'May be their downfall': Ex-prosecutor details Trump lawyers’ 'baffling missteps' at trial

14 May 2024

Attorneys representing former President Donald Trump in his first criminal trial in Manhattan are on the verge of blowing it completely due to inexplicable mistakes that are piling up, according to a former federal prosecutor.

In a Tuesday article for Politico, former Department of Justice official Ankush Khardori — who specialized in prosecuting financial fraud and white-collar crimes — opined that Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles are "not doing a particularly good job defending him." He noted that "Trump’s legal team has made several considerable, and at times baffling, missteps over the course of the trial that have increased the odds of a conviction."

"So far as I can tell, this team has managed to stay on Trump’s good side by indulging — perhaps necessarily — his worst traits and instincts. It may be their downfall," Khardori wrote.

"Most devastatingly, lead attorney Todd Blanche, in his opening statement, repeated Trump’s claim that he never had a sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels," he continued. "That was followed by days of testimony last week that — if you believe Daniels’ very persuasive account — effectively demonstrated that a central plank of Trump’s defense is a lie and has been a lie for years, and that the jury cannot trust even Trump’s lead counsel to tell them the truth."

The former federal prosecutor elaborated that the defense made Stormy Daniels' testimony even more damning by attacking her in opening statements, meaning Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's team "had no choice but to put Daniels on" after Blanche "called her a liar." He also posited that the prosecution "had to elicit considerable detail about the sexual encounter in order to establish her credibility in response to Blanche’s attack inside the courtroom and Trump’s years of attacks outside of it."

"Not only was that the appropriate way for the government to defend the integrity of its investigation and its witness, it was also an unmissable opportunity for them to tank the credibility of Trump’s entire legal defense," Khardori argued.

Another fatal mistake Trump's defense team made according to Khardori was assuming that Stormy Daniels lacked intelligence. However, he said Daniels proved herself to be "resourceful, sharp and quick-witted," which meant she eventually "turned the tables on Necheles, likely making her more sympathetic and credible in the eyes of the jury."

Khardori reserved most of his analysis of the defense's flagging performance for Trump himself. As the client, Trump has broad license to instruct his lawyers to defend him however he sees fit. And Khardori wrote that Trump's consistent prodding of his lawyers to make him out to be a victim of a political prosecution didn't do him any favors in the eyes of Judge Juan Merchan. The ex-president has reportedly been upset with Blanche's work, and is pushing him to behave more like his late former attorney, Roy Cohn, who was eventually disbarred for improper conduct.

The fact that so many of Trump's lawyers have not stayed on to represent the former president also stuck with Khardori. He observed that the job of representing the 45th president of the United States is difficult enough in civil litigation, but that much harder in a criminal case.

"Even the lawyers who have joined Trump’s legal team hoping to crack the code with him have ultimately been disappointed, diminished or both," he wrote. "They routinely leave or are fired. In the last year alone, these include: Tim Parlatore, Jim Trusty, John Rowley and Joe Tacopina."

Click here to read Khardori's article in full.

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