Donald Trump is now a convicted felon, found guilty by a jury of his peers in the city in which he was born and raised and lived for the first 70 years of his life. The front page of his former hometown newspaper looked like this today:
Republicans have all rallied in support of the Dear Leader by whining and complaining about the judicial system being used against a political opponent, apparently trying to convince the American people that anyone running for office should be immune from prosecution for their crimes. (That’s pretty rich coming from the crowd that chanted “lock her up” for four solid years.) Needless to say, every one of the lawsuits filed against him and the crimes he is accused of were being very publicly investigated long before he decided to run for president again. In fact, there’s a good case to be made that that’s why he did it. As the LA Times Doyle McManus pointed out back in October of 2021:
As long as he’s running (or even sort of running), Trump can denounce every inquest and subpoena as just another part of a political vendetta. It’s a way to hold his troops together — and to make every prosecutor think twice.
He didn’t have to run for president. There were a whole bunch of Republicans who ran against him in the primaries, ready and willing to take on the job. But Trump needed to run so that he would be able to say to himself and others that all these civil and criminal cases against him aren’t his fault.
The problem for Trump is that reality is finally catching up to him. His Big Lies may be working on his cult following but they don’t work in a court of law where real evidence is presented and ordinary people and experienced jurists are charged with weighing the facts to determine the truth. Trump has lost every single legal proceeding brought against him in the last three years.
The Trump Organization was found guilty of 17 felonies, landing his CFO in jail. He lost two defamation cases brought by E. Jean Carroll. He lost the mammoth New York civil fraud case. And now he’s lost his first criminal trial with a sweeping guilty verdict on all 34 felony counts. The pending cases in DC, Georgia and Florida may not end up being adjudicated before the election but if he loses in November they will likely go ahead and there’s a very good chance he’ll lose those as well (assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t decide to fully sacrifice what’s left of its credibility to spare him.)
You would think that a man this rich and powerful would have such good legal representation that state prosecutors and judges would be no match for them. Think about OJ Simpson and his Dream Team. So why is Trump’s team so lame? I think most legal observers would say that it’s because Trump is such a terrible client who demands that his lawyers follow his lead and that’s a very bad way to conduct a defense.
Consider how it’s worked out for him so far. Trump stayed fairly hands off from the first E. Jean Carroll trial which he lost and had to pay Carroll $5 million dollars. He obviously wasn’t happy about that and his lawyer Joe Tacopina abruptly resigned on the eve of the second one. Trump decided to take the case in hand personally and replaced him with his favorite TV lawyer Alina Habba who, along with Trump, had already been sanctioned for almost a million dollars in a case Trump brought against the Clintons which the judge called “completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose.” Trump acted out in the courtroom whenever he attended the trial, even flouncing out of the courtroom at one point, and Habba mirrored his behavior, irritating the judge and the jury as well which awarded Carroll $83.3 million dollars, $65 million of which was in punitive damages.
He performed the same rude and disruptive dance in the New York State fraud case, resulting in a gag order and sanctions for violating them. Trump was clearly in charge of that case too even to the extent that Habba pasted on his grim mug shot expression every time she came before the cameras. He clearly believed that his case should be tried as if it was his Truth Social feed. That didn’t work out too well either. He was found liable to the tune of nearly half a billion dollars.
The assumption was that his first criminal trial would be different. He would be required to attend the trial every day it was in session and he’d hired some real lawyers this time. But it was soon obvious that he was still running the show. It wasn’t just that he was outside the courthouse slamming the judge and the prosecutor every single day, which no defense lawyer would think makes a lot of sense. He also got himself sanctioned again for violating his gag order against discussing witnesses, jury members or family members of court employees which was just plain stupid. But It was undeniable that Trump was dictating the way they argued the case as well.
For instance, any lawyer would have said that Trump should just stipulate to the tryst with Stormy Daniels so they could avoid the whole spectacle of her testimony. But Trump insisted that they deny it ever happened. And when she was cross examined by Trump’s attorney, he also obviously wanted them to try to make her look like a liar instead of simply asking her if she knew anything about the records at the Trump organization and when she said no, just letting it go. After all, that’s what the case was about.
By contrast he wouldn’t let them go hard after David Pecker, his buddy who also happens to have a box full of papers that Trump believes might incriminate him in god-only-knows-what. They treated him like he was their witness when, in fact, his testimony was pivotal to the prosecution The same with his former gal friday Hope Hicks. Any lawyer who wasn’t being hamstrung by his client would have tried to shake their testimony.
And then there was Robert Costello, the friend-of-Rudy’s who made a complete mess of the case and should never have been called to testify. He ended up making Michael Cohen look as respectable as a monk by comparison. That was almost certainly Trump’s doing after seeing Costello testify before the MAGA Republicans in the House the week before. (His crude, bombastic style was like looking in the mirror.)
Trump’s lead lawyer Todd Blanche appeared on Fox and CNN after the verdict and had nothing but great things to say about Trump. But he did make it crystal clear that Trump was in charge of the case.
He also said that Trump was very much involved with jury selection and told Kaitlan Collins on CNN that they mutually decided that Trump shouldn’t take the stand. Blanche seemed a little bit shell-shocked and is probably exhausted but he pretty much admitted that Trump was running the defense strategy. You have to wonder if he will be with Trump much longer.
All of this just illustrates what we already know. Trump is a domineering bully who doesn’t know how to run anything and won’t listen to anyone, whether it’s a legal defense or the U.S. government. You’d think after losing all these elections, civil cases and now criminal trials Republicans would get it through their heads that this man who calls everything a hoax and a fake, is actually talking about himself.