The Trump Trial Opening Arguments, But With Jokes
"Trump's just sleazy" is the DEFENSE
Donald Trump’s trial could throw the election into more chaos than expected. There is no precedent for a campaign being run from jail; there is not even a ‘90s comedy with a 20% score on Rotten Tomatoes called President Con (though if there was, you know who’d be great? Owen Wilson). This trial will test our legal system, and also our patience, because we’re all sick of Trump and just want to watch Deal or No Deal Island, but stupid adulthood requires that we follow this trial at least a little.
Opening arguments began this week. The first day in court ended early because a juror had a dentist appointment. Seriously. They had an appointment for 3:00, the dentist’s office moved it up to 1:20, and the court said “Sure, we’ll cut off this nationally watched trial of an ex-president to accomodate the needs of Dr. Spinelli’s office.” Time will tell whether the jurors’ various doctors, babysitters, and Amazon Fresh delivery guys have enough flexibility in their schedules to allow this trial to conclude before the election.
Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass scored a major win for the prosecution right away. From the transcript:
Round one to Steinglass! Masterful stuff, Josh — you’re a modern Clarence Darrow. But don’t let the big bathroom win to cause you to lose focus — that’s the same mistake that Lionel Hutz made on The Simpsons in his case opposite Devil Ned Flanders.
Having secured the bladder integrity of all in the court, the prosecution set about making their case. Their starting point was a 2015 meeting between Trump, Michael Cohen, and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who has the porn-y-est name in this story despite the fact that it involves an actual porn star. In that meeting, the trio allegedly discussed how the Enquirer might help Trump, which provided the trial’s first bombshell: The National Enquirer might not be a trustworthy source of news. This was a shocking charge against the august publication that broke landmark stories like The 20 Worst Beach Bods of 2009 and I’m Being Haunted By Lucille Ball’s Ghost. In much the same way that Watergate testimony shed light on unsavory aspects of the Nixon White House, this trial has revealed that the publication that tried to tie Ted Cruz to the JFK assassination might be politically motivated.
The prosecution alleges that the trio discussed a “catch-and-kill” system that worked like this: If someone claimed to have dirt on Trump, the Enquirer would buy the story, not publish it, and Trump would pay them back. It’s like when a movie studio buys a script from a talented writer, doesn’t produce it, and instead makes Harry and the Hendersons 2: Squatch in the City. But this plan would have a nefarious purpose: It would seek to keep voters from thinking that Trump is a lecherous, philandering pervert. Even though that’s exactly how Trump portrayed himself for 30 years prior to the meeting.
The alleged plan worked well at first: Pecker is said to have squashed a story from a doorman who said that Trump fathered a child out of wedlock. That story could have been damning to Trump, because if he has an unknown child, then why does he keep running duds like Don Junior and Eric in front of the camera? The plan eventually faltered, though, because Pecker failed to account for the fact that Donald Trump is the cheapest bastard who ever walked God’s green Earth. After Pecker secured the rights to Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story for $150,000, Trump didn’t pay him back. The catch-and-kill plan floundered, though it would still prove to be by far the most effective program of Trump’s political life.
In October 2016, the Access Hollywood “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape was released. There is a question of whether the tape itself can be entered into evidence; the defense may argue that it could bias jurors who haven’t already seen it on the news, on social media, on late night talk shows, shown to them by a friend, in an airport, on the TV screen in a cab, played on the radio, discussed on a podcast, referenced in a rap lyric, or encountered in one of five billion other scenarios. The day after the tape was released, Pecker learned that Stormy Daniels was willing to sell her story for $130,000 (not $150,000 like with Karen McDougal — perhaps she was running a Columbus Day discount). This time, the money was put up by Michael Cohen. The Trump Organization referred to Mr. Cohen as a lawyer, but a key point in the prosecution’s case is that he was not really a lawyer. They call him a “fixer”, though other accurate terms might include “sucker”, “patsy”, “fall guy”, “mega-chump”, “stooge supreme”, or “His Gullibleness, High Regent of all Dipshits”.
Cohen allegedly paid $130,000 to Daniels. And in roughly the next year, the Trump Organization allegedly paid him back. And here’s where the alleged fraud comes in: Invoices sent to Cohen said that the payments were for legal services. The prosecution described the reason for the deception thusly:
For the record: You absolutely can write “reimbursement for porn star payoff” in the memo line. People usually don’t because it doesn’t look good. But you can write anything you want — here are some deductions in I Might Be Wrong’s 2023 tax filing:
The prosecution’s story involves a lot of shady dealing, but almost all of what they describe is legal. You can cheat on your wife with a porn star, you can pay that porn star hush money, and you can lie your fat ass off about the whole thing. The alleged crime is the fraudulent record-keeping. If the Trump Organization had written “reimbursement for porn star payoff” in the ledger, there would be no case. If Trump had paid Daniels himself, there would be no case. This case only exists because Trump is a cheap, shortsighted moron whose dick does the thinking because his brain is MIA, and who might once again become our chief executive even though his rank incompetence is the only fact not in dispute in this case.
The defense’s case is essentially “Trump doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.” It’s a strong case! Their story begins in 2017, when Trump put his business in a supposedly-blind trust. You may remember this episode, because Trump fought the blind trust with the ferocity of a barn cat being forced to take a bath.1 But now, that trust is key to his defense: His team says that the shoddy recordkeeping happened below Trump’s level and without his knowledge. The implication is that Trump — ever the maven for detail — would have demanded accurate invoices, but he was unable to apply his trademark penchant for precision and honesty because of those damned Democrats.
The defense’s second point is that being a mega-sleaze is not illegal. Trump’s lawyers frequently describe his actions using the word “scheme”, which is a bit like having your realtor list your house as a “3 bed/2 bath shit pile”. So, not in dispute: Whether the ex-president is a manipulative asshole who used his media contacts to squelch negative stories. In dispute: whether he is responsible for inaccurate descriptions on invoices. This is a strange case.
Day one ended on an up note for the prosecution:
Bathroom breaks promised, bathroom breaks delivered. The prosecution is on a roll. Though whether they can ride the momentum of the bathroom break coup to a felony conviction of an ex-president still remains to be seen.
Remembering the Weather Underground, a Columbia Protest Movement Gone Maximally Wrong
***Almost everything in this article comes from Bryan Burrough’s excellent book: “Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence”. In addition to the Weather Underground, the book covers groups including the Black Liberation Army, the Puerto Rican separatist group FALN, and the Symbionese Liberation Army. I highly recommend it.
Also, the trust wasn’t really blind, but let’s not re-live 2017.
I'm no great fan of Trump, but this really seems like a transparent example of "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime". Being than less than maximally honest on the contents of a line item on an invoice worth less than a quarter million must be an infraction that literally every establishment Democrat is guilty of, but it's impossible to imagine any of them getting dragged through the mud like this.
I desperately want to be alive to know what the national narrative about this whole shitshow is 50 years from now. I suspect many people will not believe the details could possibly have happened. Upside; no future president has to worry about falling to the bottom of the list. I think that we've got the floor established.