On Thursday, the jury in Donald Trump’s criminal trial heard about schemes involving a surprising series of celebrities, including Tila Tequila, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and Hulk Hogan, as attorneys for Trump sought to discredit the latest witness for the prosecution.
I’m not a lawyer but isn’t this evidence simply hearsay?
Man, flooding the zone with santorum beats flooding it with shit I guess; must be looking to get the jury’s gag reflex going or something.
IANAL but it is also an odd tactic in my estimation. You don’t want the jury to start relying too much on taped evidence (hearsay or otherwise) if the evidence against one’s own client is not so good. In this particular use of taped evidence, it’s to impugn Davidson’s testimony to the jury. And, as a side benefit, confuse who is the worst bad guy in this trial. Ideally, the trial should be about the guilt or innocence of the defendant…but that’s not how human beings process social injury much of the time. Instead, people observationally look for what is fair and isn’t fair…which is the basis for why jury trials exist in the first place…though not the actual legal definition of what a US jury is supposed to do in a criminal trial.
I didn’t know those guys were lawyers.
It’s about the only play they have…“everyone involved is dirty, so Trump had to get a bit dirty in order to protect his interests, and really he didn’t do anything except ask for the problem to go away and Cohen did all the bad stuff”. The question is if the jury decides that’s enough excuse for breaking the law, or somehow that Trump didn’t break anything but Cohen did it all and Trump was just along for the ride.
The good thing is there are lawyers on the jury, they will see through the ploys of the defense. The prosecution seems to be playing this straight, no games, and juries usually appreciate it when lawyers aren’t trying to manipulate the jury. Cohen is up soon, we’ll see a lot of fireworks during his testimony.
The prosecution must play audio/video of all the times Trump claims he surrounds himself with “only the best people.”
Because, for what Flácido Dumgringo here really wants to accomplish, he always does obviously surround himself with exactly the best scumbags.
We’ve all seen it time and again, right?
The whole paragraph is a muddle of poor grammar. I read it and shook my head. There’s a much needed semicolon missing. It spiralled down from there.
Remember, it’s 2024.
Me neither (a lawyer), and I gather that “hearsay” gets pretty complicated in law, but I’d hazard that this is not hearsay. He is reporting what (he claims) she told him, not what (he claims) she told him she was told by someone else.
My head is spinning. I’m glad a made furniture for a living.
Donnie = Old “Yellow” Yeller!
Not offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, i.e., what Stormy was saying to Davidson. It goes instead to show that Davidson was interested in using “leverage” against trump.
Ok. Thanks tx! Now I understand.
Everybody needs an editor
So from the lawyers among us:
Was this a good or bad day for Biden, I mean, for TIFBG???
I don’t see that grouping Trump with the sleazy behavior of Charlie Sheen and other celebrities is much of a benefit to Trump. The Hollywood Access tape already established that Trump was a sleaze and worse with women. The difference is that none of the other sleazes was running for president in 2016 and trying to hide his sleazy behavior.
And again, if Trump had simply paid the money out of his own pocket, then he wouldn’t be on trial today. Getting others to pay constitues the election finance crime Trump covered up with his later Trump Org checks to Cohen.
That’s true but I can’t help but feel that something is being lost in how we communicate information. It’s not like I’m perfect in my use of grammar but I’m not a writer for TPM.
Anywho……back to what I was doing.
I would imagine at the deliberations, the jury will look at where the stories match up, and where they conflict. But none of the characters will come out looking pretty, its not that kind of case.
So far, Davidson’s matches with Peckers from what I can tell. I think the question is how much can they tie the payments to Trump at the end of the day.
“Everyone involved is a sleezebag, not just my client” is a terrible defense.
Which, ultimately, only goes to credibility in this context because it is entirely irrelevant to the falsification of the business records. I kinda look at shit like this as doing a fantastical flying leap from the 3-point line, swirling the ball behind the back and through the legs while in flight and then slamming it thru the basket, only to have the buzzer go off and lose by 1 point because you should have taken the shot from the 3-point line. All flash, no real substance…sizzle, no steak…but of course, they have no shot from the 3-point line here anyway. In this case, I have to believe that convincing the jury that everyone involved is a lowlife bottom feeder, just like the defendant (because guess who else besides that witness has spent all his life repeatedly making NDA agreements and paying off people he’s fucked etc.), isn’t going to be terribly effective at producing acquittal.
I kinda wish the response he gave at one point was something along the lines of “you know, I may be the guy who makes these deals, but I’m not the one who needs them”…and that’s the kind of turn of phrase I want to see in the closing argument when they cover his testimony and the lame attempt to attack him on that point.