Bragg Manhattan DA charges tfg? Hush money. tfg “INDICATED!”

[MN-Skeptic]

Trump's lawyers did ask for a mistrial. Updates re this from Adam Klasfeld -

Adam Klasfeld
@KlasfeldReports

Judge:

"As a threshold matter, Mr. Blanche, I agree that there were some things that better be left unsaid." [...] The witness was a "little difficult to control."

Judge:

At this point, I do not believe that a mistrial is warranted.

Judge:

"I will also note that I was surprised that there weren't more objections" coming from the defense table.

He says that he objected, "sua sponte" (of his own accord), to some of the testimony. The defense needs to take some responsibility, he says.

Trump's attorney Susan Necheles says they objected to her testimony to begin with, and the judge rejected their request.

Merchan interjects — that's not accurate. He granted some aspects of their objection, rejected others.

Justice Merchan:

"I do not believe we have reached the point that a mistrial is on order."

He also notes, "The more times a story has been changed," the more fodder the defense has for cross-examination.

[W. Kevin Vicklund]

Uh, he has in his pants the thing that will prove that Ms Daniels is lying. Does he have the courage?

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if a dozen jurors cried out in horror and were suddenly silenced.

[pipistrelle]

Isn’t it their duty to object to unnecessary or inappropriate testimony? Sounds like the judge expected them to and would have agreed. Are they trying for a mistrial as in delay delay delay? Is that ethical?

[Rolodex]

Isn’t it their duty to object to unnecessary or inappropriate testimony? Sounds like the judge expected them to and would have agreed. Are they trying for a mistrial as in delay delay delay? Is that ethical?

I'm sure they got an explosion from trump at the break. Did he say anything to reporters or has he figured out he needs just to STFU when reporters are around (like deleting his Truth this morning).

Defense saying this is inappropriate, not relevant and serves to just embarrass the defendant. MAYBE THE DEFENDANT SHOULDN'T DO THINGS HE'S EMBARRASSED FOR PEOPLE TO KNOW ABOUT. What a concept.

[bob]

Isn’t it their duty to object to unnecessary or inappropriate testimony? Sounds like the judge expected them to and would have agreed. Are they trying for a mistrial as in delay delay delay? Is that ethical?

Yes and no/"it depends."

Yes, a party is expected to object to inappropriate testimony. But judges may always interpose their own "objections."

An objection isn't a necessary requisite for a mistrial motion. But, real-world, it helps because it signals to everyone that you believe the case is entering mistrial territory, which in turn creates the opportunity to modulate.

To the extent the defense team was trying to sandbag a mistrial, the judge called them on that. It may have been a questionable tactic, but I wouldn't say unethical.

Without having watched the testimony, there may have been a good tactical reason not to object. If the witness was coming off haughty or otherwise sinking her credibility, then the "never interrupt an enemy making a mistake" maxim could apply.

[sterngard friegen]

I have some personal information about what Stormy is testifying to now.

I found out from one of my lawfirm associates that Stormy was keeping her horse at his Mother's house. His Mother was a good friend of mine for 25 years at that time and lived a few miles away. I called her and told her that from what I had seen and heard Michael Avenatti was doing Stormy no good and that if Stormy needed a lawyer to extricate herself from him I would help pro bono and anonymously.

After that phone call Avenatti filed his defamation lawsuit against Trump. On the old Fogbow here I called that a huge mistake. When Katie Phang, then an occasional "expert" on MSNBC, gushed at what a great idea it was, I criticized her here as well.

A week after my convervsation I got a call from my old friend. She said she had talked to Stormy and that while Stormy said that what was happening was not at all what she had expected, she was afraid to leave Avenatti.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I will not recount the slings and arrows sent my way at the old Fogbow when I warned, essentially on the day he entered the scene, that Avenatti was very very bad news.

[Slim Cognito]

I remember.

[jemcanada2]

I remember.

I remember too. I didn’t sling any arrows though. We ignore Stern’s wisdom at our own peril!

[Maybenaut]

Isn’t it their duty to object to unnecessary or inappropriate testimony? Sounds like the judge expected them to and would have agreed. Are they trying for a mistrial as in delay delay delay? Is that ethical?

Yes and no/"it depends."

Yes, a party is expected to object to inappropriate testimony. But judges may always interpose their own "objections."

An objection isn't a necessary requisite for a mistrial motion. But, real-world, it helps because it signals to everyone that you believe the case is entering mistrial territory, which in turn creates the opportunity to modulate.

To the extent the defense team was trying to sandbag a mistrial, the judge called them on that. It may have been a questionable tactic, but I wouldn't say unethical.

