I have serious doubts about Todd Blanche making it to the end of this trial, although it would not be the greatest move on Donald Trump’s part to fire the guy early. The optics of that are horrific. Nevertheless, Blanche and the other attorneys on Trump’s crack team did not object enough today during Stormy Daniel’s testimony and Judge Juan Merchan himself pointed that out to them.
New York Daily News reporter Molly Crane-Newman tweeted that Merchan hinted that he would have done more to stop Daniels had Trump’s lawyers objected more.
“I will also note that I was also surprised there were not more objections,” he told the court. “Defense has to take some responsibility for that. The court has done everything [it] can possibly do.”
Trump’s lawyer, Susan Necheles, pushed back, but Merchan said, “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”
Speaking to CNN during the trial, former Federal Judge Nancy Gertner agreed with Merchan, saying that Trump’s lawyers should have done much more.
“They could object, move to sidebar, move to strike,” she said.
“…The judge was saying, where were you in all of this?”
She went on, “When you said that the defense lawyers objected to some and then stopped objecting, that also could be a strategic decision, which is that you don’t want to highlight the testimony,” she said of Trump’s defense team. “If you’re jumping up and down and screaming about it, then you wind up highlighting it more than it would otherwise. So, they may have done this as a strategic manner. And then there are defense lawyers who can invite a mistrial.”
She explained that it clearly wasn’t effective, but anticipates that the judge will be asked to revisit the decision.
Trump has been bleating about a mistrial every day. His mantra is “there’s no case.” Remarkable how “no case” means one thing to him and another to the Manhattan District Attorney.
Trump comes off looking basically like a fool. Who calls a woman “honeybunch?” Maybe in 1935 but certainly not in this century. Here’s more insight.
The retired judge made a good point towards the end, that sometimes lawyers don’t want to object because to do so *highlights* that portion of the testimony. There’s no question but that Trump looked bad today. So that put them between a rock and a hard place, whether you get up and object and put a laser focus on what was just said, or whether you let it ride — and then lose your chance at getting a mistrial declared.
didn’t flinch on cross!!! Stormy Strong!
Before they enter deliberations, Judge Merchan can instruct the jury to ignore Clifford’s irrelevant testimony. Is Blanche setting up an appeal based on incompetent legal representation? It would be something like the son who murdered his parents and begged the court for mercy because he was an orphan.
The word “crack” should never be used in the same sentence as trump’s legal team unless crack is immediately followed by “head” as in crack-head. I realize trump is unable to even get F-listers, what with his track record on paying folks, to represent him but it seems his legal representation gets worse every time he goes to trial. lmao
I followed some of the live coverage and the pundits were surprised about two things. First that the prosecution was asking about more things than was necessary to establish that Daniels met Trump, accepted an invitation to dinner, wound up staying in his hotel room and that it led to sex. And move on from the actual encounter and into the aftermath that began years later. The second is that Daniels was going into a level of detail that even the judge felt was unnecessary but that the prosecutors weren’t objecting all that much. And in fact the judge himself proactively tried to keep things “on point” even to the point of asking the prosecutor to have a talk with Daniels about limiting herself to direct response to what was asked and nothing more. (She did after the break and the prosecutor spoke with her btw)
The point is that while some objections were made there apparently weren’t all that many. I recall thinking before lunch the defense was maybe hoping Daniels would go off the reservation entirely and say something so “out there” they’d have grounds to request a mistrial. However the judge ran a tight enough ship making references to not needing so much detail and “move on” that didn’t happen. Sure enough though the defense wound up moving for a mistrial. And in part because they hadn’t objected more it was denied.
I think it was a planned strategy to let Daniels testify on direct and ONLY object if they felt they absolutely positively had to because all along they planned to, when direct was done say her entire appearance on the stand was so prejudicial that a mistrial should be declared. Let her “wield the gun” and then claim if was unfair she got a chance to do so. I was thinking they were going to do a weird variation on the teenager who murders his parents and begs the court for mercy because he’s now an orphan.
Fortunately the judge kept things under control enough that his denial of the mistrial will hold up on appeal, and even entered into the record the comments to the effect “If it was so terrible why weren’t you objecting more?”