Lawrence: Trump lawyers put an uncouth buffoon on the stand to defend an uncouth buffoon

Well, at 10.11 a.m. Today, Donald Trump's top criminal defense attorney, Todd Blanch, stood up and said, Your Honor, the defense rests. The truth is that there was no defense. Trump's team of expensive defense

lawyers

is actually paid by duped people who send contributions in response. to Donald Trump's relentless begging for money from people he promised he would never ask for money from When Donald Trump began his first presidential campaign, his main appeal to voters was that he was so rich that he could pay for his own campaign and, therefore, Therefore, he was incorruptible and would never ask them or anyone else for money, so Donald Trump proceeded to never spend a cent of his own money on his presidential campaign.

He lent some money to his first presidential campaign at the beginning, but of course, that campaign paid him back through their donations. Poor deluded people who sent money to the liar who promised he would never ask for money and now his money has gone to an expensive legal team who couldn't present any defense in the first Donald Trump criminal trial they could think of. Conflicting defense theories were offered in cross-examination of some of the witnesses who testified for the prosecution, but a real defense in a criminal case is not measured by the questions defense attorneys ask in cross-examination.

Those questions are not evidence next week when Judge Juan Maran is instructing the jury and will tell them that the

lawyers

' questions are not evidence. Witness responses are evidence, so Trump's defense did not present any evidence. none in defense of Donald Trump against the crimes he is accused of. no no defense. the first witness they called. He was a technical witness who added no evidence or information to the case at all. He is a young parallel assistant working for Trump's defense team who had created a spreadsheet of a list of phone calls and his testimony took only a few minutes and the document he created was accepted as evidence in the case of and that was that and then yesterday Trump's lawyers, possibly at the insistence of Donald Trump, made what every impartial observer of the trial has called the grotesque mistake of calling a criminal lawyer.

Robert Costello, whose main argument as a criminal lawyer, judging by his emails exposed in this trial, is that he is a close friend of the deranged Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani was Robert Costello's boss in the 1980s, when Giuliani was the US attorney in Manhattan. In Costello he was a federal prosecutor. Giuliani prosecutor Robert Costello's turn under oath yesterday was the witness

stand

equivalent of drunk driving at this time last night. I read to you the full transcript of what Judge Juan Maran did when Robert Costello decided to express his disagreement with the judge's ruling over the objections while he was sitting there on the witness

stand

, the transcript that we all heard in the courtroom shows to Robert Costello saying that G's je e z was the spelling chosen by the court reporter, that's what we heard.

I was able to hear it yesterday in the back row of the courtroom and None of us in the courtroom had ever seen or heard anything like it, especially from a witness who is a lawyer and it shouldn't be better, much better. Judge Maran was surprised, leaned forward and asked Costello to repeat himself, to which Costello said: hit him! which is lawyer talk, no matter what I just said, then, as we found out later, the judge saw Costello continue to express his irritation and disrespect towards the judge in ways that we could not see in the hearing and the judge ordered the courtroom.

He was cleared so he could talk about it directly with Costello. Clear the courtroom were words that no one in that room had heard before before the judge said that, including the court officers, they had never had to do that before with everyone outside the courtroom. We found out later in the transcript that he kept back what happened when we were all outside the courtroom. Judge Maran told Costello, sir, his conduct is derogatory at this time. I warn you that his behavior is derogatory if he tries to stare at me. down once again I will take him off the stand I will eliminate all of his testimony, you understand me?

