“It’s clear Trump wanted to avoid the bloodbath of a cross-examination but wanted to say something”
Former President Donald Trump spent just three minutes on the witness stand Thursday in his defamation trial brought by E. Jean Carroll, using his testimony to declare that he backs his prior deposition denying the writer’s claims.
…
As Trump left the courtroom, according to The Messenger’s Adam Klasfeld, he complained to the press in the gallery, saying, “It’s not America. It’s not America. This is not America.”
This article evaluates her based on her skill as a lawyer, defending her client. That’s the job that every other lawyer does. That’s not what Trump hired her for, though. Trump knows he will lose this. Her job is to delay the inevitable as much as possible. And she gets a bonus if she manages to get him some platform to air his grievances publically.
This is kind of at odds to the standards of the legal profession, though, and she will probably get disciplined for it. I just hope she was “fake smart” enough to get paid up front.
Bruh. He hired her because she gives his mushroom a funny feeling.
I believe it’s still called a spore at that size.
Back in the day, a lot of authentic cowboys headed to Hollywood to work as stuntmen. She’s kind of like those cowboys; an actual lawyer playing the role of a lawyer.
You give her way too much credit. I’ve never taken the bar exam, but, based on having known some very stupid lawyers I am guessing several things:
- There are different levels of difficulty in each state since each state has its own bar exam.
- If you are stupid but have a decent memory, you can pass it because it doesn’t require creative thought.
- If you can’t even do that, but you’ve got enough money, you can pay the right people in certain states and “pass” their bar exam.
Habba is just clearly stupid. I don’t know why people are suggesting anything else.
1 and 2 are more likely. It’s pretty damn hard to bribe your way past the bar, you’d have to pay a lot of people and trust none of them care about their careers or potentially getting prosecuted.
Maybe, but this is also America, where you can do practically anything you want if you’re rich.
I’m actually curious how you’d even do it logistically. There’s like three separate sets of people minimum for the tests, a whole anonymous grading system you’d have to game somehow and for that I’m pretty sure the person grading doesn’t know the number of the paper they’re grading, and then the actual admissions committee. I guess you could just bribe the admissions committee and have them fake a result but, again, there’s a separate national multistate test whose results get factored in. Maybe pay someone to take the test for you but the chances they get caught are…medium.
The more I think about it, it’s actually easier to just memorize law and pass the bar.
Look at Boebert and Sarah Palin. Neither is a scholar, but both won office. If you use what you have to get what you want, you’re smart in my book. I wouldn’t want her as my lawyer, but she’ll probably end up a TV pundit with a six figure salary.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Bobo and Caribou Barbie aren’t lawyers though… which kind of strays from the topic of “dumb lawyers”.
I do still wonder how Jack Thompson passed the bar… but Habba, Giuliani, Eastman, Powell and Wood make me think anyone could do it.
Bobo and Caribou Barbie
I snorted milk out my nose. Just saying.
Look. These people didn’t get the job on their skill but on the light drama they create while doing whatever they’ve been told to do to further their own success.
Just like another poster noted, that some have to graduate at the bottom of their class, the pool of scummy politicos on their last career option must be deep enough they could pick two with marketability and malleability to be a success as a conservative talking head.
Bobo and Caribou Barbie
Didn’t come up with those, but it bears reposting.
I’m paraphrasing badly, but Einstein said that if measure intelligence by how well a species climbs trees, dolphins would be considered idiots.
As a dear friend of mine likes to say “Someone had to graduate at the bottom of the class.”
But this isn’t a criminal case, it’s a civil case in the state of New York. Even if Trump wins in November, he will still have to pay up, and wont be able to pardon himself or tell his AG to drop the case. All Habba us doing is pissing off the judge
He’s not paying a damn thing himself, it will come out of some SuperPAC. He doesn’t care that it’s illegal. He already knows nobody can investigate him if he is President, except for Congress, and he just needs 34 Senators willing to keep him away from any consequences of that.
Even if Trump wins in November, he will still have to pay up, and wont be able to pardon himself or tell his AG to drop the case.
I wouldn’t be so sure of this.
Let’s say Trump gets back into office in November. And let’s say he’s facing an eleventy billion dollar judgement against him in this case, along with whatever criminal penalties come from his other state cases.
What if Trump just says “Nah, I’m not gonna pay.”. Then what? She sues a third time? As a sitting President, the court system is likely to defer any lawsuit until after his term is over, saying that his Presidential duties supersede her civil claims. Similarly, if he’s facing house arrest or jail time, it’s similarly likely that the courts would rule that states would have to wait for his term to be over in order to incarcerate him.
And by 2028, he could be dead. If his next attempts are successful, he may very well install himself as a dictator, backed by a Congress and Supreme Court too scared to do anything about it out of fears of retribution from his base (And we have already seen plenty of evidence that judges and lawmakers can be intimidated enough to back down out of fear of retribution). Or even if he does leave office, he’d be effectively restarting the clock and just dragging the cases back out indefinitely.
Either way, if he gets back into office, he will have several paths to choose from which could lead to him even avoiding state incarceration or civil penalties that he can’t outright pardon himself from. The only way he has even a chance of seeing consequences for his actions are if he loses the election. Any other outcome is a victory for him well above and beyond winning the election itself.
As a sitting President, the court system is likely to defer any lawsuit until after his term is over, saying that his Presidential duties supersede her civil claims.
