Ankush Khardori is a senior writer for POLITICO Magazine and a former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, where he specialized in financial fraud and white-collar crime. He has also worked in the private sector on complex commercial litigation and white-collar corporate defense. His column, Rules of Law, offers an unvarnished look at national legal affairs and the political dimensions of the law at a moment when the two are inextricably linked..
All the drama on Tuesday was in the courtroom, not outside the courtroom. It was a stark difference from Monday, where the testimony was kind of dry yet important to the prosecution, but all the drama was seemingly playing outside with Trump’s comments about the gag order. What was it that exactly frustrated the judge? There were a couple of lines in Daniels’ testimony that implied that their encounter may not have been consensual, when she said she blacked out. Ironically, that testimony or that allusion is much more prejudicial against Trump than the normal defendant because he has actuallyThe judge didn’t really explain that, but I think going into the hearing, he had made clear that he didn’t think that there needed to be a lot of detail provided.
I think you can actually argue that it shouldn’t matter much for the outcome of his case whether this event happened the way Stormy Daniels described it or not, or to some extent whether it may not have happened at all. I don’t really quite see how that figures entirely into the merits of the case. All that said, what is Trump doing through all of this? What is he physically doing during this very strange testimony?I could see that he wasn’t really looking at Daniels. The way the courtroom is constructed, it’s a little bit odd. I think it’s a bit hard to see the person in the witness box and on the witness stand from the defendant’s table, at least where Trump is sitting. The judge’s bench is kind of in the way.
It was later raised at sidebar. The judge talked to Todd Blanche, Trump’s attorney, and said, “Your client is audibly cursing, and that’s contemptuous, and I’m not gonna stand for it. Where is Melania in all of this? She’s been keeping a low profile, but ideally, I would think if you’re running for reelection, your wife — the former first lady — would be a prominent surrogate.Melania continues to be a mystery. Nobody is ever really quite sure how she spends her day. She’s incredibly private and spends a lot of time with her family. Her mother recently died, and Barron Trump is going to be heading off to college.
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