Mr. B, yes, Judge, I understand when Donald Trump's criminal defense attorney said yes, Judge, I understand that he and the rest of the legal team also completely understood what a catastrophic mistake it was to put a UNC

buffoon

in jail. witness hand as a defense witness for a rude

buffoon

today at 9:29 a.m. m. Robert Costello, the red-faced, white-haired 76-year-old criminal defense attorney, reentered the courtroom to continue cross-examination by Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger, whom Costello had specifically insulted the day before by telling him to speak for himself. microphone, ordering her to speak into the microphone when she was already speaking into the microphone and everyone in the courtroom could hear her and that It was a moment that undoubtedly helped further expose the ugly essence of Robert Costello to the jury of seven men and five women when the jury entered the courtroom 3 minutes after the witness this morning, the courtroom community that the jury has come to know. so dramatically had it changed that the presence of armed court officers who have been the most courteous and helpful guides to all of us who take our places in that courtroom every day had more than doubled where there used to be a court officer. cut standing in the central aisle.

There were three in the back of the room where there used to be two There were four There were more high-ranking officials in the room than we had ever seen at one time One of the administrative officials of the Court who has been especially helpful to the members of the Court The media, but they are rarely in the courtroom, were now standing in the back of the courtroom watching everything in that courtroom. This dramatic display of additional control of the courtroom by the court officials went unnoticed by the defense attorneys, the

defend

ant, and the prosecutors because they had their backs to that part of the courtroom they had their backs to the court officials they were right in front of them. where they could see the judge and the witness and some of the jurors, but the jury could see everything in that room the jurors could look out and see at least twice as many of those friendly court officials whom they had come to know, plus Twice as many of those Court officials had ever seen in that courtroom before, and the jury couldn't figure out why they had been sent. outside the courtroom by the judge yesterday the first time the judge decided, as he said, to speak directly to Robert Costello about what the judge called decorum in the courtroom, it was only when Costello continued his disrespectful behavior in the courtroom that the judge cleared the courtroom of the rest of us, the reporters, everyone else in the room and he and the judge had a more private meeting with Costello while, of course, all the lawyers were still present, the jury couldn't know that.

This enormous new show of force and control in that courtroom this morning was due to the dismissive conduct of the only witness that Donald Trump's team brought into that room to offer real testimony in this case and his testimony had absolutely no nothing to do with Donald Trump's crimes. Trump is accused of Robert Costello was one of the lawyers whom the prosecution's star witness Michael Cohen consulted after the FBI executed search warrants at his home, the hotel room where he was temporarily living, and his office when Michael Cohen He became a cooperating witness in that FBI.

The investigation ultimately led Michael Cohen to plead guilty to crimes, including crimes related to the payment to Stormy Daniels that Michael Cohen claimed was made at the direction of Donald Trump. During today's cross-examination it became clear that Robert Costello was eager to become Michael Cohen's attorney, so he was eager to write an email to his son boasting that he was about to become defense attorney by subpoenaing personal attorney of President Donald J. Trump, he told his son quote that I will be on the team, the problem is that his emails reveal that the team was bigger than Michael Cohen in the cross-examination it was very clear that Michael Cohen was not the main interest by Robert Costello.

It is customary for lawyers to ask witnesses to read their own emails aloud as evidence. Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger tried this on cross-examination yesterday. -examination, but Costello couldn't do it, he couldn't read his own emails without constantly inserting new editorial comments into his own emails, so today Susan Hoffinger read the emails herself. Could she expand the last 11 paragraphs in yellow and then? she read Robert Costello's email to her law partner. She cites our problem is getting Cohen on the right page without giving him the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the president.

In my opinion, this is the clear and correct strategy, but it is not a strategy to help. Michael Cohen Yesterday, when the DA asked Robert Costello to interpret one of his emails, Costello's response was that the quote in the email speaks for itself and today, after reading that email I just read to him , this attorney Hoffinger asked the question and like you said yesterday, the email speaks for itself, sometimes they respond correctly and it got worse for Robert Costello. Just joury hoffinger quoted another email to her partner about the Michael Cohen quote and this is a quote from the email, what should I say to this asshole he's playing with? man on the planet now that email certainly speaks for itself, doesn't Mr.

