Trump Trial Day 18: 99 Peenballons

Wang-shaped balloons flapped while Todd Blanche flailed.

Thursday was supposed to be the last day of testimony in the Trump trial, last chance for Trump romance!

But as it turned out, Trump defense lawyer That Crying Little Shit Todd Blanche was unable to finish his random, pointless questioning after more than five hours. And now the defense wants to call a witness after all — Bradley Smith, former commissioner of the FEC — to tell the jury about campaign finance law, even though the case is about state law. But testimony shall resume Monday, with closing arguments Tuesday.

There’s no court Friday, so Trump can attend Barron’s graduation from the William I. Koch Beauty Academy, then skip his afterparty to hold a rally.

Thursday, Trump actually wasn’t lonely in court, for a change. The bowels of Lower Manhattan were all a-rumble with about 25 Trump GOP diehards, noisily auditioning for the privilege of being the rapist fraudster’s vice president. A real who’s who of lowlifes, of course: Reps. Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert (who just one week ago could not be bothered to show up in court for her own child), Andy Biggs, Eli Crane, Mike Waltz, Bob Good, Diana Harshbarger, Ralph Norman, Michael Cloud, Anna Luna … so many that down in DC the House Oversight Committee didn’t have enough people for its scheduled Hunter Biden dick pic session! The party of law and order and fiscal responsibility thought it was more prudent to preen for Fox News, yell their gag-order-violating noises on the courthouse steps, and glare at Michael Cohen, rrr, grr! 

Will they come back next Monday and Tuesday too?

Summed up PA’s John Fetterman, who showed up to work at his job like a person with a job is supposed to:  “It was like ‘The Hunger Games’ of simp. It’s like, ‘I’m gonna simp’ and, like, ‘I’ll simp harder.’ And, of course, they all have a uniform and it’s kinda sad.’”

Indeed, and yet that big ass-kissing party was still not enough for the Defendant. Where was the Rod-Stewart-in-Rio sized crowd of angry protestors he’d hoped to see?

“Outside is like Fort Knox, you can’t get within three blocks of this place if you’re not a civilian,” he groused before court to the civilians passing by, and also to 99 luftballons shaped like stubby penises with pictures of Justices Juan Merchan and Arthur Engoron and prosecutors Jack Smith and Alvin Bragg taped to them, a display that the organizers of the Castro Street Pride Parade would call over-the-top. They had balls and everything!

Was the spectacle courtesy of some right-wingers trying to call these lawyers and judges dicks? Or was it a left-wing statement about a certain person’s allegedly stumpy equipment, and/or the lack of gender diversity in the fields of law and balloon design? We do not know.

But in spite of all that festive excitement, by 10 a.m. Trump was already falling asleep meditating in court again, and Boebert and Gaetz were forced to entertain themselves by repeatedly turning around to give stink eyes to George Conway. Also in the peanut gallery fart cloud, Alan Garten, the Trump Org chief legal officer of the past 17 years. The defense had considered calling him, but changed their minds, probably because they realized it was a PERJURY TRAP.

Court-wise, legally, that crying little shit Todd Blanche had one job: Introduce some doubt that Client Clown VonShitzinpants personally directed those illegal payments (that he already admitted to directing in other court filings, see below). Being the Trumpy lawyer he is, though, Blanche didn’t even get around to mentioning any facts about the case until nearly 1 p.m. About all he could do was kabuki Trump’s bitter rage at Michael Cohen for having the audacity to not keep kissing Trump’s ass after Trump tried to ruin his life.

“Trump admitted that Defendant reimbursed [Michael Cohen] for [Michael Cohen’s] $130,000 payment to [Daniels].” Whomp, there it is.

How bad was Blanche’s performance? Let’s ask the law feeds! Norm Eisen said, “decidedly meh.” George Conway called it “just random.” Bradley P. Moss: Alina Habba was “more effective than Blanche.” OOOF. Others: “He’s sloppy. Bad command of facts. Not prepared.” “Disjointed” and “weird.” OUCH. And “Cohen is the architect of this whole scheme!!” Is what Jeanine Pirro came away with, even though that was a bunch of talking points ago and Trump has already moved on to “NDAs aren’t illegal.”

Yeah, hasn’t been great for cryin’ Todd. Tuesday he got a reprimand from the judge for “making it about himself,” accused Michael Cohen of selling T-shirts and mugs on TikTok that a different vendor was actually selling, and got laughed at and not with for reading out Cohen’s zingiest insults, like “Cheetos-dusted cartoon villain” and “boorish cartoon misogynist,” which had nothing at all to do with Blanche’s lawyer job of poking holes in evidence.

And his lawyering skills had not improved by Thursday! He spent about five hours of everybody’s time yelling how Michael Cohen is a player hater who should go to the player haters’ ball where he would win player-hater of the year.

Blanche demanded to know, did Cohen call Trump "Dumbass Donald”? He did! Did Cohen leak news of Trump’s indictment to the New York Times because detectives leaked it to him? [Oops, that inference pissed off the judge.] Did Cohen call SDNY prosecutors “fucking animals”? He sure did! Did Cohen call Judge William Pauley, the federal judge who sentenced him, "corrupt" and say he "was in on it” and does he still think that? 

