The judge could not have been more furious.
‘I think that saying that was outrageous, Mr. Blanche — please have a seat,’ said Judge Juan Merchan.
‘For someone who has been a prosecutor as long as you have, and a defense attorney as long as you have, you know that making a comment like that is highly inappropriate. It’s simply not allowed. Period.
It was not the first time Donald Trump’s lead attorney Todd Blanche had offended the judge, but this was by far the most incendiary.
His mistake had been to suggest to the jury during closing arguments that they should not imprison someone on the basis of serial liar Michael Cohen’s say so.
Todd Blanche (left) is Donald Trump’s lead defense attorney. But he has attracted the judge’s irritation at times as he defends the world’s most famous (and difficult) client
‘You cannot send somebody to prison, you cannot convict somebody …’ he said before being shut down by an objection.
As any lawyer should know, it is not the jury’s responsibility to send people to jail or even to think about punishment. That is the judge’s job.
It was just one of a series of missteps made by Trump’s legal team that could cost him dearly. The judge has questioned Blanche’s credibility and the most damaging witness for the defense may turn out to be one of their own.
Catherine Christian, a former member of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office which is bringing the case, said the defense had done what it could but was up against a prosecution that had reams of documentary evidence.
‘They also had Donald Trump as their client,’ she said. ‘In a normal world the client listens to you.’
In this case, she added, it appeared that Trump had reversed the relationship and was driving strategy decisions such as calling Robert Costello as the defense’s second and final witness.
He had offered to represent Michael Cohen in 2018, when Trump’s former fixer’s home and office were raided by the FBI. And the defense clearly hoped that his testimony would paint Cohen as a nonstop liar, undermining the only prosecution witness that directly tied Trump to the $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.
But his presence in the witness stand may have backfired, triggering the most explosive moment of the whole trial.
He quickly became irritated as prosecutors objected to a line of questioning. ‘jeez,’ he said. He then tried to clean things up by muttering that he wanted to ‘strike it’ from the record.
Trump is seen with his legal team at the defense table earlier this month. From left to right, Blanche, Trump, Emil Bove and Susan Necheles
Twelve jurors will decide Donald Trump’s fate after sitting through six weeks of testimony
Trump must remain inside the courthouse each day as the jury deliberates on a verdict
One of the worse missteps may have been the defense’s decision to call Robert Costello as a witness. He is seen here being cross examined by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger in a court sketch
But it only made matters worse.
‘If you don’t like my ruling, you don’t say, “jeez,” and you don’t say, “strike it,” because I’m the only one who can strike testimony in court,’ said Merchan.
A moment later, the judge added: ‘Are you staring me down?’ before ordering the court to be cleared.
That exchange happened with the jury out of the room. But before that they had seen a cantankerous witness (and a lawyer at that) showing contempt to the court.
Instead of undermining Cohen’s story that Trump was involved in the hush money payment, and testifying that the former lawyer had told him he had nothing on the then president, jurors may well have concluded that the key prosecution witness was telling the truth when he said there was something ‘shifty’ about Costello.
And that was why he did not tell him the truth about what he knew about Trump.
Christian said the decision to call him carried the fingerprints of Trump.
‘There is no way as a defense attorney in a case like this you call him … even if they probably didn’t know he was going to behave like a horse’s ass.’
Controlling witnesses has been only one of the difficulties facing Blanche and his team.
The decision to call lawyer Robert Costello as one of its two witnesses may have backfired
Judge Juan Merchan chastised Costello for showing his irritation at prosecution objections. ‘Are you staring me down?’ he asked him before clearing the court briefly
Blanche turned his career upside down to represent the most famous defendant in the country. He also acts for Trump in two of his three other cases.
He has gone from New York Democrat and a partner at a Wall Street law firm, to running his own firm as a Florida Republican, with a home not far from Mar-a-Lago.
He made his name as a federal prosecutor, working white collar crime at the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York.
But he has far less experience of working in New York state court, where Trump’s trial is taking place, and it is only the second time he has been on the defense team of a criminal trial.
Next to him Susan Necheles is a seasoned defense attorney, but Emil Bove, like Blanche, is also a veteran federal prosecutor.
At times Blanche has made minor slips, that may be a hangover from his previous life in federal courts. Throughout the case he has referred to prosecutors as ‘the government,’ when in fact in New York state court they represent the ‘the people of New York.’
Or it may be deliberate. His language and strategy appear to be straight from the Trump playbook. Referring to the government allows Trump to lay the finger of blame with President Joe Biden, for example.
At times the judge has undermined the defense in front of the jury, refusing their request for a sidebar conference.
Trump supporters and opponents wait for a verdict in the park across the street from the court
The jury is deliberating for a second day Thursday while the world awaits its verdict
Judge Juan Merchan has frequently expressed irritation with Trump’s defense team
At other times, he has ripped their arguments with the jury out of the room.
In a notable early hearing, Merchan expressed his irritation during a hearing on Trump’s repeated breaches of gag order, designed to protect witnesses.
Blanche tried to argue that one of the alleged violations was simply the sharing of someone else’s comments on social media. But it turned out that Trump, or someone handling his Truth Social account, had embellished the quote.
‘You’re losing all credibility with the court,’ Merchan told him.
At other times, Trump’s lawyers have struggled to control their own client. During Stormy Daniels’ testimony, Merchan asked them to speak to Trump after he had muttered obscenities in the courtroom.
But it may have been their decision to call lawyer Costello as a witness hat turns out to be their costliest mistake.
