There’s a revolving door of lawyers in Trump world and Todd Blanche may be the next one through it. He may be thrown through it, in fact. Blanche was insufficiently loyal to his client today and that is the death knell in Trump’s circle. Loyalty is everything in Trump’s mafia-esque world, and particularly loyalty against Trump’s known enemies, of which Justice Juan Merchan is one. Blanche actually agreed with the judge Thursday during the gag order hearing and Trump lost it.
During a hearing Thursday over claims Donald Trump again defied a gag order issued by the judge in his hush money trial, the former president’s lead lawyer agreed with Judge Juan Merchan — and that appeared to infuriate his client.
Just days after the New York Times reported that Trump is butting heads with attorney Todd Blanche, complaining that he is not being “aggressive” enough, the lawyer may have thrown more fuel on that fire by conceding a point about his client’s actions.
“Not aggressive enough,” translates as Trump needs a television lawyer. The problem with that is that a television lawyer — and Alina Habba is the poster child — and a competent lawyer are two different things. Where Trump loses track of reality each and every single time is that he confuses histrionics with a winning argument and the two are not the same. Again, look at the results that lawyer Habba has generated.
The comment which infuriated Trump happened today during the gag order hearing when the basic issue of Trump having the right of political speech to speak to reporters was weighed as against defendant Trump violating the gag order which is in place.
As MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin reported on X, “Judge Merchan to Trump’s lawyer: ‘You’re telling me the scrutiny is outrageous, but nobody’s forcing him’ to talk to the press in the hall. ‘The entire area has been set up the way it has been set up so that your client, who is a candidate for president,’ can exercise his political speech rights.”T
Lawfare’s Tyler McBrien contributed, “Merchan cuts Blanche off to point out that in certain statements, Trump went to the press, the press didn’t go to him. He quite literally could’ve gone out a different door, nobody forced Trump. ‘Judge…I agree with that,’ Blanche says defeatedly, w/ big laugh from the press.”
According to legal analyst Norm Eisen, Blanche’s response seems to have exasperated Trump.
On X, he wrote, “OMG, Blanche says ‘I agree with that’ to judge regarding one of Trump statements. Trump looks back to his coterie seated behind him (includes Epsteyn), shakes head in disgust. He always turns on his lawyers.”
Blanche got his money up front when he went to work for Trump and he had to have foreseen this, or something like this, unless he’s incredibly naive. Today was just another rocky passage in a trial which has so far been nothing but fits and starts and at the end of the day Trump has lost a bit more ground than what he had the day before.
One of the reasons that lawyers hate working for Trump is because there’s never a cohesive legal team, there are always fits of temperament to be dealt with from their petulant client. Trump fails to grasp how comaraderie and trust are key elements to a legal team because Trump’s not a team player on any level. He’s the star, everybody else is a supporting player.
The judge will rule on the gag order violations later in the day. The four violations were: 1. When Trump left court after the last hearing on the gag order and attacked Michael Cohen. 2. When he gave an interview where he claimed that the jury was 95% Democrats. 3. When he again attacked Cohen in an interview with a local TV station in Pennsylvania. 4. When he praised David Pecker in the middle of his testimony. Cohen’s “Vonshitsinpants” comment was repeated in court and drew a lot of laughter.
Another day of court, another day of humiliation.
Truth and grandstanding are incompatible in a court of law.
If only Trump’s lawyers knew how to play eleventy-level chess like their client, they would understand that loud, angry, red-faced, utter stupidity is a brilliant strategy and it always works for Trump! That’s how he ended up in court improving his campaign polling, and catching up on sleep, in the first place! ♟🤬✊
This may be juvenile of me, but “Vonshitsinpants” is my personal favorite nickname for TFG.
It’s by far the best one I have heard and is extremely accurate. I’m kind of happy he got to hear it to his face.
I sincerely hope that whatever minuscule footnote in history trump warrants, Vonshisinpants is given as one of trump’s nicknames.
Someone needs to get to work on google and do a Santorum-type thing for this one. You know, every time someone google’s trump, Vonshitsinpants is featured prominently in what the search turns up. That right there would be karma biting trump in the ass like he deserves.
If I was on that jury and heard that in the courtroom, I might have wet my britches I’d be laughing so hard.