(Photographer: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
By all accounts, Donald Trump has always been a nightmare of a client. But while he used to just stiff his attorneys after the fact, these days he’s pushing attorneys to take increasingly stupid and borderline (and potentially not-so-borderline) contemptuous moves. Like when Christina Bobb represented to federal law enforcement that Trump had returned all the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in lieu of actually searching the loo. She’s running “election integrity” for the RNC these days so they’ve definitely got their top people on that task.
The former president put his attorneys in another tight spot this afternoon when the jury pool entered the courtroom, prompting everyone to stand and face the people performing their civic duty. Everyone except…
In my over 20 years practicing criminal law, I have never observed a defendant refuse to stand and face the jury.
Any competent lawyer would tell their client that his fate is in the jury’s hands and they will watch everything he does.
Trump’s disrespect for the jury is unwise. https://t.co/w8HLLHV8Tg
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) April 18, 2024
Of course not.
Is it unwise? Sure it betrays contempt for the whole process, which could end up costing him another grand or so that he’ll easily raise by asking some laid off coal miner barely making his mortgage payments to fork over a recurring donation to the billionaire because wokeness or something.
But from Trump’s perspective, what’s to be gained by observing basic decorum? Any potential juror biased against Trump doesn’t care whether or not he stands. Any potential juror in the MAGA tank isn’t going to take offense and probably gets off on the idea that Trump is such a big shot that he views all the jurors as peasants.
In the middle, any juror just taking the job seriously without prejudice is going to vote to convict because to the extent there are faults in the hush money prosecution — and there are!) — none of them will be in the hands of the fact-finders on the jury. They’re going to dutifully note that he made these payments and he misrepresented what they were for and hand that back to the judge.
None of it makes any difference to Trump. He can whip up a petulant show of how much you disrespect the whole affair and soak up “you show ’em, sir” accolades from his devotees.
Mariotti says “any competent lawyer” would tell Trump to get his act together and stand, but the thing is… he has competent lawyers in this case and they almost certainly have told him all this. He just doesn’t care.
And, he honestly might be right that he has nothing to lose.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.