This account of Day 10 is 2 days late, however I’ve excuse. On Thursday, Could 2, 2024, at round 10:15 p.m., Louisa Catherine Chiusano was born at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, the daughter of Charlotte Alter and Mark Chiusano. Louisa is the youthful sister of Rosie Chiusano, now practically two and a half. I went to the hospital final night and located Charlotte and Louisa doing nice. My spouse, Emily Lazar, and I are thrilled to have our second grandchild.
Day 11, when Hope Hicks took the stand, was a horrible one for Donald Trump, however you’ll have to examine that tomorrow.
For now, I wish to supply my tackle Day 10, after I grew a tad involved. Not nervous or pessimistic; I nonetheless assume the percentages favor conviction. However the thought occurred to me throughout the lacerating cross-examination of Keith Davidson that it’s fairly attainable a number of members of the jury will resolve to hold it.
These jurors wouldn’t essentially be secret Trumpsters. Primarily based on voir dire and observing them via binoculars (permitted so long as reporters don’t use them to concentrate on the attorneys’ open laptops), nothing raises suspicions. Not that my “hyper-observational” strategy, as The New Yorker described my MO, would essentially yield insights about their inclinations. I briefly thought that one male juror had a MAGA haircut. (“It wouldn’t be prudent,” as George H.W. Bush favored to say, to inform you which one). However then I made a decision that this statement was, nicely, a bit hyper.
The morning opened with Decide Juan Merchan’s second contempt listening to. On Thursday, the decide held Trump in contempt of court docket on 9 of the ten counts provided by the prosecution. This time, Merchan is contemplating 4 violations of the gag order from the final two weeks, every that includes Trump trashing witnesses and the jury, a severe no-no in felony trials.
Considered one of my favourite recurring humiliations of Trump is that he should sit silently—with out posting nasty rejoinders or altering the channel—whereas hatred and mock of him pour forth, nearly all the time within the voice of his personal attorneys. This occurred throughout jury choice when protection attorneys satisfied the decide to dismiss potential jurors who known as Trump “the satan” or a “sociopath.” And we’ve now watched Trump endure two contempt hearings the place his attorneys insisted that he wasn’t violating the gag order by replying to vicious assaults from Michael Cohen, the previous Trump Group legal professional central to the hush cash/election interference scheme.
In the present day, the protection did so with 500 pages of reveals that they’d despatched to the decide, most consisting of Cohen going after Trump. Merchan, taking a look at his watch, solely had the endurance for a sampling.
After Todd Blanche, the Trump lawyer on more and more skinny ice along with his shopper, learn Cohen’s tweet calling Trump “Von ShitzInPantz,” you would hear stifled giggles within the courtroom. That become laughter—instantly shushed by the humorless court docket police—when the overhead video screens displayed a PhotoShopped fats Trump as a vibrant orange superhero named “Tremendous Sufferer.” Orange was a theme. I particularly loved the picture of Trump in an orange jumpsuit subsequent to Nelson Mandela. (Trump lately dubbed himself a “modern-day” model of the anti-apartheid hero) and the road: “Hold messing with me Donald and I received’t ship something to your commissary.”
Trump is very delicate to criticisms of his companies, and he glared on the picture on the video screens of Barry Diller on CNBC’s Squawk Field with a chyron beneath: “Trump IPO is a rip-off.”
Blanche complained that Cohen makes use of his podcast, Mea Culpa, to take vicious photographs at his previous boss and is purchasing a TV present based mostly on the trial.
“Everybody can say what they need on this case besides President Trump,” Blanche whined.
The decide was unimpressed: “They’re not defendants on this case. That’s a really important situation you’re overlooking.”
When Blanche continued, Merchan interrupted to remind him that Trump was the one approaching the microphones. “No person’s forcing him to speak to the press within the corridor. The complete space has been arrange in order that your shopper, who’s a candidate for president, can train his political speech rights,” Merchan mentioned.
Blanche responded, “Decide, I agree with that.”
At that time, Trump glared at his legal professional. His orders are clear: Don’t give one inch.
The microphones to which Merchan referred are simply down the corridor from Room 1530 (the courtroom), the place—addressing the tiny press pool from behind a brief metallic barrier that fittingly resembles jail bars—Trump launches his morning fusillades in opposition to the decide (‘crooked”), the DA (“crooked”), and the trial (“rigged”). None of that is prohibited below the gag order.
You could have most likely seen extra of these transient exchanges with the media than I’ve as a result of these of us with courtroom passes should stay seated for 5 to 10 minutes till Elvis (sorry, that’s Invoice Clinton, not this sociopathic carnival barker) has left the constructing.
