Donald Trump Is Being Ritually Humiliated in Court – The New Yorker

Its cold in the courtroom where Donald Trump is on trial. Judge, is it possible just to warm it up a degree or two? Todd Blanche, Trumps hapless lead attorney, asked last week. We are shaking. Judge Juan Merchan acknowledged the temperature. It is cold, there is no question, he said from the bench. But there wasnt much he could do. The Manhattan Criminal Courthouse opened in 1941, and its HVAC system has two settings: icebox or oven. I would rather be real cold than sweating, Merchan said. And really those are your choices.

Trump, a fifteen-minute escorted motorcade ride from the gilded comforts of Trump Tower, is feeling the chill. Theyre keeping me in a courtroom thats freezing, he told reporters in a courthouse hallway. In Trumps case, however, this sensation may also be a physiological response to the stone-cold insults directed at him by what feels like nearly every participant in the trial so far. During jury selection, last week, he was forced to sit silently as everyday New Yorkers said infuriating things to his face. I feel that nobody is above the law, whether it be a former President or sitting President or a janitor, one prospective juror said, with disdain. In order to weed out anti-Trump bias in the jury pool, Trumps lawyers went through prospective jurors social-media histories. At several points, Susan Nechelesanother Trump lawyerrecited negative posts written about her client, as if it were one of Jimmy Kimmels Celebrities Read Mean Tweets segments. Stop the election of a racist, sexist narcissist, Necheles said, standing at the defense table. I wouldnt believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized. Another post read, Trump is an anathema to everything I was taught to love about Jesus, everything I was taught about how to live out my faith. His disdain for decency, disrespect toward basic tenets of right and wrong and complete disregard for the most vulnerable among us could not be more fundamentally un-Christian. As Necheles read these words out loud and into the record, Trump sat just a few feet from her, his face scrunched into a frown.

The prosecutors have called Trump a cheat, a crook, and a miser, who knew exactly what he was doing when he tried to subvert the rule of law. The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 Presidential election, Matthew Colangelo, an Assistant District Attorney, said in the governments opening statement. Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again. Trump has had to sit there as the prosecutors have discussed the sexual affairs that the adult-film star Stormy Daniels and the former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougalboth expected to testify in the casesay they had with him in the early two-thousands, when he was already married to his wife, Melania. Hes had to sit there as the prosecutors have detailed the grubby hush-money scheme he concocted to buy Danielss and McDougals silence before the 2016 election. Hes had to sit there as the recent civil judgments against him have been brought up, including the journalist E. Jean Carrolls sexual-assault and defamation lawsuits, and the New York State Attorney Generals civil fraud case that resulted in a nearly half-billion-dollar judgment against him. Hes had to sit there as his high-priced lawyers and the judge have debated his perverse relationship with social media, and drilled down into whether, in a legal sense, retweets do or do not equal endorsements. He is just mad at the world, a source familiar with Trumps thinking told CNNs Dana Bash.

Merchan has spoken of the constitutional requirement of a fair trial. But hes been visibly exasperated by Trumps recklessness and viciousness. For weeks, Trump has been complaining about the gag order that the judge imposed on him before the start of the trial, prohibiting him from making public statements about potential witnesses or prospective jurors. Most criminal defendants stick to such a proscription, in deference to the law, or at least fear of it. Trump has said all kinds of things lately about Daniels and his old lawyer Michael Cohen, who are expected to be the prosecutions key witnesses. Sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly! hes called them. The former President has also attacked and intimidated potential jurors on social media. Last week, Merchan reprimanded him for muttering and gesturing aggressively while a potential juror spoke. A few days ago, he posted that undercover liberal activists had been caught lying to try to get onto the jury. Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorneys office asked Merchan to find Trump in contempt, and to fine him a thousand dollars for each of ten recent online posts. President Trump is being very careful to comply with Your Honors rules, Blanche told Merchan on Tuesday. Merchan glowered on the bench. You, Mr. Blanche, you are losing all credibility, he said.

Trumps own lawyers have all but acknowledged that their client is a liar, and a terrible, impossible person. Speaking to a prospective juror who said shes once been the victim of sexual assault, Necheles caught herself after almost suggesting that Trump had sexually assaulted Daniels and McDougal, who have said that they had consensual sex with Trump. You understand, in this case, that there will be women who havewell, not in this case in particularbut there have been women who have accused President Trump of assaulting them? Necheles asked. You would be able to put that out of your mind?

Trump is lucky that New York doesnt allow cameras to be used during court hearings. Aside from courtroom sketches, the only images of him in the courtroom are taken by a handful of photojournaliststhe spraywho are allowed about thirty seconds every morning to snap a few pictures of him at the defense table. In front of these cameras, Trump gathers himself and juts his chin at a practiced angle. As soon as theyre gone, he visibly slumps in his chair. Coming into or out of the courtroom, he walks without his wife or his kids, flanked by lawyers, Secret Service agents, and aides wearing worried faces. All day long, he endures bemused stares from the journalists in the gallery. A few spaces in the back are reserved for members of the public who have come to gawk. I have so many quotes from it in my notebook because it was just that funny, one teen-age spectator told the Post after observing a day of proceedings.

At the end of court each day, Trump has done his best to spin whats happening inside. Last week, he took an evening trip to Harlem to visit a bodega whose owner was arrested and then cleared in a 2022 fatal stabbing in his store. Trump had hoped to embrace him as a fellow-victim of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braggs overzealous prosecution. But the bodega owner wasnt therehe was on vacation in the Dominican Republic, his lawyer said. The reality is that Trump is being exposed and humiliated by whats happening in Merchans courtroom. On Monday, the government called its first witness in the case: David Pecker, the former C.E.O. of the National Enquirers parent company. In 2015, Pecker met with Trump and Cohen and agreed to serve as the eyes and ears of Trumps Presidential campaign. Throughout the next two years, the Enquirer bought and buried bad stories about Trump, ran flattering articles about him, and ran damaging stories about his opponents. (Examples: Ted Cruz Shamed by Porn Star, Family Man Marco Rubios Love Child Stunner!) Pecker, a soft-spoken man with silver hair and a bushy mustache, called himself an old friend of Trumps. Mr. Trump was well known as the most eligible bachelor and dated the most beautiful women, he said. When someone is running for public office like this, it is very common for these women to call up a magazine like the National Enquirer to try to sell their stories. Despite his grandfatherly demeanor, Pecker described to the jury how he willingly participated in Trumps hush-money scheme, with hardly a second thought for the morality of smearing people, and using contracts as levers to control individuals and information. Talking about his tabloids investigation of a rumor that Trump had fathered a child with his housekeeper, Pecker said, If the story was true and I published it, it would be probably the biggest sale of the National Enquirer since the death of Elvis Presley. (The rumor turned out to be false.)

So far, Trumps lawyers have not mounted much of a defense. Somebody at Trump Tower generated a check, Blanche said, during his opening statement on Monday. The check made its way down to the White House, and President Trump signed it. All the defendant had done was pay hush money while running the country. What is a crime about what I just described? Blanche asked. For most of his life, Trump has acted as if the Constitution protects his right to do basically whatever he wants. It doesnt. The deference that Trump takes for granted because of his money and power extends somewhat into the courtroomno other criminal defendant would be allowed to post about witnesses and jurors the way he has, and Merchan has yet to rule on the contempt issuebut it doesnt extend all the way. In the courtroom, Trump is being confronted directly in a way he simply is not used to. It might be cold in there, but the heat is on.

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Donald Trump Is Being Ritually Humiliated in Court - The New Yorker