Judge Repeatedly Asks Lawyers to 'Control' Trump as Testimony Goes Off the Rails
Judge Repeatedly Asks Lawyers to 'Control' Trump as Testimony Goes Off the Rails
Donald Trump testified in his New York fraud trail on Tuesday, ranting from the witness stand so much that Judge Arthur Engoron rebuked him.
“I beseech you to control him if you can,” [Judge] Engoron said. “If you can’t, I will. I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.”
Ultra-mega-fucked.
Trump attorney Alina Habba at one point stood up and argued that the judge was there to listen to what Trump had to say. “I am not here to listen to what he has to say!” Engoron reportedly shouted, telling Trump’s counsel to sit back down. “We are here to hear him answer questions,” he added.
LMAO at a bottom tier lawyer trying to tell a judge how to do their job.
226Trumpsplaining the judge
112Also, Judge Engoran has 20 years of experience being a judge, and he was a practicing lawyer before that. He was a judge before Habba got her license, and he's probably more than double her overall experience.
The fact that she didn't even know that witness testimony means answering questions really puts a big question mark over her 13 years, anyways.
108The question mark appeared when she agreed to represent Trump.
57The fact that she didn't even know that witness testimony means answering questions really puts a big question mark over her 13 years, anyways.
I know that and my legal expertise is just what I've picked up over the course of my life. No law degree or anything. The fact that I might be more qualified to be a lawyer than Habba is bad news for Trump. (For the record, you do NOT want me representing you in court. Get a real lawyer, not some guy whose best qualification is "knows more than a Trump lawyer.")
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One of the most important rules when doing anything in a courtroom: don’t piss off the judge.
36Trump: "So what I'm hearing is that I should yell at the judge and insult him from the stand. Got it."
(Yes, he did just that.)
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She was also complaining, after court, that the judge was telling her what to do and she doesn't stand for that in her life.
Um, you do when you're in the court. If the judge tells you to shut up, you shut up. You can be offended that the judge told you to shut up, but you'd better not argue with the judge and tell them that you have a right to say whatever you want to say in their court. Not unless you want to spend a night in a jail cell.
23And this is exactly how they will fuel their appeal. He will say the judge was unwilling to listen to his testimony, and use that quote as evidence.
8That appeal would be quickly denied. The Judge is absolutely right: They "are here to hear him answer questions", not "to listen to what he has to say." The Judge has a responsibility to keep testimony responsive to the questions asked and relevant to the case, not to let witnesses give monologues about whatever nonsense is running through their heads at the moment.
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At one point, while he was being questioned on a 2021 financial statement, Trump claimed to have been too busy focusing on “China, Russia and keeping our country safe.” The state’s attorney reminded him that he was not president in 2021.
lmao.
211It's like a middle schooler trying to make up an alibi for why they didn't do their homework.
67Antifa ate my homework ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
51
He really is Cartman. Just slightly less intelligent lol.
29Permanently Deleted
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I liked how Trump claimed that Letitia James wouldn't know anything about 40 Wall Street. She had to suppress a chuckle. Her office is under 3 blocks away from it. Here's a Google Map of the two.
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The problem is that this is a strategy, and it might work. The judge is showing signs of exasperation. The defense is laying the grounds for an appeal based on judicial bias. Viewed in that light, each time the judge interjects out of annoyance or exasperation is citable evidence. It's funny, but it is also rather dangerous.
96The judge needs to calmly and patiently explain to Trump that he will be jailed for contempt if he doesn't follow the rules and act in good faith, and then dispassionately follow through with that consequence.
Don't threaten him, don't cajole his lawyers to constrain him, don't complain about his behavior. Just give him a time-out, like the petulant toddler he is, until he gets it through his skull that his bullshit won't be tolerated.
Once he comes back, if he won't agree to behave or if he does promise to behave and then breaks that promise, simply immediately put him back in the cell for another round.
Trump needs to see the inside of a holding cell for a while in order to act right.
102As much as I'd love to see it, jailing him for contempt would play right into their plan. He wouldn't see 24hr of cell time before his fanatic base would be whipped into violence, painted as political persecution of the GOP (defacto) nominee
It's all paper thin excuses to anyone with critical thinking, but we know it'd be a successful ploy.
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I don't think it's a strategy, it's just a happy potential by-product, albeit an unlikely one.
