Donald Trump's obsession with control is backfiring on his lawyers in court

[marmar]

Donald Trump's obsession with control is backfiring on his lawyers in court
Trump can't even let his defense lawyers do their job — yet we're to believe he didn't direct hush money payments?

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED MAY 13, 2024 5:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) ....There is one person who very much is denying the sex with Daniels: Donald J. Trump. Even worse, he's making his lawyers, who are paid for with Grandma MAGA's small-dollar donations, deny it as well. During opening statements, Trump's lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, said Daniels is offering a "false claim of a sexual encounter." In her cross-examination of Daniels, Susan Necheles, another defense attorney, repeatedly accused Daniels of lying, even sneeringly saying, "You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real." (Daniels' retort: "The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room." )

Perhaps Cruz, who is an experienced attorney, was wishcasting that Trump's lawyers had gone with a better strategy of just admitting the sex happened. By the end of Thursday, Trump's lawyers were likely quietly agreeing with Cruz, as Judge Juan Merchan ruled, yet again, that the Daniels testimony was necessary precisely because Trump's team refuses to concede on the issue of their client's non-celibacy.

....(snip)....

As the reporters at the New York Times recently wrote, "Trump views himself as his own best legal strategist." They also report that he's boxed his lawyers into an "absolutist" defense, to appease a client "who despises weakness and is allergic to anything but praise from the people around him." But, as legal experts told the Times, claiming your client is a perfect angel who has never done anything wrong tends to backfire with juries because it's not credible. Instead, experts explained, attorneys tend to prefer the "My client might not be a nice guy, but he’s no criminal" defense.

Trump's current micromanaging of his defense team certainly cuts against the claims that he would have let his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, arrange hush money payments that ended up costing Trump more than $200,000 without Trump's knowledge. But it's also creating all manner of logistical problems for his defense team, including this most recent screw-up that allowed Daniels to testify at great length. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/05/13/donald-obsession-with-control-is-backfiring-on-his-lawyers-in/

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I've had similar arguments with clients about how to proceed.

Sometimes their "strategy" is harmless and sometimes has helped their position.

And then there are those who are divorced from their weakness at trial. They have tried to tell me to do something that would actually injure them as well as lose the case.

And I have told them, "Fire me!" I wouldn't have their blood on my hands.

Example: My client was being unlawfully evicted from his place of business, a car repair enterprise. The landlord was wrong and we were going to win in court. I told my client not to speak to the landlord under any circumstance. If the landlord wanted to talk to someone, it would be me.

And sure enough, I was on the phone with my client the night before we were going to get a final injunction, complete with $14,000 of judgment. He announced that the landlord was on call waiting. I was firm and repeated not to talk to the landlord.

And you guessed it. Five minutes before we were to go in front of the judge, my client told me that he did in fact talk to the landlord. And like "businessmen," they worked out their differences. And he wanted me to withdraw our motion for a final injunction with the penalty. I begged him not to make me do it. He could have the ENTIRE $14,000. He refused.

So I told him to fire me. You should have seen the judge's face when my client announced that he had fired his counsel one minute prior -- and then when he announced he was withdrawing the motion. The judge thought he was nuts. So did I.

Epilogue: The landlord immediately barricaded the garage doors to my client's business so he couldn't move any of his equipment to a new location. My client went bankrupt. He lost his house. He now fixes an occasional car or truck in the house that he's renting.

Moral of the Story: LISTEN TO YOUR LAWYER ! ! !

[LiberalFighter]

3. Trump never had to deal with top level attorneys.

He thinks all of his past experiences gves him knowledge to control and direct.

[FakeNoose]

6. Roy Cohn - the crooked mob lawyer - ruined Chump years ago

This has been covered in books by David Cay Johnston and others. When Chump was a young man working for his father, he hired Roy Cohn to handle some lawsuits that were on the slightly shady side. (I think it had to do with evicting some unwanted tenants in Trump's Long Island buildings.) Cohn behaved just like the mob lawyer he was, and Chump was ecstatic.

Ever since then Chump has asked every decent, honest lawyer to behave just as Roy Cohn would have. Of course most refused, but the ones who did, lost their licenses or were censured by a judge.

[Rocknation]

2. Trump views himself as his own best EVERYTHING.

THAT is why he MUST be in TOTAL control at ALL times; why being disagreed with or criticized are not options; why his addiction to telling "the big lie" has practically turned him into a cult leader. Way deep down inside, he knows that he has never been worthy of the wealth, power, and status he was born into. So he must repel ANY level of accountability like the plague -- and keep in mind that he did such a good job of repelling the "hoax" pf the Covid plague that he contracted it.


Rocknation

[RevBrotherThomas]

7. "practically" a cult leader???

nt

[Harker]

4. The jerk of all trades is master of none. n/t

[Martin68]

5. Dump's insistence on bossing his lawyers around isn't new. It has cost him a great deal, including making it hard to

find good legal counsel who will work with him. He's stuck with second stringers who are happy to take a paycheck and follow orders that will damage his defense.

[GB_RN]

9. I Think That...

You’re being generous with the description of his attorneys as “second stringers”. I certainly wouldn’t describe parking garage-lawyer, Alina Haba as a second string. Fourth string might still be quite complimentary.

And let’s not forget that Cantaloupe Caligula’s habit of stiffing people on their bills his attorneys included, also has played a rather significant part in his inability to keep top tier lawyers…and at this point, even hire any.

[Martin68]

11. Yes, you are right, I was being generous. It's a bad habit of mine. I always prefer understatement to exaggeration.

I have a feeling these attorneys demanded their fees up front, and that's all they care about.

[Grins]

8. Trump and his lawyers - Stormy and Trump DIDN'T get ugly?

And so he stroked her checks for $135,000?

I’m sure there are thousands of women who would take that to NOT have sex with the bloated vulgarian. Call it a hunch.

[BigmanPigman]

10. He is too cheap to pay off his

accomplices. He promised to pay various people money over the years and either never paid them of stiffed them on most of it. Michael Cohen wasn't paid as tRump promised. The cheap bastard dug his own grave by being a greedy egomaniac.