Without having watched the testimony, there may have been a good tactical reason not to object. If the witness was coming off haughty or otherwise sinking her credibility, then the "never interrupt an enemy making a mistake" maxim could apply.

Also, too, that’s why judges are reluctant to shut down objectionable but un-objected-to testimony — the other side might have its own reasons for wanting it in.

[Foggy]

The quadfectee wasn't nodding off to sleep today, you betcha. He managed to stay awake the whole time.

[Dr. Ken]

The quadfectee wasn't nodding off to sleep today, you betcha. He managed to stay awake the whole time.

Trump got a taste of what he did at the Clinton debate.

[p0rtia]

Yeah, the humiliation aspect was great.

That said, color me unhappy at the extra three hours of testimony from Story that was so icky and unrelated that it drowned out the two or three times she verified her story and proved fuckhead a liar.

IANAL, BIIW, direct would have lasted an hour. Tops.

Way to cloud a crisp case (IMO).

[chancery]

https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/sta ... 639801519

Mueller, She Wrote
@MuellerSheWrote
I think it's important that we don't miss what Stormy is testifying to. He invited her to dinner. There was no dinner. She wanted to leave. He stood between her and the door. He told her that her career and future depended on her having sex with him. He didn't use a condom.

https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/17 ... 111361893

Lisa Rubin
@lawofruby

NEW: The ongoing Trump criminal trial is the fourth Trump trial in the last 12 months—and it’s my fourth too. And after watching dozens of witnesses, I’m afraid the more they change, the more things stay the same. 1/

I’ve watched a nearly 80-year-old E. Jean Carroll, who successfully accused Trump of sexual assault and defamation, fend off the implication that she was lying because she never called the police and didn’t tell her story for two decades plus. 2/

And now I’ve seen an adult film star more comfortable with her stage name than her given one similarly attacked for not calling the police or telling those closest to her after she was threatened in a parking lot 7 years before she went public with her whole story. 3/

I’ve listened as E. Jean Carroll occasionally rambled about what the defense and sometimes even the judge considered trivial details of her assault, even as those details were vivid reminders to her that what Trump denied was her lived truth. 4/

And today I heard Stormy Daniels struggle to subsume her own truth within court-ordered “guardrails” that excluded her extraneous or just damning memories, even though to her, they prove what happened in a hotel penthouse was as real as it was surreal. 5/

But I forgot how misogyny and sexual trauma — even after an encounter devoid of physical or verbal threats, as Stormy acknowledged today — can turn radically different women into vessels for similar testimony that reverberates from one courtroom to the next. FIN.

[Ben-Prime]

The quadfectee wasn't nodding off to sleep today, you betcha. He managed to stay awake the whole time.

Trump got a taste of what he did at the Clinton debate.

One would think they had some sort of device that could measure every time he wanted to lurch forward in his chair and shout "WRONG!" and sent him some kind of electric jolt.

[raison de arizona]

tfg is a child that can't contain himself.

[MN-Skeptic]

Kaitlan Collins
@kaitlancollins

Notable moment in court today where the judge told the defense he could hear Trump cursing:

Judge Merchan: "I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually and that's contemptuous...I am speaking to you here at the bench because I don't want to embarrass him."

[Kendra]

After a 10 minute screed, Hannity is now talking to Alina Habba about today's testimony

[Resume18]

I am speaking to you here at the bench because I don't want to embarrass him.

I would say here now, your honor, please embarrass him, but at this point, I no longer think that's possible. Further, to his cultists, that's a feature. If he is re-elected, we are fucked.

[andersweinstein]

I just learned the New York Times is publishing the trial transcripts in pdf form. This looks to obviate the need to rely on the yeoman services of Shad Riley (85 followers including me) to convert them.

Root page for the transcripts:
https://www.nytimes.com/article/trump-hush-money-trial-transcripts.html

Page for latest, May 6, 2024:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/nyregion/trump-hush-money-trial-transcript-may-6.html

And a direct link to the May 6 pdf
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/6df39b47cb7d8788/5d31eb8c-full.pdf

I don't know if the paywall is going to be an issue for fogbowers. I assume the pages are subject to the paywall restrictions, but suspect the direct link is not. I can continue to post links if desired (as, I expect, could many others).

[Ben-Prime]

I just learned the New York Times is publishing the trial transcripts in pdf form. This looks to obviate the need to rely on the yeoman services of Shad Riley (85 followers including me) to convert them.