Sure it's possible that a judge might make mistakes that may form the basis for a successful appeal. Is Engoron more likely to make mistakes because of Trump's antics? Not necessarily. Most people do their best work under pressure.
Trump's behavior is focused as always on his supporters. The more he appears to be persecuted the more his supporters will throw money at him - it's that simple. He's intentionally pushing the judge as far as he can without crossing the line into actual consequences.
Edit: as an aside the photos of these idiots always makes me think about how much time they've spent practicing their facial expressions in a mirror.
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"You are the most guilty, uncooperative, unapologetic criminal I've ever dealt with" — Judge
Slap on wrist — also, Judge
I'll believe otherwise when I see it.
90This judge already ruled that the Trump enterprise in NY is dead and for all business licenses to be pulled. That has been stayed pending appeal. They will not win the appeal.
This trial is purely for damages to see just how much of Trump's assets will have to be liquidated once Judge Engoron determines an amount based on this ridiculous "testimony."
Hint: it's going to be a metric fuckload
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At one point he indicated that he had sometimes felt the values assigned to his properties were off, but stated that the discrepancies were both “high and low.”
"Your honor, I'd like to take this opportunity to defend myself by confirming the facts of the case and also that I didn't listen when you told me what I'm accused of!" - The former POTUS
52Sure I've punched people, but sometimes I hurt myself so that means I'm innocent of the times I hurt others.
6It's even worse than that: apart from the overvaluing for insurance and other purposes that everyone's focusing on, he's also been undervaluing the very same properties to evade taxes, further undercutting both the "honest mistake " and "had no idea" defenses.
3
Fucking astounds me how this grifter is pulling numbers....everyone for him is just doing it for spite now...
31You underestimate the electoral power of making rural white folks feel like they can say the N-word without being looked down on as racist trash
These are the rat fuckers who think the president will make their families come back for thanksgiving again even though they have done no work to address that they all left because they tried to force some poor young girl onto cousin Maury with his husband right fucking there.
29I've definitely seen a lot of backfire effect going on. If you voted for Trump because, for example, you thought that a political outsider would fix everything and you ignored all the bad shit in hopes that it would work out, then it's hard now to admit that you were wrong. Admitting that Trump sucks is also, for those people, admitting that they were foolish to ever believe in him, which is a difficult and intolerable admission. Better to just ignore evidence and move forward blindly in support.
At least, I've seen a lot of that in my mostly purple area where the divide is only getting worse and stronger.
9This free book from 1951 about mass movements explains what is going on. They feel their lives are spoiled and maga gives them hope. Logic doesn't matter.
The True Believer - Eric Hoffer https://www.academia.edu/21464682/The_True_Believer_Eric_Hoffer
7
There was an article yesterday saying that both Trump and his lawyers are specifically trying to piss off the judge, at which point they'll use it as a point in their appeal. Oh, and his current lawyers have told him that even if the judge does try to their him in jail for contempt, they have strategies to ensure that he doesn't actually have to spend any time there. :/
17This is the best summary I could come up with:
Donald Trump was rebuked by Judge Arthur Engoron for giving “speeches” during his testimony on Monday before New York court in a civil fraud trial that will determine the future of his business empire.
“Some of your answers have not been in response to the question,” Engoron told Trump earlier in his testimony, adding that prosecuting attorney Kevin Wallace had been “very patient.”
“Getting ready to head to the Downtown Lower Manhattan Courthouse to testify in one of the many cases that were instigated and brought by my POLITICAL OPPONENT, Crooked Joe Biden, through agencies and surrogates, for purposes of ELECTION INTERFERENCE,” Trump wrote.
“Got a really Biased, Nasty, Club controlled, but often overturned, Judge, a Racist, Evil, and Corrupt Attorney General,” he added.” A dark day for our Country.
The former president has already been fined twice, and threatened with jail time, for violating a gag order put in place by Engoron after he attacked one of the judge’s clerks on social media.
On Friday, Engoron expanded the order, which barred the former president from publicly commenting on members of the court’s staff, to include similar restrictions on the statements of Trump’s attorneys.
The original article contains 858 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
10the american justice system right now:
9It'll be the first time he's ever finished a full sentence without rambling about fly paper or injecting disinfectant.
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Good luck with that.
3