Trump vs. Cohen today
Donald John Trump won’t be armed and he won’t be standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue when he and his former fixer Michael Cohen meet today at the former president’s state fraud trial in Manhattan. Trump plans to be there, mug-shot glare at the ready (The Guardian):
“I look forward to the reunion,” Cohen, once Trump’s lawyer, said. “I hope Donald does as well.”
Now in its fourth week, Trump, his adult sons and their family business have been found liable for inflating the value of Trump’s assets to routinely and repeatedly deceive banks, insurers and others. Judge Arthur Engoron is using the hearings to decide on punishment, which could include a huge fine and probably means the dissolution of the Trump’s New York property empire.
Over a dozen witnesses, many former Trump Organization employees, have testified in the trial so far. But Cohen’s testimony is seen as crucial to the case.
Trump has a schedule full of court cases, indictments, and a lengthy list of complaints about how unfairly he’s being treated.
Just last night, Trump barely made the cutoff date for filing motions to dismiss his January 6th indictment. Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) provides a handy table of his motions to dismiss things for which he’s not been charged:
Wheeler ticks through the list, perhaps most ironically this one:
Motion to Strike Inflammatory Allegations: This is an attempt to eliminate the language in the indictment showing how Trump mobilized his mob because he isn’t charged with mobilizing the mob (as DOJ already laid out, that is one of the means by which he obstructed the vote certification). This is likely tactical, an attempt to remove one of the primary means by which he obstructed the vote certification to make his 18 USC 1512(c)(2) argument less flimsy.
Washington Post cites the filings, explaining that these type of motions are fairly typical:
“Because the Government has not charged President Trump with responsibility for the actions at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, allegations related to these actions are not relevant and are prejudicial and inflammatory. Therefore, the Court should strike these allegations from the Indictment,” wrote defense attorneys Todd Blanche, John Lauro, Emil Bove and Gregory Singer.
“The indictment must be dismissed because it seeks to criminalize core political speech and advocacy that lies at the heart of the First Amendment,” they wrote.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors will respond in coming weeks, the Post reports.
Trump is scheduled to face trial in federal court in Washington in March after pleading not guilty to an Aug. 1 indictment accusing him of a criminal conspiracy to remain in power, obstruct Congress’s lawful certification of Biden’s victory and deprive Americans of their civil right to have their votes counted.
These types of motions are all the more typical for Donald Trump.
In Trump’s appeal of the defamation lawsuit by writer E. Jean Carroll on Monday, a Trump attorney argued presidential immunity shields him. This would be the Nixon defense on steroids. When the president does it, it’s not illegal (Politico):
Trump’s argument comes as he is pressing a similarly aggressive immunity defense in his federal criminal case stemming from his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Trump is “absolutely immune from prosecution” in that case, his lawyers contended in court papers this month — an argument that special counsel Jack Smith said is in sharp conflict with American history and the Constitution.
In the Carroll case on Monday, Trump lawyer Michael Madaio told a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals that presidential immunity is “an absolute and non-waivable protection.”
“If this court does not overturn the lower court’s ruling,” Madaio said, “a president, for the first time in our nation’s history, will be held civilly liable for his official acts.”
A more pedestrian version would be a tourist from Sheboygan in the hands of Italian police shouting, “You can’t do this to me. I’m an American!”
Meantime, Trump is still fuming about the gag order imposed last week in his federal Januray 6th trial. He’s filed an appeal of that as well (Washington Post):
Judge Tanya S. Chutkan agreed to temporarily lift the gag order that had restricted Trump’s public statements about special counsel Jack Smith, his team and witnesses while she considered a motion from Trump’s lawyers to suspend it entirely while they appeal.
Within 48 hours, Trump issued a new broadsideattacking the prosecutor, Trump’s first since the gag had been imposed. On Sunday, he took to his social network Truth Social to attack Smith in the exact terms that the order had prohibited, calling him “Deranged Jack Smith.”
Fred and Mary Anne Trump never gave little Donny a “time out,” did they?
The sequence illustrated the careful dance Trump had engaged in since Chutkan issued her order. He had refrained from immediately and flagrantly violating the gag order while it was in place, even as he railed against it and continued attacking judges and making a host of other comments that, while not technical violations, most defense attorneys would advise against.
And most clients would take the advice for which they are paying handsomely. Trump’s attorneys can neither count on getting paid nor on him taking their advice. *
Trump is fundraising furiously off the gag order.
“Anything that turns up the temperature and becomes controversial is where the online fundraising comes from,” said Brad Parscale, a former Trump campaign manager who now works in online fundraising. “It’s a lot easier to catch fish in a hot lake than a cold lake. All these stories heat up the lake.”
As Trump racked up criminal charges over the summer, his campaign message increasingly focused on fighting the prosecutions that he claims are politicized. In doing so, Trump has worked to position himself alongside his supporters, with one fundraising message last week calling the gag order against him “an attempt to gag American people and cancel out your vote.”
“We couldn’t script this any better from a political standpoint,” one adviser said. “He does best as the victim who is being treated unfairly.”
How Trump manages his schedule among all the court cases, lawyer meetings, campaign rallies, and Truth Social tirades is a wonder. His scheduler is not paid enough, it goes without saying,
* I can relate. One of my cocktail party answers to, “So what do you do?” was, “Clients pay a lot of money to ignore what I tell them.”