Legal expert hands Trump lawyers a way to 'salvage their inept case' – Raw Story
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Legal experts have widely agreed that Donald Trump’s defense in his hush money case has not gone well — but one argued Monday that it’s not too late for his lawyers to claw the case back.
Former federal prosecutor Shan Wu wrote Monday that Trump’s lawyers could still convince jurors that he’s innocent of business fraud charges — but only by following a specific strategy.
“The best defense closings are not scattergun approaches that rely upon lofty rhetoric or anecdotes about the meaning of reasonable doubt,” he wrote in the Daily Beast.
“ … The reality is defendants tend to face a ‘presumed guilty”’ attitude that the defense must overcome. To do so, defense counsel needs to present a coherent theory or theories.
“For example, the defendant wasn’t present at the crime scene and the eyewitnesses are suspect because they either have bad eyesight or are biased against the defendant.”
So, he wrote, Trump’s defense lawyers need to change what they’ve been doing so far in the five week trial.
“Thus far, Trump’s defense team seems to use a throw-everything-at-the-kitchen-wall strategy with a particular emphasis on Trump’s favorite foods: insult and shame.”
Using those tactics to attack witnesses adult movie star Stormy Daniels and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, he wrote, did not go down well.
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“To salvage their inept case, the defense needs to give a closing which is tightly focused on facts and not their client’s penchant for insult,” he wrote.
“The best way for them to treat the Stormy Daniels testimony is to argue it is not really relevant to whether Trump engaged in falsification of business records since she has no knowledge of accounting details. If, on the other hand, they try to satisfy Trump by arguing that the sexual encounter never took place, then they not only put the jury’s focus on a legally irrelevant factor but also risk setting up a credibility contest between Trump and Daniels. That’s not a contest Trump is likely to win.
“With Michael Cohen, they need to play up the slim amount of testimony that Trump gave specific instructions given to falsify the reimbursements to Cohen as legal invoices.
“That leads to the defense’s strongest argument, which is that there is insufficient evidence of Trump directing or knowing how the reimbursements were recorded.”
“It’s their best argument because it attacks the foundation of the case.”
Trump is facing 34 charges of business fraud involving alleged payments to Daniels to keep quiet about a sexual relationship the pair had.
Closing arguments are scheduled to begin Tuesday, before the case is handed to the jury for deliberations.
A co-conspirator in former President Donald Trump's Georgia election racketeering case argued Tuesday he cannot mount a defense without 800,000 voter applications he does not want to pay for, according to an attorney tuning into the hearing.
Harrison Floyd, the former head of Black Voices for Trump accused of conspiring to overturn Georgia's 2020 presidential election, appeared in Fulton County court to demand voter records he says he needs to prove President Joe Biden won.
"The defense counsel for Harrison Floyd says he needs more information about the ballots cast in 2020 in order to determine whether a false statement," reported attorney Anthony Michael Kreis. "The attorney says Floyd shouldn't have to pay for the production of materials either."
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The county told Judge Scott McAfee such an endeavor would necessitate redacting and printing documentation that would present an unfair burden.
"The county should not have to bear that burden," they argued, according to Kreis. "It'll be thousands of hours."
Floyd himself offered a more colloquial account of his defense in an X post Tuesday: "I 👏🏾WANT👏🏾 ALL 👏🏾THE 👏🏾BALLOTS."
Floyd is one of 19 defendants named in the criminal election racketeering indictment brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in August 2023.
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Since then, four of the original 19 have accepted plea deals in exchange for their testimony and Willis herself has been subjected to a court hearing regarding a personal relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Wade has since withdrawn from the case, as requested by the court.
Kreis' reports of Tuesday's hearing spurred one of his followers to demand sanctions for Floyd's attorneys on the grounds that "these yahoos lost over 62 court cases and President Biden is in office."
But Kreis argued Floyd's lawyers were right to challenge the government's case however possible.
"They can craft kooky defenses that jurors can reject," Kreis replied. "We've an adversarial criminal justice system– this is it working."
