On Wednesday, the judge presiding over Donald Trump’s fraud trial in New York grappled with a problem that the political world has struggled to solve for decades: how to rein in the ex-president’s rage, tantrums, and inclination to break all the laws.
Four upcoming criminal cases will add a controversial twist to the election year, and on an extraordinary day in court, Trump may have had a preview of the future when he was asked to take the stand to explain his conduct.
New York’s judge put Trump in his place by telling him he wasn’t “credible,” reversing the usual power dynamics with the president and serving as a sobering reminder that no one is immune to the rule of law.
Trump’s standing as a defendant means he can’t do and say everything he wants, a factor that won’t just play into the present trial but looks to be the start of a trend as the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP nomination confronts multiple trials next year.
Although Trump’s skill at stirring popular fury, inventing alternative realities, and obscuring the truth means that even two impeachments and an electoral defeat might not have deterred him, the fact-based atmosphere of the courtroom perhaps might.
Donald Trump’s simmering rage
Throughout much of this fraud trial, Trump has given the impression of being on fire. If convicted, his eponymous empire may be banned from doing business in New York. Even before the trial began, Judge Arthur Engoron concluded that Trump, his company, and his adult sons had cheated banks and insurance companies by exaggerating the worth of Trump’s properties. The former president has appealed this decision. On Wednesday, however, Trump’s anger appeared to boil over in a series of odd occurrences.
It first appeared that Trump, in breach of a gag order, made a new attack on the judge’s clerk. When asked about Engoron’s partisanship, he told reporters that Engoron was accompanied by a “very partisan person sitting alongside him.” After a hearing to investigate the remark, the judge fined the ex-president $10,000 for violating a limited gag order that barred him from making threats against court personnel. Trump said Cohen, his former fixer and the man sitting next to the judge during Cohen’s testimony against Trump, was the target of the charge.
This wasn’t the first time Trump had to pay a penalty for breaking the silence. He was fined $5,000 last week for failing to remove a social media post in which he insulted Engoron’s clerk.
A rebuke of the sort expressed by Engoron, “Don’t do it again or it’ll be worse,” is something Trump, the dominant figure in every room for decades, rarely hears.
For someone as wealthy as Trump, the fines are chump change, even if his fortune is not exactly as vast as he claims (which is the crux of the argument). These sums are hardly likely to silence a former president who is accustomed to getting his way. However, this is only a preview of the potential fallout from the multiple trials that will become intertwined with his presidential election campaign over the next year (regarding his business, attempts to overturn the 2020 election, hoarding of classified documents, and a hush money payment to an adult film star). In every open legal matter, Trump maintains his innocence.
After the judge refused to dismiss the case based on Cohen’s allegedly conflicting evidence over whether his former boss directed him to exaggerate financial figures, Trump again resorted to histrionics and stormed out of the courtroom. Trump abruptly announced, “I’m leaving,” as he walked out the courtroom’s massive doors. Contrary to the Trump team’s assertion that Cohen was the most important witness, Engoron flatly denied the petition. “There’s enough evidence in this case to fill this courtroom,” he said. (As AWN’s Jeremy Herb and Lauren del Valle reported from the courtroom, Cohen later explained that Trump didn’t ask him directly but he indicated it by speaking like a “mob boss.”
Trump is reportedly a lawyer’s worst nightmare due to his habit of delivering running commentary to reporters throughout the non-televised proceedings. This dynamic may recur in his future tests, putting him in an even more precarious position. But his actions are in line with his strategy of influencing public opinion through his prominence. Trump is holding his own public trial in the hallway outside the courtroom as the lawyers try the case inside. This is a case of us being railroaded, Trump stated on Wednesday. We may all agree that “this is a very unfair thing.”
The traditions of the court and the limitations of the law are insensitive to emotional and political arguments, so Trump’s tantrums won’t help him get his way like they did when he was a business mogul and president. AWN senior legal expert Elie Honig stated that Trump’s legal team is within their rights to conduct a vigorous cross-examination of Cohen, but that inconsistent testimony does not automatically kill a case. “It doesn’t mean game over, let’s go home,” Honig reassured the group.
The evolution of legal defences into a political movement
Trump’s counternarrative serves to buttress his larger campaign strategy of portraying himself as a victim of President Joe Biden’s exploitation of the legal system to destroy his 2024 presidential bid. Because of this, he has been able to raise more money for his legal defence and further extend his lead in the Republican primary. Trump’s campaign challengers are drowned out and he maintains media attention thanks to his controversial one-liners.
Judges besides Engoron are puzzling over how to deal with Trump’s habitual rule violation. Washington, DC Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over a trial for alleged federal election sabotage, is experiencing similar difficulties. To protect witnesses, court personnel, and prosecutors from Trump’s social media insults, the judge has temporarily halted her earlier gag order pending briefs on his plea to pause the order while his appeal plays out.
But Chutkan had already told Trump that there are restrictions on what he can say about a case before he imposed the measure. In court earlier this month, Chutkan told Trump’s attorneys, “He does not have the right to say and do exactly what he pleases.” As a response to the controversy, the former president’s camp has claimed that Chutkan and the Justice Department under the Biden administration are trying to silence him in order to stifle his presidential campaign.
On Wednesday, Trump received unexpected backing from an unlikely source. An amicus brief was submitted on behalf of the former president by the ACLU and its DC branch, contending that the scope of the injunction violates his First Amendment rights. Prosecutors requested Chutkan to reinstate the ban in a petition on Wednesday, citing a Truth Social post by Trump regarding former chief of staff Mark Meadows as evidence that Trump had resumed discussing possible witnesses in social media posts.
Through his whole business and political career, Trump has proven that he can do and say whatever he wants. His sense of entitlement, which disregards established norms, is now the cornerstone of his defence.
Trump’s legal team, for example, is contending that the ex-president is immune from prosecution for conduct that occurred while he was in office because his efforts to overturn the election were within the scope of his official duties. Jack Smith, the special counsel, has objected, saying that the president may commit several crimes while in office and never face consequences.
President Trump regularly claimed there were no limits on his behaviour while in office. At a coronavirus briefing in the White House in April 2020, Trump said, “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be.” Furthermore, in 2019, he gave a speech in Washington where he incorrectly stated that the Constitution, which was meant to limit monarchical power, actually allowed him absolute power. “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” he declared.
But Trump’s weak constitutional arguments imply that a second term that he has vowed will be about “retribution” would be even more lawless than his first, should he win back the presidency in November 2024. He has already threatened to go after his opponents in court.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), who virtually gave up her career to oppose Trump, told AWN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday’s “State of the Union” that “there will be no guardrails.”
For the time being, at least, Trump is discovering that the law provides limits. Everything is up in the air, however, if he wins the presidency again.
