Alina Habba's antics make her a candidate for Bar Assoc. disciplinary action: attorney – Raw Story
Tom Boggioni is a writer, born, raised and living in San Diego — where he attended San Diego State University. Prior to writing for Raw Story, he wrote for FireDogLake, blogged as TBogg, and worked in banking, marketing and construction.
Donald Trump lawyer Alina Habba's "flagrant disregard" for courtroom rules could pave the way for Judge Lewis Kaplan to refer her to the State Bar for a hearing and investigation.
According to former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, the E. Jean Carroll case judge would be completely within his rights to ask the New York State Bar Association to review the former president's attorney's conduct after Kaplan repeatedly was forced to admonish her during the two-week trial.
On her Substack platform, Vance suggested that Habba's lack of legal skills and knowledge about the rules of evidence aren't the issue so much as the chaos she repeatedly created in the civil trial she ultimately lost which cost her client $83.3 million on Friday.
RELATED: 'Performative' Alina Habba cost Trump 'an incredible amount of money': ex-GOP official
According to Vance, who called Habba's outbursts "disgraceful," she, "… would not be surprised to see the Judge refer her to the Bar Association for disciplinary action."
Clarifying her reasoning, she explained, "It wasn’t her novice mistakes that were the issue, although they caused a lot of comments. It was her flagrant disregard of the Judge’s decisions about arguments that could and could not be made to the jury. She trod on those rulings despite repeated warnings from the Judge."
Vance added the proper procedure when a lawyer feels the judge erred is to take it up later in an appeal.
ALSO READ: Alina Habba is persona non grata at her Pennsylvania law school
In the case of the combative Habba, the Trump attorney's "repeated strategy was to fight with the Judge. Tell her she couldn’t do something, and she jumped right in anyhow, repeatedly insinuating that Trump didn’t assault Carroll," the former prosecutor wrote.
"The Judge would be well within his rights to let the Bar sort her out. Her lack of respect for the rule of law, which mirrors her client’s, is unacceptable in a lawyer," Vance concluded.
You can read more here.
According to attorney Shan Wu, the swift E. Jean Carroll jury decision to award her $83.3 million in damages after being defamed by Donald Trump is both good news and bad news for the former president.
In his column for the Daily Beast, Wu contends that by rushing the awarding of damages out on Friday, the former president was given a break because it could easily have been much more if they had waited until after the weekend.
On the other hand, he asserted that the $65 million punitive damages award, by virtue of it being a lesser amount, makes it virtually impossible to appeal.
As he wrote, "In assessing whether punitive damages are excessive, the rough rule of thumb is that they need to be between four times the compensatory and no more than ten times based on a line of United States Supreme Court cases. Here the $65 million falls safely within that ratio being roughly four times the amount of the compensatory damages. The test is really one of 'reasonableness '—meaning the punitive damages must be reasonably related to the amount of compensatory damages and these easily meet that requirement."
ALSO READ: Few Trumpers who embrace political violence understand its endgame
Adding that punitive damages of $100 million would still have been reasonable, he wrote, "One factor that may have caused the damages to be lower was having the jury start deliberations Friday afternoon. As a prosecutor, I never liked juries to start deliberations on a Friday afternoon because they might be motivated to reach a hasty decision in order to start their weekend and avoid having to come back on Monday. That’s nothing against the jury. It’s just human nature. Starting them deliberating on Monday morning could have allowed them more time to have a healthy debate over a larger damages figure."
As for why the jury came down so hard on Trump, Wu said it all came down to the lawyers.
'There was little doubt as to which side had the more effective lawyering with Trump’s lead attorney Alina Habba consistently making basic evidentiary mistakes worthy of comparison to the lawyering in My Cousin Vinny during the trial and being admonished by the judge even in the midst of her closing argument," he added.
You can read more here.
Fox News host Pete Hegseth suggested that the Kansas City Chiefs may be in trouble because of "Taylor Swift backlash." The singer has reportedly dated Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, putting focus on the team.
During a Sunday discussion about the AFC and NFC football championships, Hegseth explained how Swift could be a factor in the Chiefs' Sunday matchup against the Baltimore Ravens.
ALSO READ: Few Trumpers who embrace political violence understand its endgame
"I wonder what the Ravens-Chiefs breakdown is," Fox News co-host Will Cain told Hegseth. "There are a lot of people pulling for the underdog, even though they're the favorites, the Ravens."
"There's a lot of people probably pulling for the Ravens," Hegseth agreed. "I think there's a little bit of a Taylor Swift backlash, too."
Watch the video below from Fox News or at the link.
According to a Sunday, January 28 report from The Guardian, a group of Civil War and Reconstruction historians are backing the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling to disqualify Donald Trump from political office under the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause.
In a brief filed to the US Supreme Court, the twenty-five historians wrote, "The court should take cognizance that section three of the 14th amendment covers the present, is forward-looking, and requires no additional acts of Congress for implementation."
The Guardian notes Trump attorneys "argue that the presidency is not an 'office' as described in the 14th amendment, that only congressional action can stop someone from running, and that Trump did not incite an insurrection."
In their filing the historians "cited Andrew Johnson, in 1868 the first president impeached, referring to himself as 'chief executive officer,' according to the report, "Pointing out that section 3 of the 14th amendment is self-executing, and that 'no former Confederate instantly disqualified from holding office under section three was disqualified by an act of Congress', the historians also noted that Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, cited his own disqualification as reason an indictment for treason should be quashed."
The group emphasized, “For historians, contemporary evidence from the decision-makers who sponsored, backed, and voted for the 14th amendment [ratified in 1868] is most probative. Analysis of this evidence demonstrates that decision-makers crafted section three to cover the president and to create an enduring check on insurrection, requiring no additional action from Congress."
The Guardian's full report is here.
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