“So that’s not true? That is not true?”
The judge presiding over the Manhattan criminal trial of Donald J. Trump had just cut off the former president’s lawyer, Todd Blanche. Mr. Blanche was in the middle of defending a social media post in which his client wrote that a statement that had been public for years had “JUST FOUND”!
Mr. Blanche had already acknowledged during Tuesday’s hearing that Mr. Trump’s post was false. But Judge Juan M. Merchan was not satisfied.
“I need to understand,” Judge Merchan said, looking down at the attorney from the bench, “what I’m dealing with.”
The question of what is true – or at least what can be proven – is at the heart of every trial. But this particular defendant, accused by the Manhattan district attorney’s office of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal, has spent five decades spitting out thousands and thousands of words, sometimes in a matter of minutes, sometimes in the same breath, without each other to worry about consequences of what he said.
Mr. Trump has treated his own words as disposable items, intended for one-time use and not necessarily indicative of deeply held beliefs. And his tendency to stack phrases on top of each other has often worked to his advantage, amusing or engaging his supporters — sometimes inspiring threats and even violence — while at the same time distracting, infuriating or simply disorienting his critics and opponents.
If at the hearing Mr. Blanche seemed unconcerned about telling a criminal judge that his client had said something wrong, perhaps that was simply because the routine had become so familiar to him.
Mr. Trump’s longstanding habit of single-mindedly spreading his awareness — on social media, on television, to newspaper reporters, to rally attendees — can now be blamed on him by prosecutors and a judge who has real power over him.
Prosecutors have asked the judge to sentence the former president criminally for violating a gag order prohibiting him from attacking witnesses, which they said was necessary because his previous attacks “resulted in credible threats of violence, harassment and.” had led to intimidation”. Judge Merchan’s questioning of the veracity of what Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social was one of several episodes that highlighted how constant public speaking – which has made Mr. Trump a fixture in the world tabloid-turned-reality-TV-star – has been working against him lately.
Ultimately, the case could threaten not only Mr. Trump’s freedom, but also the central tenets of a lifelong ethos that is pervasive in the former president’s talk: a comfortable disregard for the truth, outright denial of anything harmful and a dogged insistence on his opponents always act with bad intentions.
The consequences so far have been minimal. Prosecutors told the judge at Tuesday’s contempt hearing that they are not seeking prison time for now for comments aimed primarily at two key witnesses: Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer and personal lawyer, and Ms. Daniels , the porn star who claimed to have had an affair with Mr. Trump and whom Mr. Cohen paid $130,000 for his silence weeks before the 2016 election.
The threat of a fine affects Mr. Trump less. But when he faced a similar sentence in a civil fraud trial late last year, he slowed his attacks on a court official after the penalties increased.
Mr. Trump succinctly explained his mentality when he ran for president in 2016. When Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell asked him why he responded to each slight, the candidate replied: “I have to defend myself.”
Mr. Trump’s words — which helped propel him to the White House during dozens of rallies and interviews — often worked against him once he was there. In July 2016, his public call for Russia to “find” Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails from her private server shortly after he officially became the Republican nominee became part of the investigation into whether his campaign had colluded with the Russians to to support him in his choice.
Mr. Trump was also under investigation for obstruction of justice as part of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s broader investigation into Russian interference. One of those possible obstructions was a series of tweets in April 2018 in which he stated that Mr. Cohen, his personal lawyer who was under investigation, would never attack him. (Mr. Cohen eventually did so; he is expected to be a key witness in Mr. Trump’s criminal trial, and prosecutors have proposed entering those tweets as evidence.)
As sitting president, Mr. Trump was protected from prosecution; he was only confronted with a detailed report from Mr. Müller.
Those protections fell away when he lost the presidency and left the White House. But Mr. Trump has not changed his approach to public life, and it seems quite unlikely that he ever will.
Mr. Trump has long confused legal problems with public relations problems, viewing the legal kind as easily confused with explanations or distractions.
Since the indictment was unveiled by District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg in April 2023, Mr. Trump and his advisers have intertwined legal and policy responses. They successfully called on Republicans to defend the former president and baselessly claimed that Mr. Bragg, a Democrat in a predominantly Democratic county, was acting on orders from Mr. Trump’s political opponent, President Biden.
They have also tried to use political arguments to justify Mr. Trump’s actions in this case. During Tuesday’s gag order hearing, Mr. Blanche sought to excuse a series of verbal attacks by Mr. Trump on Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels. He argued that the former president’s attacks were responding to political attacks from his opponents – who happened to be witnesses in the case.
The judge didn’t believe it. He told Mr. Blanche that in each example he wanted to ask, “What exactly is your client responding to?” When Mr. Blanche did not have the information requested, Judge Merchan reminded him of the purpose of the hearing.
“I will decide whether your client feels disrespect or not,” he said, adding: “I keep asking you for a specific example, but I don’t get an answer.”
Judge Merchan has not yet ruled on whether Trump should be found in contempt. While prosecutors have argued that Mr. Trump is “angling” to be arrested, some people close to Mr. Trump privately insist that, for all his bravado, he is desperate to avoid prison time.
Yet Mr. Trump has continued to make comments that test the limits of what he can say. Two days after the hearing, prosecutors filed four new cases in which they said he violated confidentiality.
Two were there during political interviews. One was in the hallway, just outside Judge Merchan’s courtroom, where cameras are stationed to capture Mr. Trump making speeches before and after court hearings. There, Mr. Trump again criticized Mr. Cohen’s credibility.
In response, Judge Merchan has scheduled a new hearing for this week in which the former president’s statements will once again be in the spotlight: dissected, considered and ultimately judged.
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2024-04-28 09:03:50
www.nytimes.com