You gotta laugh to keep from crying
One of MSNBC’s commentators remarked Tuesday on the “thugocracy” on display at Donald Trump’s criminal trial. A parade of characters has pilgrimaged to Lower Manhattan to display their fealty to Boss Trump. On the day his defense rested, they included Chuck Zito, former convict and former leader of the New York chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. Trump likes his “heavies.”
Rachel Maddow remarked:
The Hells Angels leader is a very large man wearing a very flamboyant suit with a big, dyed-black pompadour, and huge, gaudy jewelry on very large hands. And he’s sitting next to Boris Epshteyn, who kind of looks like his body double.
And there’s Alan Dershowitz, and there’s other recognizable people. And there’s members of Congress and well-known lawyers. And everybody seems sort of, there is a sort of performative aspect to the way they’re behaving in court. It is very noticeable for those of us who are there observing as journalists. I don’t know if they’re catching the jury’s attention so much. It’s a little, I mean, it’s not a Star Wars bar scene, but it’s a little bit of a cast of characters.
Forbes provides a short list of those characters that includes former Trump advisor, Hungarian Nazi-adjacent Sebastian Gorka.
But it was Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick who fronted Tuesday’s red tie brigade formation outside the courthouse. Patrick has been mentioned as a potential attorney general pick in a second Trump administration. However, he could not stick the landing on his “Banana Republic/if it can happen to Trump, it can happen to you” lecture about the ruling class coming down on poor Donald Trump:
Patrick: What happens when the courts come after you because you said something that the ruling class didn’t like? That’s what these other countries are all about. They shut down the ruling class. They want to be sure that anyone who speaks up against ruling class disappears
Reporter. Isn’t the former president a member of the ruling class?
Define irony — a bunch of idiots in matching blue suits and red ties many of whom traveled to Lower Manhattan to stand around idly during work hours on a workday lecturing working journalists about their opposition to the ruling class.
Reinforcing the thugocracy theme over the last two days was Robert Costello, Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer and one of only two defense witnesses. Former Trump “fixer,” Michael Cohen (who knows something about being a thug), testified previously that he didn’t trust Costello. Described by Fox News’ Jonathan Turley as a “killshot witness,” Costello’s testimony on Monday did not go as Team Trump planned:
The judge promptly lost his patience with Mr. Costello, a prosecutor turned defense lawyer and a fixture in New York’s legal world. When Mr. Costello scoffed at one of the judge’s rulings — “jeez,” he said, before mumbling a retraction — the judge grew irate.
Excusing the jury, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, lectured Mr. Costello: “If you don’t like my ruling, you don’t say ‘jeez,’ and you don’t say ‘strike it,’ because I’m the only one who can strike testimony in court,” he said, adding, “Are you staring me down?”
He ordered the courtroom cleared, briefly ejecting reporters and other onlookers, while allowing Mr. Trump’s supporters to remain. When those told to leave did so, according to a transcript, he told Mr. Costello that his conduct was “contemptuous” and said, “If you try to stare me down one more time I will remove you from the stand,” adding, to the defense lawyers, “I will strike his testimony, do you hear me?”
Several litigators surveyed by CNN and MSNBC said in all their years they’d never seen a judge order a courtroom cleared. Cross-examination did not go any better on Tuesday. The state’s attorney dismantled Costello’s testimony by reading back his own emails. As Digby put it:
Calling Giuliani’s lawyer Robert Costello to the stand would be legal malpractice if it weren’t for the fact that it was probably because Trump demanded it. The cross examination today was just brutal. Basically the prosecutors just read all of Costello’s emails to Cohen in which he was clearly trying to keep him from turning on Trump when he very briefly became the “back channel” between Rudy Giuliani (Trump) and Cohen. The whole thing sounbds like nothing short of an episode of the Sopranos.
The defense rested without calling Trump. The accused, who for months complained that he’d been muzzled and declared his eagerness to testify in his own defense, was a no-show.
It’s important to note the kind of people with which Trump surrounds himself, and who flock to his presence like moths to a flame. As commentators have noted and prosecutors may in their summation, Trump chose these unsavory characters, not prosecutors. And the behaviors he models are spreading through the cult of personality that once was the Republican Party.
As experienced litigators said of Judge Merchan’s clearing the courtroom, I’ve attended Democratic meetings for decades and have never seen anything like this catfight below. (Yes, I know.)
Infiltrators, obviously. Conservatism never fails.
Thugocracy 101: 1. Attack. Attack. Attack. 2. Admit nothing. Deny everything. 3. Claim victory and never admit defeat. Never take responsibility.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.