Perhaps one had to be there to answer that question, since the judge barred cameras in the trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan. Instead, we have to rely on mainstream-media outlets to cover the goings-on, and trust them not to spin it. On occasion, some of these reports manage to capture the most shocking developments and provide reliable analyses, but more often we get generalized 30,000-foot overviews.
Independent voices of authoritative weight occasionally emerge, such as Alan Dershowitz, who had a literal front-row seat to Judge Juan Merchan’s meltdown over Bob Costello’s alleged “side eye” on Monday. After I wrote about his discussion about Merchan on Hannity, Dershowitz wrote out his observations, some of which we’ll discuss shortly. He did offer a warning about the media coverage on his Substack late yesterday, calling it both insufficient and biased:
The public should have been able to see the judge in action, but because the case is not being televised, the public has to rely on the biased reporting of partisan journalists.
But the public was even denied the opportunity to hear from journalists who saw the judge in action because he cleared the courtroom.
I am one of the few witnesses to his improper conduct who remained behind to observe his deep failings.
Even when journalists do report on courtroom proceedings, their accounts must be taken with a grain of salt. When you watch CNN or MSNBC, you generally see an account of a trial that never took place.
Not long after reading this, a friend on Twitter reached out to me to ask if I’d be interested in helping with a dramatic reading of Monday’s testimony for the show “Good Lawgic.” The host, Joe Nierman, has an entire Good Lawgic community of followers for his live-stream shows on YouTube and Rumble. Nierman is a litigator in New York as well, so he grasps the nuances of transcripts and legal arguments. He also is the plaintiff in a lawsuit that seeks to end Merchan’s gag order:
But New York-based lawyer Joseph Nierman observed that the First Amendment also guarantees freedom of the press, and that the gag order, entered by Merchan on March 26, gives the press a slanted, one-sided picture of the proceedings.
In his own petition Nierman alleges that, “As the first, former president or major party presidential candidate to face criminal charges in a court of law, this trial is of astonishing significance to every American and will likely play a significant role in our nation’s history.”
He observes, however, that reporters covering this case that captures international interest will only have the opportunity to get opinions of the day-to-day proceedings from one source — lawyers in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
Nierman will be in court this afternoon for a hearing on whether this lawsuit can proceed, so stay tuned on that issue. But he’s also been doing dramatic readings from the trial on his live-stream shows since testimony began, in order to close the gaps between the media’s reporting and what actually happened in the courtroom. Yesterday, they were a person short for the show to read the last day of Michael Cohen’s testimony from Monday, and my friend Sandy (RightGlockMom on Twitter/X) asked if I’d be interested. Normally, that’s way past my bedtime, but I had not had much of a chance to read the transcripts of the trial, either.
So I stayed up and took part in the dramatic reading yesterday — and ended up playing the part of lead defense attorney Todd Blanche, which turned out to be a very demanding role. The dramatic reading of the cross-examination — we didn’t get to the re-direct — turned out to be enormously eye-opening. It’s a long video, and you can start to hear my voice cracking through the last half of it as it really did roll way past my bedtime, but it was totally worth it.
Here’s the video, and my thoughts on the cross-examination will follow:
A few thoughts:
First, the scope of Cohen’s dishonesty in this testimony is simply breathtaking. It isn’t just the embezzlement to which he admitted under pressure, either. Cohen repeatedly and consistently misrepresents himself on nearly every aspect of his testimony, especially regarding his relationship with Trump. Blanche patiently boxes him in every time, usually with Cohen’s own e-mails and public statements.
The press largely ignored just how comprehensively Blanche planned and executed this cross-examination. Even worse, the media tried to make Cohen’s admission of embezzlement into some kind of evidence of his honesty. You have to deliberately ignore everything else that happened in Monday’s testimony to sell Cohen as a truth-teller, as you’ll see when watching the video.
Blanche also utterly demolished the prosecution’s case that the payments to Cohen from Trump and the Trump trust could only have related to the Stormy Daniels pay-off — hence the cover-up allegedly facilitated by the false records. However, Blanche forced Cohen to admit that he consistently represented himself as Trump’s personal attorney throughout the payment period (2017 and part of 2018) and did a lot of work for both Trump and his family while in that role. Blanche draws out from Cohen that he made a lot of money doing similar representation for corporate clients in the same time period, making well over $4 million in the 18 months he served as Trump’s personal attorney — and did far less legal work for his other clients, too. The $35,000 per month payment covered a lot of legal work for Trump, and clearly was meant for that purpose.
Did you read or hear about that in the mainstream media?
Yes, that’s a rhetorical question. This is what Dershowitz meant in his warning.
Finally, Judge Juan Merchan’s conduct seemed increasingly bizarre during the cross-examination at sidebars. He repeatedly sustained objections and curtailed what appeared to be legitimate tests of Cohen’s credibility. On these issues, I’ll defer to Nierman, who as a litigator in New York is far more familiar with procedure and admissibility than I would be — and Nierman’s criticisms of Merchan got more and more passionate as the reading proceeded. That is even apart from the “berserk” meltdown that took place during Costello’s testimony, which Nierman actually covered by himself at the very beginning of the video above before we got into Blanche’s cross-examination of Cohen.
When I saw Dershowitz’ discussion on Hannity and then read his Substack essay, I assumed Dershowitz was engaged in rhetorical hyperbole:
But in my 60 years as a lawyer and law professor, I have never seen a spectacle such as the one I observed sitting in the front row of the courthouse yesterday.
The judge in Donald Trump’s trial was an absolute tyrant, though he appeared to the jury to be a benevolent despot. He seemed automatically to be ruling against the defendant at every turn.
Many experienced lawyers raised their eyebrows when the judge excluded obviously relevant evidence when offered by the defense, while including irrelevant evidence offered by the prosecution.
But when the defense’s only substantive witness, the experienced attorney Robert Costello, raised his eyebrows at one of New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s rulings, the court went berserk.
All it took was one dramatic reading of the testimony at hand, and it’s clear that Dershowitz wasn’t being hyperbolic. And that’s why this trial should have been televised from the start — so that everyone could see the travesty taking place and the prosecution’s prostitution of justice through a serial perjurer with several chips on his shoulder.
Anyway, enjoy this dramatic reading of the testimony, which is the next-best substitute. If my friend Phelim McAleer considers one of his theater verité productions, I hope to get an audition as Blanche. But in the meantime, remember this as a key reason why we need to support independent voices in the media, such as Joe Nierman’s and ours. Join us in the fight. Become a HotAir VIP member today and use promo code FAKENEWS to receive a 50% discount on your membership.
Also, the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:
- Andrew Malcolm discusses the latest entry in his Memories series, about his lifelong habit of sending messages in a bottle — and how it connects him to his father.
- We also talk about the potential debate trap for Donald Trump, and the far more dangerous debate trap for Joe Biden.
- Michael Cohen wrapped up his disastrous turn as Alvin Bragg’s star witness, and I discuss how it reminds me of the latest episode of “The Jinx 2.”
The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!