The 2 new contempt costs associated to Cohen stem from Trump saying outdoors court docket on April 22, “When are they going to have a look at all of the lies that Cohen did within the final trial? He obtained caught mendacity within the final trial.” The following day, the forty fifth president of the USA was at it once more: “Michael Cohen is a convicted liar, and he’s obtained no credibility in anyway.” We’ll see whether or not Merchan believes these traces have been in response to a particular Cohen assault or unprovoked. If the latter, Trump might be fined $1,000 for every of them.
The decide indicated that essentially the most severe contempt cost stems from Trump’s grievance in regards to the jury in an interview with Actual America’s Voice, a MAGA cable and satellite tv for pc channel: “The jury was picked so quick—95 % Democrats. The world’s largely all Democrat. You consider it as a—only a purely Democrat space. It’s a really unfair scenario, that I can inform you,” Donald mentioned of the New York Metropolis borough the place he lived for many years.
These feedback preview Trump’s political argument if he will get convicted. He’ll bash the jurors as biased Democrats, query their integrity, and weaken religion within the felony justice system much more than he has already.
Merchan believes that’s a flagrant violation of his gag order, which explicitly bars attacking jurors.
“He spoke in regards to the jury. He mentioned the jury was 95 % Democratic,” Merchan barked from the bench, maybe not recognizing that he was inadvertently spreading Trump’s calumny. “The implication was that this isn’t a good jury.”
When Blanche, the protection legal professional, tried distinguishing between “the jury” that Trump attacked and particular person “jurors” whom he spared, Merchan batted away the lame distinction.
Then Blanche, an skilled white-collar felony protection lawyer, tried to argue that commentators have been allowed to touch upon juries, so why couldn’t Trump? Merchan thought this foolish excuse—which appeared like one thing that the 77-year-old defendant himself got here up with—was even weaker than the one Blanche used within the first listening to on the gag order. In that one, Trump re-posted contemptible (in each senses of the phrase) right-wing content material.
After that first listening to, Merchan dominated there’s no distinction between posting unique venomous content material and re-posting another person’s. Now, he reiterated that to keep away from the gag order, Trump needed to be responding to particular assaults.
Blanche argued that “the defendant wasn’t responding to something particularly,” simply months and years of assaults from Cohen and others. Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo replied that the gag order had solely been in place for a number of weeks and thus didn’t cowl months or years of mutual vitriol and was not interfering with Trump’s proper to marketing campaign.
Trump has additionally trashed Stormy Daniels, who’s on the witness listing. This led Blanche to complain that Trump ought to be allowed to answer President Joe Biden’s remarks on the White Home Correspondents Dinner final month. Blanche quoted Biden’s quip, “Donald had had a number of robust days recently. You may name it stormy climate.”
The decide was incredulous, “Are you saying that he [Trump] can’t reply with out saying, ‘Stormy Daniels’?” Merchan mentioned. “He can actually reply to President Biden.”
“The defendant is doing every thing he can to make this case about politics,” Colangelo summarized. “It’s not. It’s about his felony conduct.”
There may be one depend the place Trump may skate. Merchan didn’t appear to care about Trump saying final week that he hoped David Pecker can be “good” to him on the stand. The decide might not have but learn the complete textual content of Trump’s feedback about Pecker. I discovered the road—“It is a message to Pecker: Be good.”—to be threatening, not complimentary. (See Joe Pesci’s “Be good!” scene in On line casino.) We’ll see if on additional inspection, the decide agrees.
As I wrote in my Day 9 report, it’s unlucky {that a} former president being held in contempt of court docket shouldn’t be a lot greater information. Think about if Richard Nixon (pardoned earlier than any trial) had been discovered responsible of contempt. It could have generated “Saturday Evening Bloodbath”-level protection. This period might be remembered for its numbness. A world-class deviant is “defining deviancy down” within the memorable formulation of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
The contempt debate has private resonance for me. In 1969, I used to be a 12-year-old child on Chicago’s North Facet, bursting out the entrance door each morning to choose up the Solar-Occasions on our porch. That 12 months introduced large protection of the Chicago 8 conspiracy trial that grew out of the disturbances on the 1968 Democratic Conference, and I reveled in a minor connection to it: Yippie chief Abbie Hoffman was sleeping within the spare bed room of household buddies who rightly suspected the FBI tapped their telephone. Their overdue telephone payments have been mysteriously paid.) The identify of the trial was modified to the Chicago 7 when Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panthers and utterly harmless, was severed from the case. Decide Julius Hoffman (unrelated to Abbie) infamously ordered Seale certain (to a chair) and gagged (with a fabric) for disrupting the courtroom. He sentenced Seale to 4 years in jail for contempt, a call overturned on enchantment.
Merchan received’t order Trump certain and gagged, even when he begins shouting within the courtroom. And he’s unlikely to jail him or impose my most popular punishment, selecting up trash in an orange jumpsuit. However as he summoned the jury again into the courtroom, it was clear the decide’s endurance with the protection was carrying skinny.
