Biden would not even come close to passing his. The only way he can stand in front of people is to get pumped up with drugs. Biden weighs like 97 pounds and Trump around 240. Trump is just a much healthier guy. Biden is old, frail and in poor health.
FOUR MORE YEARS PAUSE!
Some of the best projectors aren’t always found in movie theaters.
Chucklefucks.
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Court is in session today. Trump has already had his morning whinge to the press about having to get up early (it starts at 9:30am EDT) and sit in a cold courtroom. He is joined today by such leading lights as Bernie Kerik, Alan Dershowitz and Kash Patel.
Cohen is due back on the stand to complete cross examination and re-direct. Some housekeeping to care of first though.
Judge Merchan has set closing arguments for Tuesday of next week. Given that they are off Wednesday as usual but also Friday because of the long weekend, there was no point in starting that process this week.
Team Trump is arguing with the judge about his previous ruling about the limits of testimony allowed by legal experts. They want to put someone on the stand to discuss election law, presumably to explain to the jury that no election law was broken here, thus taking away the trigger that escalated Trump’s malfeasance here to felony status.
Explaining law to the jury is the judge’s job and when Team Trump complained, Merchan told them that this rule has been in place since the start and now is not the time to try to re-litigate it. When Team Trump got all pissy about that, Merchan told them to “relax”.
The legal expert in question is the only witness the defense has for-sure said they will call. Given the limits of the testimony he will be allowed to give, the defense’s entire case presentation could be a matter of hours.
Having scored a couple of points last Thursday, Team Trump is back to being all over the place again this morning. They have asked Cohen about how many meetings he’s had with prosecutors - like there’s something sinister there - and about his taxi medallion business.
I haven’t seen what point - if any - was made about taxi medallions, though I imagine that anyone from Manhattan will hear the dog whistle here that the medallion business is as crooked as Lombard Street. However, painting the defendant’s close confident and long-term “fixer” as a 'uge crook is not the flex they think it is.
Democrat logic:
When Cohen worked with Trump: Cohen is the most crooked person ever.
When Cohen turned on Trump: Cohen is such a great and honest man.
So far, it seems that Blanche - having had 3 full days to prepare for this morning - is doing a great job of reaffirming Cohen’s direct testimony.
The jury appears to be getting bored with Team Trump spending days and days on pointing out what a scumbag Cohen is. They know. It would also be logical to infer from this that Cohen’s employer knew, too.
Team Trump gets Cohen to admit that he stole from the Trump Org when he asked to be reimbursed $50,000 (grossed up to $100,000 to pass it off as income) when he only paid Red Finch $20,000 to help him rig an online CNBC poll for Trump.
The defense went for and got this admission. They think it’s a win.
Yes, Cohen is a liar yet we all are supposed to believe everything he says. There’s a reason why this case wasn’t pursued before. That is because Cohen is not a credible witness and that is all that they have.
Randy’s back with a banger.
Cross examination is over. Hoffinger for The People is back up on re-direct. Team Trump made a thing about Cohen goosing the amount he paid to RedFinch, so Hoffinger made a point to go back to that topic:
Team The People has the jury’s attention.
Hoffinger is going back over the areas where Team Trump tried - and in some cases succeeded - to sow confusion, and cleaning it up. Quickfire clean-up, move on, rinse-repeat.
Team Trump had pressed Cohen about whether Keith Schiller was actually with Trump on 10/24/16, which is when Cohen said he called Schiller who passed the phone to Trump. On re-direct, Team The People introduced a photo of Trump and Schiller together, time stamped shortly before the Cohen-Schiller phone call.
“OBJECTION!”
Merchan has dismissed the jury early for lunch and there is now a sidebar over the photo. Methinks Team The People set a trap and Team Trump blundered right into it.
Methinks Team The Maggots have manipulated pictures to try to make things look bad for Trump.
Court is back, sans jury, while they thrash out the photo. Judge ruled it inadmissible for lack of foundation (no proof of when it was taken). Prosecutors have asked to call back the CSPAN witness to testify to its foundation - can be there tomorrow morning.
Team Trump objects on the basis that the prosecution is somehow stalling. Merchan waves that away as nonsense.
Merchan will allow the CSPAN witness. It’s up to the defense if they want to wait until after to begin their case or let the CSPAN witness testify out of order.
Interesting. For all their posturing, once the judge agreed to allow the CSPAN witness the defense caved and stipulated to the foundation of the photo.
Manufactured drama over and the jury comes in.
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They figured the witness would just make it worse for TT. Also, MAGA is addicted to drama.
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The most hay that the defense made with Cohen was about the phone calls on and around 10/24, because that is where Cohen says he got direct authorization from Trump to make the payment. There being no corroboration to Cohen’s story of calling Schiller and him handing Trump the phone.
There were corroborating phone records, but Team Trump made a good fist of positing that it was more likely about the teenager harassment that was going on contemporaneously than the hush money payment, because there was no proof that Schiller was anywhere near Trump at that time of the evening.
With this pivotal fact being something they could actually challenge due to Cohen’s long history of being a scumbag, it was clear that this was going to be the scab at which they picked during closing. “It’s Cohen’s word against President Trump’s (sic), and Cohen is a fucking liar!”
[Sound of a trap slamming shut]
The reason they tried to get the photo excluded is that it evaporates all of the above. There’s a call from Cohen to Schilling at (roughly) the same time that there is a photo of Trump and Schilling together. They appeared to be on the move together, so it’s not like they were passing in a corridor, they were transferring from car to plane (or vice versa), so clearly would have been together for some time before and after the photo was taken.
Stipulating to the photo gives it less drama, because it’s not being specifically entered into evidence by a witness called specifically to do that and only that. But it still removes one aspect of reasonable doubt that Blanche had spent about a day setting up and now means that he has to shred about half of his summation.