NY: Trump on Trial!

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/frankrunyeon/status/1791576159496335807
Paywall-free article: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/complaint-dismissed-against-trump-hush-money-judge-who-donated-biden-2024-05-17/

Who care?

If we as a country want to start holding our judges to the standards they ought to be held to right now, I heartily support the idea. Marchant can and should resign immediately, along with Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kennedy, and Coney Barrett, among many others.

[emailking]

I don't think not making political contributions is a standard he ought to be held to.

[Badger]

I will be ignoring this matter just like I did with the millions Clarence Thomas got from his billionaire friends with cases before the SCOTUS.

Well, you're both not that incisive so not unexpected, and also Australian so it doesn't matter. So there's that.

[emailking]

Lawyer preparation suggests Trump won’t testify in New York trial
Awaiting final word from the mercurial defendant, the judge is proceeding as if Trump will not take the stand.

After brashly declaring he wanted to testify in his criminal trial, it appears increasingly unlikely that Donald Trump will do so, as the jury seems poised to hear closing arguments next week.

Defendants rarely testify in their own defense, because their lawyers advise them that the risks of doing so, particularly when it comes to being questioned by prosecutors under oath, are simply too great.

Even so, defense attorneys often try to hold out until the last possible minute to say whether their client will testify, hoping to keep prosecutors guessing.

...

Four people close to the former president said next week’s plan does not include him testifying, and they expect the jury to start deliberating later in the week. Trump is famously mercurial and could always demand to testify, some of these people said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Trump, declined to comment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/18/trump-trial-testifying/


Not a surprise, but it's still his decision to make and he insisted on testifying in 2 recent civil trials.

[brucejoel99]

Jonathan Alter reporting the trial will convene early at 8:45 tomorrow morning rather than the usual 9:30 so that Merchan can squeeze in as much as possible of what's left (Cohen's cross & redirect, the charge conference, summations, & jury instructions) to ensure that the deliberations can begin by Thursday at the latest, before the Memorial Day weekend starts.

[Joe Republic]

Trump is guaranteed to perjure himself multiple times, so not testifying is strategically the best move for him.

[mjba257]

The charging conference will be critical. If it's decided that the judge will instruct the jury on misdemeanor business record falsification, that completely changes what the final outcome could be. There is too much reasonable doubt in the prosecutions theory of an underlying crime, but the evidence for business record falsification is much stronger. In essence, this would be a fail safe for them, because right now, the odds are strong for a hung jury on the felony counts. A misdemeanor, OTOH, provides an easy out for jurors who really hate Trump but who don't think the facts support a felony conviction. With a misdemeanor conviction, the prosecution can still hang their hats on something, and that's better than a hung jury or an outright acquittal.

[Yoda]

Trump is guaranteed to perjure himself multiple times, so not testifying is strategically the best move for him.

If he lies, yeh. If he tells the truth, he incriminates himself. All this press coverage acting as if there was ever a chance in hell he would testify is silly. He's a coward. He's never, ever, ever going to testify.