So was Trump’s. As normal, he’s upset about the best way his attorneys are dealing with the case, although he doesn’t present it within the courtroom. As an alternative, Trump is attempting to sound chipper. On Wednesday, he posted on Reality Social, “Opposite to the FAKE NEWS MEDIA, I don’t go to sleep throughout the Crooked D.A.’s Witch Hunt, particularly not at present. I merely shut my lovely blue eyes, typically, hear intensely, and take it ALL in!!!”
When he opens his eyes and walks out throughout breaks, his expression is much less defiant than a examine in frustration, as if he’s resigned to this non permanent destiny. On the finish of the day he shot MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell a unclean appear to be the one he despatched George Conway’s route final week.
Mid-morning, Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass resumed his direct examination of Keith Davidson, the Beverly Hills lawyer who represented each Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. He was pre-butting what would occur on cross-examination.
After testifying that the discharge of the Entry Hollywood tape on October 7, 2016, had “great affect” on the marketability of the Stormy Daniels story, Davidson advised a story of rising frustration with Cohen over why the urgency Cohen expressed on an nearly hourly foundation was not matched by precise supply of the cash.
“I consider he [Cohen] was not telling me the reality” about “delays in funding” the hush cash, Davidson testified. After I first heard this, I questioned why prosecutors wished to re-emphasize that Cohen lied to Davidson. Then I spotted that it bolstered the chronology they have been constructing of Trump and Cohen freaking out over the Entry Hollywood tape, Trump being too low-cost to pony up, and Cohen frantically organising a brand new firm and drawing on his residence fairness mortgage to make the cost.
Within the negotiations, Cohen demanded “a lot increased liquidated damages” than Davidson provided—$1 million for each time Daniels (signing as Stephanie Clifford) breached the contract by speaking about her relationship with Trump. Davidson agreed to it regardless that he thought it unenforceable.
Daniels and Cohen signed the contract on October 28, 2016, and Davidson on October 31, per week earlier than the election. Solely Cohen and Davidson retained copies, with Davidson writing by hand within the area reserved for the pseudonym “David Dennison,” the true identify of Donald Trump.
4 days earlier than the election, The Wall Road Journal uncovered how American Media Worldwide, the Nationwide Enquirer’s guardian firm, used “catch and kill” on the McDougal story. Cohen advised Davidson that “the boss was very upset, and he threatened to sue” McDougal. Just like the response to the Entry Hollywood story, this goes to Trump’s motive for signing off on the hush cash to Stormy Daniels.
After Trump received, Davidson texted Dylan Howard, an govt at AMI, what he known as “gallows humor”:
“What have we completed?”
Howard replied: “Oh, my God.”
On the stand, Davidson blandly testified, “There was an understanding that our actions might have in some methods assisted the presidential marketing campaign of Donald Trump.”
This bolsters the prosecution’s argument that the members of the conspiracy (together with Trump) supposed to affect the election, an necessary component of the DA’s case.
Nonetheless attempting to pre-butt, Steinglass requested about what occurred after the election, when Cohen often known as Davidson.
On December 9, Davidson was holiday-shopping at a “surprisingly adorned” large field division retailer with an “Alice in Wonderland” motif of outsized characters (becoming, I believed) the place “you felt small.” Cohen known as and unloaded:
“Jesus Christ, Are you able to fucking consider I’m not going to Washington after every thing I’ve completed for that fucking man,” a reference to his not being provided an administration job. “I’ve saved the man’s ass so many occasions.”
Cohen advised Davidson, “That man shouldn’t be even paying me the $130,000 again.”
I used to be fairly certain we’d hear extra about that assertion on cross-examination. However I didn’t predict what else Davidson would say on cross about Cohen’s way of thinking a month after the election—that Cohen was “despondent” and Davidson feared he “would kill himself.” Cohen had delusions of grandeur. He thought he ought to have been thought of to be Trump’s legal professional basic or White Home chief of workers. When Cohen testifies, we’ll study if Trump provided him something. Both approach, Cohen was extraordinarily disenchanted.
As a child fascinated by American presidents, I realized in regards to the assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881. The murderer, Charles J. Guiteau, was routinely described in historical past books as a “disenchanted office-seeker.”
Trump’s protection attorneys received’t make reference to Garfield, whom Trump remembers solely as a cat. They don’t have to. The jury realized that Cohen had an enormous private purpose for searching for revenge in opposition to Trump, and it landed.
On direct, Davidson defined that when the Stormy Daniels story broke in 2018, he wrote an announcement within the actress’sname denying the affair. On this second of pre-buttal, the jury started to study that this smooth lawyer was additionally a talented liar. It turned out that in the event you knew the way to decode the denial, it wasn’t actually a denial in any respect however simply a part of what Davidson cynically known as the same old “cat-and-mouse interplay with the press.”