Root page for the transcripts:
https://www.nytimes.com/article/trump-hush-money-trial-transcripts.html

Page for latest, May 6, 2024:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/nyregion/trump-hush-money-trial-transcript-may-6.html

And a direct link to the May 6 pdf
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/6df39b47cb7d8788/5d31eb8c-full.pdf

I don't know if the paywall is going to be an issue for fogbowers. I assume the pages are subject to the paywall restrictions, but suspect the direct link is not. I can continue to post links if desired (as, I expect, could many others).

I'm a subscriber and if folks are willing to put up with time zone differences (I'm currently in about the same time zone as Bangkok, and will be for another 9-10 weeks), I might could do some gift linking as we go.

[andersweinstein]

Lisa Rubin
@lawofruby
...

I also found that a very eloquent thread from Lisa Rubin, highglighting the sometimes overlooked metoo aspect of Daniels' encounter that resonates beyond the salacious details. TPM's Kovensky also noted this and here's another comment in this vein from NYT's Jessica Bennett:

The Darker Side of Stormy Daniels's Testimony

► Show Spoiler

The Darker Side of Stormy Daniels’s Testimony
By Jessica Bennett

He promised her dinner … but they didn’t have dinner. He told her she reminded him of his daughter … then stripped down to his boxers and a T-shirt while she was in the bathroom. He said he could help her career with a spot on his TV show … then scolded her, “I thought you were serious,” when she tried to leave.

To be clear, Stormy Daniels has never accused Donald Trump of anything but a payoff. She has maintained that the sex she says they had in his Lake Tahoe hotel suite in 2006 was consensual, albeit unenjoyable. But as I sat in the packed overflow room in the criminal courthouse where Trump is being tried and listened to Daniels testify about the sexual encounter she has often joked about, the whole thing sounded a lot darker, and murkier, than it had before.

Daniels took the stand on Tuesday and spoke confidently. She gestured with her hands, at times joking, and at other times she spoke so quickly that the judge had to ask her to slow down. But despite an agreement by the prosecution to not present “salacious” details about the sexual encounter itself, things took a bleak turn when Daniels described what came immediately before and after it.

Trump was not threatening during the sexual encounter, she testified, though he was standing between her and the door. She did not say no to sex with him, but she also didn’t consent to him not using a condom. She kept in contact with him after, she said — even going to another hotel room with him another time — because she wanted to expand her career, and he was dangling an opportunity to appear on “The Apprentice.”

And yet at times, the words Daniels used to describe the encounter with Trump were reminiscent of so many of the other stories of women who have come forward to accuse him of sexual assault: She said she “blacked out,” then lay naked, staring up at the ceiling. She “felt like the room spun in slow motion,” and that the blood left her hands and feet. When it was over, she said, she fumbled with her shoes — gold strappy heels she had trouble fastening because her hands were shaking so hard.

Ultimately she blamed herself: “I just thought, ‘Oh my God, what did I misread to get here?’”

[Luke]

I remember too also Stern, it was excellent advice.

I'm sure EVERY Fogbowzer has been wondering:What does Stormy Daniels have in common with The Titular Mama June? It turns out that Stormy's manager was Friend of The Fogbow Gina Rodriguez, who also managed The Titular Mama June! Gina knows about Fogbow, knows it's The Fogbow's Favourite Show, and likes our posts about her.


Thanks for the NYTimes links for transcripts, it worked for me without a paywall. Here are other resources from NYCourts:

Luke Johnson @Orly_licious 11h
#TrumpTrial Transcripts & Evidence 5/6/24: https://pdfs.nycourts.gov/PeopleVs.DTru ... 5-06-2024/
Overview: https://ww2.nycourts.gov/press/index.shtml
Transcripts: https://pdfs.nycourts.gov/PeopleVs.DTru ... anscripts/
Evidence: https://pdfs.nycourts.gov/PeopleVs.DTru ... /Evidence/
#FalsifiedDocuments #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #TrumpCriminalTrial #PeoplevDTrump

[Foggy]

So did Stormy's direct testimony end yesterday, and today begins with cross-examination? I don't have time to read the transcripts (but thanks again for the links, andersweinstein).

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Wednesdays are no trial days. Cross begins tomorrow.
Karen Freidman Agnilio on Legal AF thought Stephanie Clifford’s testimony was on point especially all the details of the encounter. She compared it to testimony she would get from children in sex abuse cases. She said this case is about credibility- Clifford v. Turnip. The more details described, the more believable it happened.

[Foggy]

Wednesdays are no trial days. Cross begins tomorrow.

Ah, most excellent. So today the quadfectee can focus on violating the gag order some more. I am anticipate.