A judge verbally criticized a Donald Trump defense attorney during Tuesday’s secret Manhattan trial, questioning the lawyer’s ethics and calling his arguments unsupported and “irrelevant.”
“You lose all credibility,” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan angrily told attorney Todd Blanche.
“You lose all credibility with the court,” Merchan repeated, his voice frustrated.
The remarkable criticism came during a hearing to determine whether the Republican Party frontrunner was in contempt of court for violating his order of silence more than ten times in the past three weeks.
The judge said Tuesday morning that he would issue his ruling later — he did not say when — at the request of prosecutors that Trump be fined $10,000. Prosecutors also want Trump to be warned of possible prison time if his attacks on jurors and witnesses continue.
“We are not yet asking for a prison sentence, even though the defendant seems to want to achieve it,” prosecutor Christopher Conroy said during a hearing held before the start of the day’s testimony.
In addition to the secret trial, now in its second week, Blanche is representing Trump in his Florida classified documents case and his Washington, D.C., 2021 election interference case.
His credibility was undermined again Tuesday as he struggled to argue that Trump had not violated his silence order, as prosecutors claimed — and that in fact his client was being “cautious.” .
“We’re trying to comply with it,” Blanche told the judge, referring to the gag order.
“President Trump is very cautious,” the lawyer added.
It is at this moment that the judge accuses Blanche of “losing all credibility”.
“We don’t read the order that way,” Blanche stammered, calling the order of silence “ambiguous.”
“We will delete the messages, of course,” the lawyer added.
Merchan’s April 1 order prohibits Trump from making statements against witnesses and jurors, among other categories of people, if such attacks would interfere with the trial.
The alleged gag violations brought up Tuesday included Trump’s April 10 Truth Social post attacking key witnesses Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels as “sleazebags,” and another “truth” that claimed “undercover liberal activists” were infiltrating the jury.
The arguments Blanche made during Tuesday’s hearing in defense of Trump’s messages fell broadly into three categories.
None of the arguments were supported, the judge quickly noted.
“I asked you eight or nine times, show me,” the judge said, referring to the times he asked Blanche to support case law. “And you couldn’t do that, even once.”
Blanche’s first argument was that Trump is allowed to launch purely political attacks against his political opponents.
The second was that Trump is somehow protected because prosecutors waited three weeks to start filing charges.
“There is a history of publication and republication here that has not been checked,” the lawyer groped.
But the fact that the prosecutors “did not come here” after the first messages “is not conclusive”, retorted the judge.
Blanche’s third argument was that the rebroadcasting of attacks on trial witnesses that had originally been made by others was somehow exempt.
This is where Merchan really hit the proverbial ceiling.
Where is the case law exempting repeated or “republished” speeches from silence orders? » asked the judge.
“I asked you eight or nine times, show me, and you couldn’t do it once,” the judge said.
“You’re not giving me anything to hang my hat on,” he added.
Delete some of the 10 messages by reposting them “washes your hands somehow? » asked the judge.
What if someone walked around with a sign saying “terrible things” about jurors, Merchan asked Blanche, hypothetically.
“Do you think that if your client grabbed that sign and walked around with it, and it said terrible things about the jury, he wouldn’t have done anything wrong?” » asked the judge to the lawyer.
“Is that what you’re telling me?” repeated the judge, his voice impatient.
“Are you testifying under oath that this is your position?” » asked the judge at another point.
“Is it your client’s position that when he reposted something he did not believe he was violating the gag order?”
Trump has repeatedly attacked Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels online. Atilgan Ozdil/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Prosecutors are seeking a $10,000 fine — the maximum allowed — for three weeks of posts on Truth Social and the campaign website attacking two trial witnesses, Daniels and Cohen.
An April 10 Truth Social article called the porn star and former Trump fixer “sleazy bags.”
A Truth Social article from April 17, the second day of jury selection, was “very disturbing,” prosecutor Christopher Conroy told the judge.
He quoted Fox News commentator Jesse Watters and claimed that “undercover liberal activists are lying to the judge in order to get on the Trump jury.”
Trump could be thrown in jail for up to 30 days in jail for each gag violation, but Conroy said Tuesday that a warning that jail time is possible if Trump doesn’t stop would be enough — for now.
Other witnesses, beyond Cohen and Daniels, see these messages and are also intimidated, the prosecutor said, calling it “a kind of backlash.”
“The defendant has his day in court,” Conroy said in successfully arguing for the fines and warning imposed by Merchan.
“Unfortunately,” the prosecutor added, “he is doing everything he can to undermine this process.”
Catch and kill
After the morning hearing, jurors were called into the courtroom to hear the rest of the testimony from the trial’s first witness, former National Enquirer executive David Pecker.
“I met him in the ’80s at Mar-a-Lago,” Pecker told the jury of five women and seven men.
Pecker described the “beneficial relationship” he had with Trump since he took control of the tabloid in March 1999.
Stories attacking Trump’s enemies — especially stories that Hillary Clinton “enabled” her womanizing husband — were good for them both, Pecker said.
The two spoke daily during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, he said, when tabloid headlines included “Ted Cruz Sex Scandal, Five Different Mistresses.”
In describing the origins of the tabloid’s “catch and kill” campaign on behalf of Trump, Pecker offered jurors an important narrative about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case.
Prosecutors allege that just 11 days before the 2016 election, Trump paid $130,000 in hush money to bury Daniels’ story about an extramarital affair with the then-Apprentice star in 2006.
It’s a story Pecker “discovered” when Daniels tried to sell it to the Enquirer, then “killed” by alerting Cohen, prosecutors said.
Cohen, then vice president of the Trump Organization, acted as fundraiser, taking out a home equity loan to pay the $130,000 to Daniels’ attorney.
Prosecutors say that by repaying Cohen in monthly installments throughout 2017, Trump falsified 34 Trump Organization business records.
Each of the falsified invoices, checks and accounting entries claimed the reimbursements were “legal fees,” rather than what they were, prosecutors say: illegal campaign expenses intended to influence the 2016 election.
Pecker’s testimony is expected to continue when court resumes Wednesday.
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