal to the stand. So, Daniels is the only Trump paramour the jury will hear from.
  
  
• Keep It Zipped, Donald: No, not that. Trump's mouth. The former president's attorneys asked Merchan to pare back the gag order that is currently constraining their client, and the judge said no way. This says something very interesting about Trump's priorities, we think.
  
  
• The Rolodex: There were three other people who testified on Thursday, besides Daniels. One works for the Trump Organization, one works for a publisher that produced Trump's book and one worked in the Trump White House. The purpose of all three was to attest to Trump's working style, and his tendency to be very hands-on when it came to spending money. The testimony from this trio was pretty bland, excepting that Madeleine Westerhout, who was one of Trump's private secretaries, revealed a bunch of names that were in his rolodex, including a bunch of right-wing media types (Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, etc.) and a bunch of pro athletes (Serena Williams, Tom Brady, etc.). To us, the big news here is that Trump still uses a rolodex. Does he keep it next to the typewriter and the dictaphone?

There you have it. They'll be back at it today. (Z)