Costello answer yes? It was very clear that Robert Costello's interest in trying to become Michael Cohen's lawyer was to be on the team not of Michael Cohen, but on the team of the man whom Costello considers the most powerful man on the planet the man who was sitting in front of Robert Costello in the

defend

ant's chair Robert Costello left the witness stand in disgrace at 10:11 a.m. m. this morning after 42 minutes on the witness stand This morning, establishing absolutely nothing for Donald Trump's defense against criminal charges of falsifying New York business records to illegally help his 2016 presidential campaign, the judge He then explained the scheduling dilemma he faced and told the jury that he likes to keep the final decision. defense and prosecution arguments together so that they are not separated by a day or a weekend and that he would need additional time to prepare his legal instructions for the jury, so he noted that because they were already scheduled not to meet on Wednesday of this week that the earliest they could start attorney briefs without having to split them up would be sometime maybe Thursday of this week and that might not allow everything to be completed before Memorial Day weekend. fallen or would send the jury to deliberations at Friday was over for the day, so the best way for the judge to handle it was to send the jury today on what will become their Memorial Day long weekend and that It happened just after today's last witness, Robert Costello, left the witness stand.

The judge spent time afterward and then spent the afternoon considering arguments from both sides about what should be included in the judge's instructions to the jury that will likely be delivered next Wednesday, the day after attorneys present their closing arguments to the jury. on Tuesday, which of course, will be the day after the Memorial Day holiday, so here we are, the case is there, there will be no more evidence, the prosecution has presented evidence to support every element of the crimes that Donald Trump faces in that courtroom , the Manhattan 12 jury. Residents will begin deliberating next week on the question of whether the evidence presented by the district attorney amounts to professional evidence.

Beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump committed those crimes, there is nothing about the jurors themselves that gives you the slightest clue as to how they could do it. be leaning on the case or what evidence they think is important but they are always very attentive to everything that is in that room especially to Judge Maran's instructions and they will surely be very attentive when the judge pronounces the last words that they will hear before starting to deliberate on this The judge in the Michon case has said he hopes to keep his instructions to about an hour or less and this afternoon, in a hearing without the jury present, lawyers for both sides argued over what those instructions should be, it did not go well to Trump's criminal defense attorneys.

EML B brought up something that the judge had ruled out of the case a long time ago, long before the trial began. This was frustratingfor the judge. Judge Maran said, look, Mr. Boet, this is an issue that's been going on for a long time. When I wrote a decision on this, my decision is dated February 7 and in that decision I ordered the defense to provide a disclosure notice of their intention to rely on the defense's advice of counsel by March 11, 2024 and that will present all statements and communications detectable within its possession or control for the same data.

What that means is that the judge told Trump's defense team, if you are going to use the defense, my lawyer forced me to do it, you have to inform us before the trial because there are many evidentiary requirements to make that defense that defense would essentially be: I simply followed the advice of my attorney Michael Cohen. There are technical requirements to making that legal defense that Donald Trump's lawyers decided not to make and that's why, in his growing frustration this afternoon, the judge later said about the defense. on advice of counsel on advice of attorney morphed into something called attorney presence which I had never heard of and was not familiar with, but I addressed it in the Motions in limony and at that time indicated that you are excluded from arguing that this legal claim of council presence there was no such thing, it is just a way to avoid having to hand over documents related to council advice now that this term council presence has once again morphed into something called attorney participation, my answer it hasn't changed and honestly it seems disingenuous to me that you are presenting the argument to this OP right now and Mr.

Bo tries to get up, at which point the judge says please don't get up. He let him speak properly. He let him speak. Let me speak. Mr. Bo, okay Judge, it was troubling when the term was changed to presence of counsel. I couldn't believe it when I saw it again in his presentation, now I call it attorney participation and I understand it. The argument that you are making, I tell you my decision is that the jury will not hear that court instruction nor will you be allowed to make that argument. Period, Trump's lawyers can't help but test Judge Maran's patience, but in the process they can't. stop professionally humiliating yourselves in your representation of the rude buffoon you sit with all day at that defense table and