Donald Trump stands up and turns around, facing thunder. He strokes his red tie and whispers, visibly but to no one in particular: “fucking fuck shit”. In the f’s, his thin lower lip extends from beneath his upper teeth. His frustration is lip-readable.
Then he walks out of the courtroom down the aisle, furiously looking at the press on the left, furiously looking at the press on the right. His shoulders are hunched in his blue jacket, but he pushes his jaw forward, chin up, and narrows his eyes. Trump is angry, aggrieved and impatient – and everyone needs to know it.
It is Tuesday afternoon in New York and the Republican presidential candidate has been fined for the first time by the judge in the morning, of 9,000 dollars (8,383 euros), for online statements about witnesses, the prosecutor, the judge and the jury. A violation of being gag order which dictates that he may not slander them.
He had to listen for hours to interrogations of ‘technical witnesses’ from the New York prosecutor, about bank records and court transcripts. He is then confronted by Keith Davidson, Hollywood lawyer for minor celebrities who make money by keeping quiet about bigger celebrities. He helps them sell their escapades to tabloids and television channels, or to whoever wants to cover it up. He made such a deal twice with Trump’s formal and informal associates. A secret one side letter with a contract, text messages and recordings of telephone conversations prove this. “There was awareness that our efforts … had supported Donald Trump’s presidential campaign,” Davidson said on the witness stand. Who previously told how a “stingy” Trump had delayed the redemption payment for a long time.
Davidson is the second substantive witness in the hush money trial: the first ever criminal case against a former president of the United States. Previously, David Pecker, the tabloid’s former publisher, did the National Enquirerexplains how he helped negative stories about Trump kill. Testimony from Hope Hicks, Trump’s spokesperson and White House confidante, began on Friday.
Trump is suspected of trying to influence the 2016 elections by paying off a porn star, with whom he slept in 2006, and of falsifying documents. He denies both the sex with and the payment to Stormy Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford). The affair came to light in 2018 via The Wall Street Journal.
There is little doubt about those facts, especially after the first testimonies and the bank statement that showed that Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen transferred $131,000 to Davidson from a specially opened bank account two weeks before the 2016 election. The question is whether the jury can be convinced that Trump did it with the intention to protect his political campaign and committed forgery in the process. He could receive a maximum prison sentence of four years for this.
Around Donald Trump – hate him or love him – it’s always a spectacle. Except in court, where in his experience he has now been prevented from campaigning for three weeks. Here he can only sit in his faux leather red-brown chair and silently follow the proceedings: from the banality of many legal proceedings to the incriminating statements. Here the judge determines the pace, the prosecutors the evidence, the witnesses the story about him, the journalists the image and soon the jury of twelve New Yorkers whether he is guilty.
Glamour, money and horniness
Cameras or audio recordings of the process are not permitted. There is room for sixty reporters and three court illustrators on uncomfortable wooden benches in the courtroom. (Elsewhere in the building, more than a hundred journalists and other interested parties follow the testimonies on a television screen.) They report live on what is said through their publications and social media. They are the only ones who can see how Trump responds to the evidence.
Although that view appears to be quite limited during a short trial week in Manhattan: Trump can only be seen on his back during the hearings. Those who are lucky will look directly at the back of his head and the bald spots that his flaxen comb does not completely cover. Those who are unlucky will spend an entire session looking at the stomach of one of the seven armed court security guards who stand like stewards in a football stadium with their backs to the match to keep an eye on the crowd. „Lockdown, lockdown”, sounds over their walkie-talkies when Trump is inside.
In the courtroom with dirty brown paneling and large square fluorescent tubes, there are four screens showing documents and video evidence. In a corner of those screens, Trump can also be admired from the front. But even the court reporters who brought binoculars with them have difficulty reading his face and body language. What is recognizable is dissatisfaction. Trump radiates anger or boredom.
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It varies from day to day how involved the suspect is in what is said about him. On Tuesdays he regularly slumps deeply in his chair between his two main lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove. He sleeps? During jury selection, Trump dozed off several times and woke up or had to be woken up by his lawyers. They now keep a close eye on him and talk to him, or tap him if they think he is drifting away.
During jury selection, Trump dozed off several times and woke up, or had to be woken up by his lawyers
On Thursday as Davidson’s testimony continues, Trump will be more alert. He leans forward over the table, as if he would like to fire the lawyer like he did as a TV star The Apprentice did. It is impossible to judge how contemptuously or intimidatingly he stares at him.
Davidson clarifies in which circles real estate man Trump moved before he became president: a world of beauty pageants and parties with porn actresses and Playboymodels. Women who, as a celebrity, he could, as he said in an infamous recording leaked before the 2016 elections, “grab their crotches” with impunity. And who occasionally climbed into a hotel bed with him.
There is nothing left of glamour, money and horniness in the faded glory of the New York court. The art deco building – a few years older than Trump (77) – is being renovated and is covered in scaffolding. The climate control on the fifteenth floor is so poor that Trump has complained of being cold. Apart from the extreme security, media attention and top lawyers, the legal situation of suspect Trump is formally hardly different from that of the young man with short dreadlocks who is handcuffed and with a plaster on his forehead by a police car on the same day. When Judge Juan Merchan imposes a fine on him, Trump must endure it in silence. Not responding goes against his nature. Trump’s response is almost always more aggressive than the setback he experiences.
Slow reaction speed
Trump knows when he can change the image to his will. When he gets out of his chair during a break on Thursday and lets the journalists lip-read that he thinks it’s all “bullshit”. Outside the room, where he always gives short statements about the “nonsense case”. And comments on the news of the day, such as the protests at universities: “We cannot let radical left idiots take over this country.” On his Truth Social, where he responds, hours after reports of his court naps were published, that he “simply sometimes closes my beautiful blue eyes, listens intensely and takes it all in.” But his reaction speed has slowed drastically.
All technical evidence and stakeholders must be reviewed in court before the jury can reach a verdict. But the facts are largely known and feel far removed from the reality of the current presidential campaign between Trump and Joe Biden. The media attention for this historic process is great – and therefore part of the campaign. However, it is expected that neither an acquittal nor a guilty verdict will have a major impact. Even Trump’s fans show only moderate interest in prosecuting their hero. On Tuesday morning, dozens of members of New York’s Young Republicans gather in front of the court with Trump flags, but on other days there are only the satellite vans of television stations and a few demonstrators for and against Trump.
The most crucial witnesses have yet to come, such as Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who is the subject of the criminal case, and Stormy Daniels. Trump can make the case a sensation again if he testifies himself. But will he? The former president and his lawyers are keeping quiet about this.
In a civil fraud case, Trump was sentenced to a fine of hundreds of millions in February. His testimony in that case was so weak and fact-free that it did not help his defense.
Even more is at stake in the criminal trial – possibly even a prison sentence. If he is interrogated, he must answer compelling questions and tell the truth without getting himself into further trouble. He can also opt out. But when Trump leaves the courtroom sulking after another day of silence, it is difficult to imagine that he will be able to resist the temptation. He doesn’t look like a cat in a corner, but like a bull snorting and waiting for the arena gate to open. On the way to the exit, a man longs to answer witnesses out loud, instead of just swearing in a whisper.
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