Like a gang of dopey high-schoolers in thrall to the class bully, Republican politicians crashed former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial for falsifying business records on Tuesday to shamelessly demonstrate their fealty to the defendant and intimidate the witness, judge, and prosecutors with glares, nerd-strutting, and rude behavior.
All quoted text is from the New York Times live trial feed.
Word has gone out to Trump allies over the past few days that Trump wants to see a bigger show of support inside the courtroom. The cavalry has arrived, led by J.D. Vance yesterday. Vance’s appearance in court has generated an incentive for others who hope to be Trump's running mate to get to Manhattan fast.
And this sets the scene for Tuesday’s dramatic opening:
Trump walks into the courtroom, trailed by Doug Burgum, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Eric and Lara Trump, in addition to two advisers, Boris Epshteyn and Alina Habba, and the actual lawyers on the case.
Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, is reportedly on Trump’s shortlist of vice presidential candidates. He is not to be confused with the governor of South Dakota (Kristi Noem), who had been on Trump’s shortlist but has dog- and goat-executed her way to irrelevance and infamy. Ramaswamy is a venture capitalist whose recent bid for the GOP presidential nomination predictably ended in defeat, and he is desperately trying to out-bootlick everyone else to get on Trump’s VP list. He attempted to prove it with a juvenile stunt in court:
Michael Cohen was in the midst of testimony about weighing whether to retain loyalty to Trump, painting it as a very difficult decision, as he considered whether he would be loyal to his family, his country or Trump.
As he was speaking, Vivek Ramaswamy and a number of the other politicians here supporting Trump today walked back in the room. It was a remarkable moment, but Cohen seemed mostly unfazed. He kept testifying.
This is unconfirmed, but my sources in the courthouse say Viv at the time was wearing aviators and a Never Surrender t-shirt with a pack of Marlboros rolled up one sleeve.
Justice Merchan didn’t take note of what took place, but he might have if Cohen had been disrupted. We have almost never seen a display like that during the proceedings — several officials marching in during testimony — and it was disruptive in the room, if not to the witness.
Here’s another description of the incident, from Talking Points Memo:
As Cohen was testifying just now about his decision to finally leave the “fold” and speak truthfully, who returned to the courtroom but the group of GOP politicians who had disappeared during the break. Cohen began to speak about his family and his decision to flip, and Vivek Ramaswamy, Doug Burgum, and others marched in.
It clearly was disruptive to people in the room, but did not appear to interrupt Cohen’s flow.
Seriously, what a bunch of juvenile, entitled douchebags.
Moving on to Cohen’s actual testimony, Trump’s lead attorney, Todd Blanche, incurred Justice Juan Merchan’s wrath with the opening questions of his cross-examination which, oddly, had to do with what Cohen called Blanche on TikTok. (For the record, Cohen referred to Blanche as a “crying little shit.” No one said Michael Cohen was Mr. Class.) Then it sort of went downhill from there for Blanche, who was unable to get under Cohen’s skin and took the jury down a few cul-de-sacs that didn’t yield much value for the defense and appeared to confuse or bore jurors.
Reflecting on Todd Blanche’s cross-examination of Michael Cohen so far: His opener was striking, when he asked Cohen, in a biting tone, whether he had described Blanche with an expletive on social media. But his questions lost steam after that, and he seemed slightly chastened after two sustained objections and a sidebar with the judge.
Lawyers have to make a choice to either go full Roy Cohn or not when they work for Trump, given his desire for a ruthless defender like Cohn, his disbarred and long dead former fixer and lawyer. Blanche seems to be trying for a middle path.
If that middle path could be defined as “moderately ruthless,” I’m guessing Trump is unenthused. As the NYT’s Maggie Haberman notes above, Trump wants someone as brutal and remorseless as Roy Cohn. Ironically, the closest he’s ever come to that is Michael Cohen, who worked for 10 years as Trump’s fixer and heavy.
Cohen testified that after the FBI raided his home and offices in April 2018, Trump went into full attack mode on Cohen’s behalf. Unfortunately for Cohen, loyalty is a one-way street in Trump World, and soon Cohen started getting the big freeze.
At this point in the narrative in 2018, Michael Cohen was looking for reassurance that Trump was going to take care of him. He would soon lose that sense of security, as the Trump Organization started balking at paying some of Cohen’s legal bills.
Trump would cease paying Cohen’s lawyer fees by July once it became clear Cohen wasn’t willing to go down by himself. In August 2018, he pleaded guilty and implicated “a candidate for federal office.”
Michael Cohen is now reading aloud the tweets Trump put out when Cohen pleaded guilty, saying that he felt “very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family” and praising Manafort for refusing to “break.” “Such respect for a brave man.” It is absolutely remarkable that the sitting president was tweeting these things.
It is remarkable. What’s even more remarkable is that the latest polls show this two-bit mob boss — who is on trial for falsifying records to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election — leading President Biden in five swing states.
Cohen is back on the witness stand Thursday for more cross-examination. Trump will spend the hours between now and then trying to exhume Roy Cohn’s body.
(From Project Orange: Saving Democracy From the Trump-MAGA Cult)