As an example, Davidson claimed that when Daniels wrote in her ghosted assertion, “Rumors that I acquired hush cash from Donald Trump are false,” she—and Davidson—weren’t mendacity as a result of the “consideration” settlement she signed made no particular reference to hush cash. And when she mentioned she had “no sexual and/or romantic relationship” with Trump, she was, uh, telling the reality, or a minimum of a part of it. The encounter was neither romantic nor a relationship, and the “and/or” was a invaluable loophole.
Davidson exuded smug pleasure when explaining that “no sexual and romantic relationship” was technically true.
Daniels used a variation of the loophole on Jimmy Kimmel Dwell. Later, she repudiated her repudiation, then lately modified her story to recommend maybe her liaison with Trump was not fully consensual. All in all, as both Stormy Daniels or Stephanie Clifford, she’s going to make a horrible witness if she’s known as.
Within the meantime, dealing with Stormy introduced Davidson and Cohen into nearer contact. When she recklessly fired Davidson as her lawyer in favor of the well-known (however in the end felony) Michael Avanatti, Cohen and Davidson solid a a lot nearer connection than Davidson conveyed throughout his first day on direct.
By this time, I used to be starting to assume they have been two peas in a pod and that Trump may profit from what may very well be known as “The Sleazy Lawyer Impact.” Cohen and Davidson have been simply sleazy attorneys attempting to get some cash out of Trump.
This was the theme of Emil Bove’s blistering cross-examination: Davidson is mainly an extortionist by commerce. Bove was a lot better at present than when he tousled cross-examining David Pecker final week and needed to apologize to the jury. He additionally obtained fortunate as a result of Davidson proved to be a a lot worse witness for the DA than Pecker, whose gentle solutions on the stand made his testimony appear credible sufficient.
Bove started by establishing a necessary level for the protection: Davidson admitted he had by no means met Trump and had no first-hand data of his enterprise data. “The whole lot about President Trump comes from both TV or Michael Cohen, proper?”
Davidson mentioned sure, however that was one in every of his solely straight solutions of the afternoon. A lot of the remainder of the time, he mentioned, “I don’t recall” about incidents he clearly recalled and performed lawyerly phrase video games that will need to have irritated the jury.
When Bove mentioned, “I’m not right here to play lawyer video games with you,” the prosecution’s objection was sustained. However Davidson took the bait. “You’re getting truthful solutions, sir,” he mentioned sharply. “In the event you’re not right here to play authorized video games, then don’t say ‘extract.’”
It turned out that extracting settlements and utilizing leverage to the hilt was the well mannered approach of describing Davidson’s customary enterprise practices. As Bove established, the correct time period is extort. Right here the louche tabloid world Trump has inhabited for half a century got here alive within the courtroom with lurid tales that took jurors far past tales of a Playboy “Playmate of the Yr” and porn star.
Davidson smugly denied even worrying in regards to the line between correct negotiation and extortion, which wasn’t plausible on its face and performed even worse for him when it turned clear that he must reply for his sleazy legislation observe.
Bove then walked Davidson via a sequence of controversies involving troubled celebrities, all of which made Davidson look unsavory and responsible of some form of extortion, even when he was by no means prosecuted for it. He had his legislation license suspended for 90 days, turned the goal of a Tampa police report, and, in a unique case, an FBI sting operation.
Davidson appears to have had a sub-specialty in intercourse tapes. In a single extremely publicized case, he “extracted” large cash out of Hulk Hogan in alternate for not airing intercourse tapes. In one other, he labored with a “intercourse tapes dealer” named Kevin Blatt to get $75,000 out of pro-Nazi actuality TV star Tina Tequila.
Davidson represented a leaker on the Betty Ford Clinic who satisfied TMZ to provide her $10,000 in alternate for suppressing a narrative about Lindsay Lohan’s dependancy.
“You’ve represented some purchasers who you helped receives a commission by Charlie Sheen, proper?” Bove requested.
“I’ve represented a number of purchasers who had claims in opposition to Charlie Sheen,” Davidson answered rigorously.
“And who you extracted sums of cash from Charlie Sheen on behalf of, right?”
“There was no extraction,” he answered rigorously. “We asserted that there was tortious exercise dedicated and legitimate settlements that have been executed.” Eye roll.
Bove pressed Davidson about Stormy Daniels saying to him, “If he [Trump] loses this election, all of us lose all fucking leverage.” Later, when Daniels retracts her declare, he and Cohen focus on “settlers regret” and namecheck Larry Flynt, the late Hustler writer. within the course of.
All of this laid the groundwork for the protection to argue that Trump was simply the harmless sufferer of skilled extortionists.
Issues went a lot better for the prosecution on Friday, and I’ll report that to you tomorrow.