Trump is The Client From Hell, Part 872
Trump is always his own worst enemy, especially when it comes to the law.
You’d think that, eventually, Trump would learn. His insistence on ignoring basic legal advice – even during trials – has already cost him hundreds of millions of dollars. And yet, if today is anything to go on, he remains the client from hell, refusing to let his lawyers do their jobs, demanding they run ridiculous arguments, and ignoring their advice . . . more likely, their desperate pleas, by this point.
At Trump’s contempt hearing this morning, the prosecution raised eleven – at least, I think it’s eleven, I’m losing count – instances where they claim Trump has violated Judge Merchan’s gag order preventing Trump from attacking court personnel, jurors, and witnesses. His most recent violation occurred on Monday, less than 24 hours before the hearing itself. So not a good look.
The prosecution has Trump dead-to-rights on this one. Trump screwed up, badly, and he did it in front of a national audience. In a situation like this, your client’s only hope lies in repentance and groveling. You make up an excuse, any excuse, for your client’s awful behavior and swear that your client is mortified and that this will never happen again. Judges don’t actually want to punish people for contempt, what they mostly want is to ensure that it never happens again so if you can convince the judge that you’ve put the fear of God into your client, most judges are happy to accept the apology and move on.
What you don’t do is try to gaslight the judge and tell him or her that what your client did was perfectly fine and it’s the judge who has the problem.
Guess which strategy Blanche chose?
Instead of apologizing, he tried to defend Trump’s blatant violations of the judge’s gag order. Todd Blanche knows perfectly well that, “He started it!” is not an actual legal defense. It’s a pity that Trump doesn’t.
It got so bad that Merchan ended the hearing by telling Blanche, “You’re losing all credibility with the court.” This might not sound like much of a dig to the average layman, but trust me when I tell you it is an astounding thing for a judge to say to a lawyer. If a judge ever gets more furious at you than that, you are going to jail.
I am 100% certain that this “defense” was all Trump’s idea and that he forced Blanche to take this line over Blanche’s strong protests. This doesn’t bode well for the trial. Again and again, we’ve seen very bad lawyering in Trump’s cases. Sometimes, this was because Trump is scraping the bottom of the legal barrel since he has a reputation and most good lawyers want nothing to do with him. But it’s also because Trump forces lawyers to make unwise strategic decisions that stroke his ego but damage his defense.
It looks like it’s happening again. It’s only the second day of the trial and Trump is already forcing his lawyers to do ridiculous things. Todd Blanche is in for the longest six weeks of his life.