Nope. See Clinton v. Jones, 1997:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_v._Jones
“landmark United States Supreme Court case establishing that a sitting President of the United States has no immunity from civil law litigation, in federal court, for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office.[1] In particular, there is no temporary immunity and thus no delay of federal cases until the President leaves office.[1]”
What if Trump just says “Nah, I’m not gonna pay.”. Then what?
It sounds like you haven’t ever seen a subpoena sent to a financial institution. As long as Trump’s money is in a US bank or financial institution, it’s easy to get.
You just have to prove to a judge that he’s not paying. The judge issues a subpoena to the financial institution to hand over information regarding any accounts he has. If he has trusts, it’s a bit more complicated but no US financial institution is going to shield any of their clients from legal fines or penalties. They can easily lose their license for that.
Once all the asset details are known, the judge orders payouts. I’m not a lawyer and have never done it, but just looking at wording on the subpoena is enough. “Chase Bank will provide all documents related to accounts owned or controlled by or for the benefit of: whoever”. Their legal department wants to comply as fast as possible with something like this, so they will issue checks as soon as they can.
Habba’s mission is not to be a good lawyer within the rules and traditions of the courtroom. Habba’s mission is to drag the proceedings as much as possible out of the rules of the courtroom, and into the rules of “I’m the leader, do as I say or I’ll have you shot.”
A lawyer who’s staying within the rules of the courtroom is pretty much doomed to failure, and will interfere with mission #2 while they’re failing, which is why Trump hates them. Trump is so generally incompetent that it remains to be seen whether mission #2 will be successful. But Trump and Habba are in no way using bad strategy when they try mission #2, because it’s certainly possible to win that game, whereas mission #1 is a lost cause at this point.
She’s not trying to be his lawyer. She’s auditioning for the role of his next ex-wife.
“And you say that because you personally made him aware of those confines?” Kaplan said before Trump loudly interrupted to tell his lawyer he “never met this woman.” Kaplan then instructed Trump to keep his voice down.
Jesus fucking christ…
Letting him testify
Cute they think that was her decision, let alone her idea to have him rant in the trial. Donnie wanted desperately to speak out in almost every prior case so far, and especially so now we are in primary season to maintain his victim complex
She’s not a competent lawyer by even the most generous of standards. I agree that this was absolutely his idea, but she also has a fiduciary responsibility to her clients, so the blame is certainly hers. He can’t actually take the stand unless called by a lawyer, and no competent lawyer would have done that (and some of his other lawyers even prevented him in other cases).
She’s a colossal fuckup, no matter whose hairbrained idea it was initially.
You cannot blame a lawyer for allowing their client to testify, they literally have an ethical obligation to allow a client to testify if the client chooses to (ABA Model Rule 3.3(9) ). You can call her competency into question for other reasons, but she would absolutely be sanctioned if she didn’t allow him to testify.
Neat! I learned something! Thanks.
Anytime! I don’t respect her decision to advocate for Trump in any way, but she put herself in an extremely difficult situation. Not only are the facts extremely adverse to your side, you have to counsel such an unlikable, egotistical clown. She deserves so much of the criticism that she gets, even if only for being conceited enough to think she could come out of such a public trial without the sort of reputational harm she’s receiving.
He can’t actually take the stand unless called by a lawyer
While technically true, his lawyer must call him to the stand if he wants it. Lawyers aren’t ethically allowed to silence their own clients’ testimony, even if it is damaging to the case. The lawyer can argue with the client ahead of time and tell them it’s a horrible idea. But if the client refuses to budge and insists, the lawyer has an ethical obligation to call them to the stand. She could literally be cited by the bar association for refusing to let him testify.
And I guess that’s the reason why two of his lawyers withdrew, one even the day before trial, because they could not convince him to stay silent and did not want to watch him testify and could not hinder him to testify because of the law.
Victim complex yes, but I’m also sure he’s convinced he could talk his way out of it. He’s been able to do that or pay the right people off his whole life so far, and these cases ending poorly for him surely has him convinced that everyone involved is just “doing it wrong” and he needs to step in and fix it himself.
Your right Donnie it’s not if it was America you would have been held in contempt long ago.
It’s not America he is used to, for all these years of golfing, being a showman and conman and hanging out with Epstein and Co with no care for the world around. He could do that until he die, the US of A could’ve let him. But for whatever reason he went all in.
“Let him”
You guys would hand Trump a mistrial on a silver platter.
Hey, they let Ted Bundy represent himself because he was obviously better than his legal counsel. He just happened to also be guilty.
They have to let you represent yourself so long as you’re competent to do so, they can assign you a state ordered attorney so things go smoother with filings but it’s quite literally a constitutional right.
So, he and Trump have some things in common. Does Trump own a VW Bug?
SLAAAAAAMMMMMM
“Slam”
Find a better word.
We have people whose vocabulary consists of “imagine” and “literally” and a jumble of mis-joined words and bad pluralization.
Imagine u literally backup emails
This is the hill you’re defending?
He’s gotta be running out of lawyers willing to take him as a client at this point
He isn’t already?
There’s a point there. Ms habbas appears to be what one gets when one has run out of competent lawyers. Without a friendly judge and a good case, the odds of success arent good.
Habba argued that her arguments for the case’s dismissal were being misunderstood, offering to clarify them for the judge. But Kaplan’s response was short. “No,” he replied.
He hired some less than excellent bimbo lawyer and it’s working out predictably
And the judge just allowed it and gave a million warnings and zero consequences