Cohen refused to be flapped. “I don't know how Judge Pauley made his decision. In Otisville I met people with longer tax issues who got a year and a day.”

Solid point, and now that Cohen mentions it, it sure would be downright unfittin’ for the person who benefited way more from this lawbreaking scheme to get no time at all! Great job, Todd.

It was afternoon by the time Blanche even got around to addressing any evidence in this case, and he had a maybe gotcha! Cohen said he talked to Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller at 8:02 p.m. on October 24, 2016, to tell him that the Stormy deal was done, the money had been wired. But at 7:48, Cohen had been texting Schiller about a prank caller! How was it even possible that Cohen “had enough time to update Schiller about all the problems you were having and also update President Trump about the status of the Stormy Daniels situation?”

How can a brief conversation have more than one topic, it is nonpossible! And Cohen can’t even remember if the call was over a speakerphone! And he didn’t mention the prank call in court before! At this point, Blanche was raising his voice, “practically shrieking,” as Some People Said.

Todd’s got three settings, Crying Little Shit, Frowny, and Shouty:

BLANCHE: You lied about this. You said you didn’t remember the harassing phone calls — now you claim that in the one minute and 36 seconds call you spoke about the harasser and Stormy Daniels!

COHEN: Could have been.

BLANCHE:  Not what you said Tuesday. You are lying!

COHEN: Based on the records, I think I spoke about both.

BLANCHE: We are not asking for your belief. This jury does not want to hear about what you think happened!

BLANCHE: The people's chart omitted your texts with Keith Schiller — you claim you were telling the truth on Tuesday?

COHEN: Based on the documents.

BLANCHE: So you testified off documents the People gave me, and not your own memory?

Maybe because he’s here to talk about the documents and not the prank caller, Todd? 

After lunch, Blanche was forced to clarify to the jury that there was no evidence that anyone at the New York District Attorney’s office leaked anything to the Times about Trump’s indictment. Another swing and a miss! Maybe he should review the lawyering rules, instead of trusting his own memory.

And Blanche didn’t remember he already talked about that prank caller, because he got back on that prank caller again. How could Cohen have possibly said any other words on the phone to Keith while he was so occupied with that prank caller?

Blanche brought the weakest of weaksauce, but it was clear after nearly five hours of questioning that it’s the only kind of sauce Blanche makes. But it’s sauce his client likes! Blanche asked if Cohen said he had a strong professional relationship with Chris Cuomo, Katy Tur, and Maggie Haberman, and if he gave Maggie Haberman scoops, and Trump smirked, his highest praise. Yes, after his morning meditation, Trump was awake all afternoon, apparently eager to draft the next talking point for his surrogates to skirt his gag order with: COHEN WAS A LEFT-WING MEDIA PLANT!

Did Cohen record conversations with reporters, clients and other people? queried Blanche. When Cohen said yes, Trump beamed at Susan Necheles. Who else did Cohen record? NBC president Jeff Zucker! Well great, now “Natalie’s Rap” will be stuck in our heads all night.

Todd was morally outraged at the violations of his client and Jeff Zucker!

“You know it's unethical for a lawyer to record his client, right?”

COHEN: There is the crime-fraud exception.

OOF, BURN. Reports of gasps from the overflow room!

BLANCHE: Just so I understand, you surreptitiously recorded your client so you could play a privileged recorded communication between you and your client with a third party?

COHEN: Correct.

Jury, please focus on the real crime here, the people who record the people doing crimes! Then Blanche pretended to be scandalized that Cohen said his memory of some phone calls had been jogged by looking at call logs. Todd’s lawyerin’ style is “seagull behind a cruise ship.”

FINALLY, with less than an hour left in the jury’s day, Todd got to the Stormy Daniels payment. Did Cohen say that Stormy Daniels was extorting Mister(!) Trump? Can Cohen agree that NDAs are legal and a settlement between two parties happens all the time? (So which was it, Todd, illegal extortion, or a legal NDA?) Can Cohen agree Trump never signed the letter? That’s true, too bad in the Stormy Daniels 2018 defamation case Trump’s lawyers admitted in court papers that Trump actually knew all about the “reimbursement.”

Then there was this:

BLANCHE: The truth is, for the entire time you worked for the Trump Org, you never had a retainer agreement?

COHEN: That's correct.

BLANCHE: And you were acting as a lawyer that whole time?

COHEN: Well I did legal matters and non-legal matters.

Er … wasn’t that the whole point the prosecution was trying to make all along?

Great job! With that, the jury and alternates’ 72 exhausted eyeballs and earholes were dismissed for the day. Then Emil Bove argued about letting the former head of the FEC testify, even though neither he nor his job have anything to do with election laws in New York state. But Emil just thinks it might be fun!

Justice Merchan will decide Monday, and then closing arguments start Tuesday, because the judge is not even letting Trump’s ongoing contempt derail this chugging choo-choo of justice.

See you then!