The Trial, Ho Hum

Created
Wed, 08/05/2024 - 08:00
Updated
Wed, 08/05/2024 - 08:00
The trial was pretty banal this morning, even though important: How do you prove a defendant caused others to make false business records where those with direct knowledge of his intent and involvement are limited to the defendant, a man now in jail for perjury, and Michael Cohen?  You surround Michael Cohen’s expected testimony with a mountain of circumstantial evidence, an already substantial pile to which prosecutors just added excerpts from Trump’s books How to Get Rich and Think Like a Billionaire.   Those excerpts reveal Trump as a micromanager who advised never taking one’s eyes off his checkbook, advertised he negotiated the price of everything “down to the paper clips,” trusted Weisselberg wholly, and boasted that he even loved signing checks.  And best of all for the prosecutors? They are Trump’s own easy-to-digest, New York Times-bestselling words, perhaps amplified or made snappier by his ghostwriter, Meredith McIver, but nonetheless his.  He has said many times that he liked to sign checks because that was how he kept tabs on what was being spent. Apparently, he kept doing it while he was in the White House. And then they called Stormy. Hoo boy: Within 15 minutes of her testimony beginning, Daniels had guided the jury to the hotel suite in Lake Tahoe where she has said she and Trump had sex. “Does Mr. Hefner know you stole his pajamas?” she recalled asking Trump after seeing his silk sleepwear. He peppered her with questions, she said, about her job—about unions, residuals, and…