Alina Habba

[no_hypocrisy]

Now that the dust has settled, here's my take on Habba, Trump, and the Carroll trial.

Habba seemed oblivious to the basic courses in law school of evidence, trial advocacy, and even orientation where you're introduced to civil procedure.

According to Attorney Ethics, you are charged with "zealous representation" of your client. IOW, you do whatever you can to put the position(s) of your client before the factfinder, whether it's a jury or a judge. You do your research, you consult your client, you're organized when you appear in court, and your presentation is coherent and persuasive.

What you don't do is whatever your client tells you to do. Just the opposite: you advise your client of the limitations of his/her/their/its case. And there's always some limitations. Maybe you don't have necessary provable facts. Maybe statutes and caselaw are not promising. I've had to sternly tell clients that they don't have much of a case and we can only fall back on trial where hopefully, adversarial counsel will make mistakes that can be reversed on appeal.

From where I'm sitting, Habba promised Trump they'd win no matter what. She'd tell the judge where to get off. She'd make judicial history and give him justice simultaneously. She'd promise the judge that Trump wouldn't pontificate on the stand, then let him do exactly that while looking helplessly at the judge. TRUMP would win the case, not Habba.

IMO, their "strategy" was to get a mistrial. Or get jury nullification where they'd award E. Jean Carroll something insulting like $1.00. Or get just one juror to refuse to award any amount.

Remember, they could have made a settlement offer of any amount at any time to make this spectacle to go away. But they didn't. They could have asked for the amount to remain undisclosed. They didn't.

And how about THIS: Trump could have publicly apologized to E. Jean Carroll during the trial. I've done this with clients who were legally culpable. Had them write letters of apology, give ALL the money they took back to the Court to give to the victims, and apologize for their actions publicly in court. Did they want to do it? Of course not. But we didn't have a case and they wanted the whole thing to go away. Result: The Court accepted their guilty pleas, apologies, and money BUT didn't impose any fines or prison for larceny. We were granted mercy because of our accepting responsibility and showing humility. Trump *might* have had a reduction in the judgment by the jury.

Alina Habba reminds me of those unfortunate compatriots in law school, where they're called on by the professor about an assigned case, and they end up looking like abject fools in front of 100 students as well as the professor. (It happened to me once -- and once is enough for you to dedicate yourself to being prepared in the future.)