Raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, I have an insider perspective of rich white spoiled brats.
Yesterday, I told my friend Bob, who does the tech work for my books at the free internet library, archive.org, that Donald Trump’s criminal fraud trial in New York state court in Manhattan is the first time in his life that he has not been in control.
He is in a pressure cooker, in his home state, where he is well known.
The pressure is building.
Will he shit his pants?
"Oh my God, Trump just shit his pants"
"Mister Trump and his diaper problems"
Will he explode?
Photos cannot be taken in New York courts.
I saw on TV news last night that Trump complained about the sketch artist.
This in my Apple Newsfeed this morning is followed by my former federal judge law clerk and practicing attorney rumination:
Trump was unhinged during first week of hush money trial. He'll only get weirder.
REX HUPPKE | USA TODAY
Updated 4:00 am EDT Apr. 21, 2024
Courtroom sketch artists are our gateway into Donald Trump’s New York trial
For perhaps the first time in his life, Donald Trump had to spend a week shutting up.
There was one place he had to be – a Manhattan criminal courtroom – and he couldn’t come and go as he pleased. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t send inflammatory social media posts from his phone.
He just had to sit there and listen as “the people of the state of New York vs. Donald J. Trump” began and jurors were selected to decide whether the former president falsified business records as part of a scheme to silence a former adult-film star and influence the 2016 presidential election.
Tough-guy Trump sure did a lot of bellyaching his first week on trial
Trump was clearly shocked to learn standing trial on criminal charges comes with certain inconveniences.
He griped outside the courtroom. He whined on social media in the evenings. He reportedly dozed off several times during the proceedings, a sign the stress of the trial might be keeping him up at night.
As the avatar of a purportedly tough political party that labels liberals “snowflakes,” Trump seemed less John Wayne and more “Ross from ‘Friends.’ ”
If Trump seemed bananas during jury selection, wait until opening arguments.
By the end of the week, a full jury along with alternates had been seated, so opening arguments are expected to begin Monday.
And Trump will again have to be there. He’ll have to be in that courtroom every day of the trial because that’s how it works when you’re the defendant in a criminal case in Manhattan.
Trump didn’t want to be there, he should’ve thought twice about paying $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, according to his former attorney Michael Cohen, along with several other alleged actions that led to his 34-count indictment. An excellent way to stay out of a courtroom is to not engage in dodgy behavior.
But what’s done is done.
Trump lied about not being able to attend his son's graduation
Trump got the ball rolling by lying to his followers and saying Judge Juan Merchan was forbidding him from attending his son Barron’s high school graduation next month. That is false. The judge said he would have to see how the trial is going at that point and will rule on it closer to the date.
But Trump moaned on social media: “Who will explain for me, to my wonderful son, Barron, who is a GREAT Student at a fantastic School, that his Dad will likely not be allowed to attend his Graduation Ceremony, something that we have been talking about for years, because a seriously Conflicted and Corrupt New York State Judge wants me in Criminal Court on a bogus 'Biden Case' which, according to virtually all Legal Scholars and Pundits, has no merit, and should NEVER have been brought.”
I’d be happy to explain it: “Barron, your father is on trial and accused of attempting to silence an adult-film star he allegedly had an affair with shortly after you were born and hid potentially scandalous information from voters before the 2016 election. The judge will decide closer to your graduation date if your father can attend.”
Easy peasy!
He made up images of himself bursting out of the courtroom in a rage.
Beyond that, Trump hurled inflammatory Truth Social posts calling the whole trial “a SCAM brought about by a Corrupt District Attorney” and the judge and prosecutors “Nasty, Crooked People.”
“I JUST STORMED OUT OF COURT!” (he hadn’t) and made up nonsense about the jury selection process to make himself seem like a victim, posting: “I thought STRIKES were supposed to be ‘unlimited’ when we were picking our jury? I was then told we only had 10.”Each side is allowed to strike 10 jurors without providing a reason. That’s standard and has never changed.
Trump also potentially violated his gag order by sharing the following quote from Fox News host Jesse Watters on his Truth Social page: “‘They are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury,’ Jesse Watters.”That is, of course, nonsense.And then there was that weird bit about Jimmy Kimmel ...
And while all of the above is amply nutso, at no point last week did the cheese seem to slip off Trump’s cracker more than in this bizarro-world Wednesday night post about late-night host Jimmy Kimmel:“Stupid Jimmy Kimmel, who still hasn’t recovered from his horrendous performance and big ratings drop as Host of The Academy Awards, especially when he showed he suffered from TDS, commonly known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, to the entire World by reading on air my TRUTH about how bad a job he was doing that night, right before he stumbled through announcing the biggest award of all, ‘Picture of the Year.’ It was a CLASSIC CHOKE, one of the biggest ever in show business, and to top it off, he forgot to say the famous and mandatory line, ‘AND THE WINNER IS.’ Instead he stammered around as he opened the envelope. Supposedly his wife, and even management, begged him not to do it, ‘DON’T READ HIS TRUTH, JIMMY, PLEASE DON’T DO THIS,’ they said. He was made to look like a FOOL, which he is, and at the same time go down in Television History as the WORST HOST EVER OF THE ONCE VAUNTED ACADEMY AWARDS!”
First off, Trump was confusing Kimmel with Al Pacino, the actor who handed out the best picture award. But more importantly: WOW! That’s your presidential nominee, Republicans. He’s on trial, he’s unhinged and he’s coming unglued.
If the past week was any indication, America is going to swiftly run out of synonyms for “bonkers.”
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
After graduating from the University of Alabama School of law in 1968, I clerked for a federal judge in Birmingham, Alabama, who presided over every federal prosecution in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. I watched many federal prosecutions and sat in my judge's chambers listening to him, prosecutors and defense lawyers discuss jury trials over which he presided.
If Trump’s lawyers are worth their salt, they told him that he has to speak only to them in court. They told him not to violate the judge’s gag order: that he not intimidate or threaten witnesses, jurors, prosecutors and their staff and their families, and the judge and his staff and their families.
If Trump's lawyers are worth their salt, they told him if he ignores the judge’s gag order, the judge can hold him in contempt and put him in jail until he agrees to behave. They told him, if the judge lets him out of jail and back in the courtroom, and he violates the gag order again, the judge can put him in jail and keep him there until hell freezes over.
Along the way, the 12 seated jurors and 6 alternate jurors will watch Trump very closely in the courtroom. Juries do that. They size up the accused. They size up the accused’s lawyers. They size up the prosecutors. They size up the judge. They size up the witnesses.
After all the evidence is in, the jury hears the prosecutors and the defense attorneys’ closing arguments. The jury is instructed by the judge on the law. The jury retires and deliberates and decides the defendant’s fate.
The verdict for conviction must be unanimous. One juror against conviction can hang a jury. If the jury hangs, the prosecutor has to decide whether to retry the defendant or move on to something else.
Two of the twelve seated jurors are lawyers.
In my experience, lawyers routinely were stuck from juries by one side or the other. That there are two lawyers on this jury is unprecedented, cosmic even. I think the lay jurors will rely heavily on the two lawyer jurors to understand what the law is, and the lay jurors will rely on themselves to decide what the facts are.
If the jury acquits or hangs, Trump wins- if he has not shit his pants, gone stark raving mad, had a fatal or disabling heart attack, stroke, etc.
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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