Simple Question: What is a lawyer? Answer: A lot of hot air in a cheap suit with a law degree and a state bar license.
Simple Question: What does a lawyer actually do at a trial. Answer: He talks. At the start of the trial, he tells 12-18 schmucks who couldn’t weasel out of jury duty how his brilliant presentation will prove either a) that the dirtbag is as guilty as hell, or b) his sainted client couldn’t possibly have committed the crimes, since he was still asleep after volunteering all night at a homeless soup kitchen. Then he calls a bunch of other schmucks up and holds conversations. He asks questions, and they answer. Sometimes they show cool pictures or power point slides. And at the end he recaps how brilliantly he made his case, and why the jury would be morons not to vote for his side. Most lawyers would call me a stupid sh*t, but I defy them to show me where I’m wrong.
You know who else does exactly what a lawyer does? Anybody who has ever tried to sell you something. Words are his craft, and when you’re selling something, I don’t care what it is, as they say on Madison Avenue, Image is everything. What a lawyer is really selling is his persona. Whether in court or in television ads, the attorney is trying to convice both potential clients as well as jurors of his professionalism, his integrity, and his probity. You can trust him. Everything else is just words.
Which means that the 2nd worst thing that can happen to a lawyer is to be dressed down in court by the judge. And by far and away the worst thing that can happen to a lawyer is to get dressed down by the judge in open court with the jury present.
Juries love judges. Judges say good morning to them, smile at them He sends them on breaks or lunch with a cheery Smoke ’em if ya got em.’ He sends them home for the night or weekend. If that beloved surrogate father figure slaps down a lawyer for being misleading or dishonest, or disregarding his orders and instructions, then that will color the way the jury tends to view that lawyer, quite possibly with disastrous results for their clients.
But here’s the McGuffin. The same thing can be true for witnesses. Thanks to decades of courtroom dramas, the everyday folks who become jurors have come to view witnesses as the ultimate arbiter’s of fact and impartiality. They tell the jury what they know. Not what they think. Not what they figure, or suspect, but what they know. And if a judge has to admonish the witness, especially multiple times to not embellish their answers, or to not answer questions not yet asked, it can diminish that witness’s veracity and authenticity with the jury, as well as the probity of the lawyer who called them.
That’s where Stormy Daniels almoist tanked it for the prosecution. To be honest, I was disappointed with her direct testimony. After all, she’s a professional in front of a camera, or public eyes on her, she’s trained to follow directions and stick to the script. Only incredibly incompetent lawyering by Trump’s counsel saved the day. As I wrote at the time, how in the hell do you slut shame a porn star?! She’s a professional, and isn’t going to flinch from intimately describing things that anybody with $30 can see on a DVD/ Fortunately she rehabilitated herself on cross examination, deflecting Trump’s lawyer’s clumsy reposts like a cat batting at a rubber mouse.
Which brings us to Michael Cohen. As I wrote at the time, only a sexist pig on two cloven hooves like Donald Trump could torn a porn star into a sympathetic witness for the prosecution.
Well, guess what folks. Pope John Paul II couldn’t make a sympathetic witness out of Michael Cohen. He is a total scumbag. A soulless, slavish sycophant to Trump, there are myriad tapes out there of Cohen screaming obscenities and threatening reporters ready to write negative articles on Trump. He liked to think of himself as Trump’s Ray Donovan, conveniently ignoring the fact that the real Ray Donovan didn’t waste his time making empty threats on the phone. He drove over and kicked ass.
That being said, there is no reason that Cohen can’t be an effective, if not devastating witness if he just stays on point! Juries don’t have to like prosecution witnesses, they just have to believe them. I’ll bet there wasn’t a single juror that liked the lowlife mobsters who testified against The Teflon Don, John Gotti. And yet, Gotti died of cancer in a prison infirmary. A prosecutor doesn’t normally go to a convent to find witnesses against a drug lord. Other drug scumbags will have to do.
And Michael Cohen is a runaway train. He just can’t shut his fat mouth. For years now Cohen has been running around saying, This isn’t about retribution, it’s about accountability. What unutterable bullsh*t. Cohen served two years of prison and home confinement time for crimes that he committed on behalf of Trump. He lost his law license. He’s written two bestselling books trashing Trump, and does a podcast doing the same. He has been showing up on Tik-Tok talking about Trump, and sporting a t-shirt with an image of Trump behind bars, which he conveniently just happens to be selling. More than life itself, Cohen wants Trump to suffer the same indignities he did. That isn’t accountability, it’s retribution.
Worse yet for the prosecution, Judge Merchan, one of the mildest and most tolerant judges I’ve ever seen, is getting a hard on for Cohen. He’s disgusted with Cohen’s online and media antics, and has repeatedly requested that the prosecution get their howler monkey back on his leash. The prosecution has had no choice but to apologize and say that they have repeatedly asked Cohen to cut it out, but he wouldn’t. On Friday the judge made the request again, this time telling the prosecutors to tell Cohen that the request had come from the bench.
Michael Cohen needs to get his sh*t straight, and most riki-tik. The last thing the prosecution needs is a judge pissed off at the state’s star witness. And Michael Cohen’s job on that jury stand is actually quite simple. He’s a tour guide. He is on the stand to cohesively tie all the testimony of witnesses like Pecker, Davidson, Hicks and Graff, and the documentary evidence into a steel chain wthat he wraps around Trump’s neck. That’s it. Full stop.
I can already predict how the prosecution is going to handle this. They will lead off with a detailed explanation of Cohen’s professional and working relationship with Trump. They will vring out Cohen’s criminal acts, putting their own spin on it, and leaving the defense simply plowing over old ground on cross examination, and closing with Cohen’s admission that everything he did was at the behest of Trump. from there on out, they are very carefully going to lead him through corroborating the previous testimony, and authenticating the documentary evidence, being careful to keep him on a choker chain to avoid answers that would give the defense excuses to expand their cross examination.
All Cohen has to do is to follow the script and connect the goddamn dots. The prosecutors will make cross as easy as humanly possible. But if Cohen pulls a Stormy Daniels, making gratuitous statements and forcing the judge to admonish him, then the cross examination turns into a full blown shit show.
I will leave you with this. It only takes one vote to hang a jury. And that will largely depend on how Cohen handles himself on the stand. Don’t touch that dial.
I thank you for the privilege of your time.
It’s said that doctors make the worst patients. The thing is, lawyers are even worse when they are witnesses.
Cohen doesn’t have to be a sympathetic witness, he just needs to be credible. And why shouldn’t he be? — he obviously knows more about Trump than almost anyone. The judge asked the prosecutors to urge Cohen to avoid further public statements about the case prior to his testimony. What concerns the judge is not primarily the jury. It is the possible ammunition Cohen’s pretrial statements could give for challenging Trump’s gag order, or for creating an argument for appeal based on unfairness of the order. (Cohen can attack Trump in the public arena, but Trump cannot defend himself in the public arena.) Cohen is within his rights to make public statements, but it could cause unnecessary complications. I think Cohen (who is a lawyer) will understand this.
You’re right: few people alive know former guy’s biz practices and law-breaking as well as Cohen does and knowledge of trump’s crimes might outweigh sympathy value. A big mouth however doesn’t help him or the prosecution one bit so let’s hope he has at least the minimal sense enough to STFU.