Donald Trump has two modes: attack, and pout when the attack doesn't land. But as a criminal defendant for the first time in his life, he is having to acclimate himself to an environment where he can’t make or break the rules – and where punishment for the kind of brash defiance that plays well on Truth Social could land him behind bars.
The adjustment process will no doubt be difficult. On Monday, Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the first ever prosecution of a former president, made it abundantly clear to Trump and his legal team that it will be he and the New York criminal justice system calling the shots from here on out.
Particularly striking was an exchange Monday afternoon between Merchan and Trump lawyer Todd Blanche. Prosecutors had drawn attention to Trump’s social media posts attacking his former personal attorney Michael Cohen and adult film star Stormy Daniels, the woman whose silence he is accused of illicitly buying off with a $130,000 payment ahead of the 2016 election. Trump, his attorney argued, had fired off the posts in question because they had disparaged him first.
Merchan, who earlier prohibited such attacks on witnesses, instructed Blanche to come back with a written argument as to why Trump shouldn’t be held in contempt (prosecutors want the posts deleted and the former president fined).
“When you respond, direct me to any portion of the original gag order or the subsequent gag order that says there is an exception to the gag order if Mr. Trump feels he is being attacked,” Merchan said, as reported by Business Insider. “I don’t recall inserting that anywhere in either gag order.”
Merchan also several times ruled in Trump’s favor, such as barring prosecutors, at least for now, from submitting as evidence as the “Access Hollywood” tape in which the presumptive Republican presidential nominee boasted of sexually assaulting women.
“I think he is no nonsense,” Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor, said of Merchan in a Monday night appearance on MSNBC. He pointed, in particular, to the judge’s ruling that the defense team must submit, in just 24 hours, the full list of exhibits they intend to present at trial, rejecting pleas for more time by noting that Trump’s lawyers had repeatedly found a way to multitask and rapidly filed numerous, lengthy motions before.
“What the judge did is [say]... ‘no more games, if you do not produce every piece of evidence you intend to use, it’s precluded,’” Weissmann noted. “I thought that was a very strong, definitive ruling by the judge. So I think he is going to run a very tight ship. He strikes me as somebody as in the mold of Judge Kaplan, the judge who had the two E. Jean Carroll cases, so I think we’re going to see a very efficient trial being conducted here.”
The E. Jean Carroll cases did not turn out well for the former president, who was twice found to have defamed a woman he had raped. Efficiency is decidedly not the preference of the criminal defendant, whose go-to legal strategy has been to delay and delay again his day in court.
That strategy has worked so far in Florida, where Trump’s classified documents case is being overseen by a federal judge that he himself appointed. In New York, by contrast, the judge appears committed to a speedy trial – a fact that’s already causing apparent distress.
On Monday, reporters in the Manhattan courtroom witnessed Trump confronting Blanche, his lead attorney, and demanding he push back harder on Merchan’s 24-hour deadline for that list of exhibits.
Catherine A. Christian, a trial lawyer who previously worked for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, told MSNBC that the exhibits issue is unlikely to be a major factor in the case. But the apparent quarrel between Trump and his lawyers points to another important question: Can the guy behave himself? And that – throwing tantrums in a courtroom where juror will be present – could have a much greater impact on the verdict, with legal experts noting that Trump’s habit of acting out when he doesn't get his way will not play well with those charged with judging his guilt (a fact his own own lawyers have no doubt tried to impart).
“It’s going to be a long trial for Mr. Blanche because [Trump] is out of control,” Christian said. “He is one of those clients that you hope to not have because, if he’s acting this way now, he’s going to do it throughout the trial.”