Former National Football League star running back Herschel Walker is still sitting on more than $4 million from his failed run against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) — and both the Georgia Republican Party and former President Donald Trump's campaign are reportedly clamoring for the cash.
According to Politico, Walker has $4.3 million in his campaign account, which he can't use for personal expenses but can hold onto as a war chest for any federal office he chooses to run for in the future.
Reporter Brittany Gibson noted that the Peach State GOP is "nearly broke" and desperate for the U.S. Senate candidate it nominated in 2022 to part with that money to help down-ballot candidates in 2024.
"I would give directly to candidates at the legislature level because to maintain the majorities in Georgia, we’re really having to fight here," Georgia Republican strategist Brian Robinson said.
READ MORE: 'Unparalleled in its audacity and scope': Herschel Walker implicated in 'jaw-dropping' wire fraud scheme
After losing the U.S. Senate runoff election in December of 2022, Walker — who hadn’t previously run for any elected office — has been effectively invisible.
The former two-time Pro Bowl athlete decided to finish his undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia, where he played Division I football before entering the NFL draft.
When contacted for comment, Walker told Politico that he was in the middle of writing a paper, but disputed that he had millions of unspent campaign funds.
"It wasn’t money left in my account. Everyone keeps saying that," Walker said.
The outlet reported that Walker transferred $100,000 of those funds to the National Republican Senatorial Committee's recount fund, and gave another $400,000 to various charities and nonprofits. However, the rest remains untouched, and Republicans are saying it should either be refunded to donors, donated to the Georgia GOP or give to one of former President Donald Trump's super PACs backing his 2024 candidacy.
"Republicans are being outspent everywhere up and down the ballot and there’s a significant sum of resources just sitting there,” an unnamed Georgia Republican strategist told Politico. “It could be supporting Trump, who did a ton for Herschel’s campaign.”
READ MORE: Georgia is 'booming' economically under Biden like it 'never did' under Trump
While Trump is struggling to fund a nationwide campaign infrastructure while simultaneously defending himself in four criminal proceedings, the Georgia Republican Party is also particularly hurting for funds. Politico reported that while the Peach State GOP had around $1.2 million in its coffers around this time in 2020, it has less than half of that amount now.
And since 2021, it has spent roughly $2 million on legal expenses for various Republican officials ensnared in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' RICO indictment pertaining to alleged interference in the 2020 election.
Georgia House Republican candidates starved of funds they would normally expect from the state party apparatus could be what causes the House of Representatives to flip to Democratic control in 2025, given how small Republicans' majority has become under the leadersip of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
Currently, he can only afford two defections on votes assuming full attendance. If Republicans in the Atlanta, Macon and Savannah suburbs don't win their respective elections, it could tilt House control in Democrats' favor.
READ MORE: Georgia GOP vice chair booted for illegally voting 9 times as a convicted felon
Former President Donald Trump has had a massive flaw ever since he was a kid, that has been one of his greatest weaknesses, said his niece Mary Trump in a recent TikTok video.
The younger Trump, a psychologist by trade, has been a frequent critic of her uncle, and has often sought to unpack his mental abnormalities that she says are responsible for his behavior in life and politics.
"Even as a little kid, he was incapable of having a sense of humor about himself, which is really not great. Kids need to have that kind of resilience that he never had," she said in the video. "But worse, at seven decades later, he still does not have the ability to laugh at himself, which I think is a dangerous thing."
Mary Trump referenced a former video, in which she regaled a story where her father, one of Trump's brothers, splattered him over the head with a bowl of mashed potatoes to get him to stop bothering a third brother.
"Every single time, even six decades after the event itself occurred, Donald reacted exactly the same way. While everybody was laughing about it, he crossed his arms. And he pouted and he sulked until somebody changed the subject."
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This comes after Mary Trump issued a dire warning on her Substack earlier this month about the consequences if her uncle is re-elected into office.
"We are so turned around that many of us blame the man who has actually tried to fix the horrific damage his predecessor inflicted on all of us while giving a pass to the man who landed us here," she wrote.
"And not only is Donald getting a pass; tens of millions of [Americans] want to give him almost unlimited power which he will wield in ways that will destroy us."
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