Thread by @SethAbramson

(THREAD) If you want everyone to understand the stunts Trump and his lawyers pulled today in cross-examining longtime Trump fixer Michael Cohen, please RETWEET this thread.

I’m a NYT-bestselling Trump biographer and former criminal defense lawyer, and I’ll explain what happened.

1/ This thread builds off my 200-tweet, five-hour thread from yesterday, which was also about Team Trump’s Michael Cohen cross-examination and which you can read below. But there will be some *very* significant differences between that thread and this one.

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1790443317169103068

2/ Yesterday I live-tweeted the Cohen cross-examination on a slight delay to offer background data and context for various lines of questioning. But given the odd choices Team Trump made in cross-examining Cohen, that may not have been the ideal approach. I have a better one now.

3/ THREAD COVER ART CREDIT: Christine Cornell.

4/ The problem with live-tweeting the Cohen cross-examination is that it was not done the way we criminal defense attorneys *normally* conduct cross-examinations, which is through sequential chapters that are discrete, tell a story, create a structured narrative, and have an arc.

5/ When I cross-examined witnesses before fact-finders (whether judge or jury) in multiple homicide cases back in the 2000s, or even when I did homicide arraignments in the late 1990s, I knew the case at bar was highly complex and could not be followed willy-nilly without an arc.

6/ Now, this Trump case—34 felonies for Falsifying Business Records, with what otherwise would’ve been 34 misdemeanors elevated to felonies on the statutory basis that they were committed in service of a federal election fraud conspiracy—isn’t actually that factually complicated.

7/ If Donald Trump were not the defendant, this case would have been conducted—*start to finish*—in one week.

The very fact that it will instead takes weeks and weeks only underscores that *everyone* (including prosecutors) is bending over backwards to be *beyond* fair to Trump.

8/ Media has made the case sound more complex than it is by calling it a hush-money case—which is like calling a First-Degree Murder in which a man drowns his brother in a backyard pool the Day-Tim-Came-Home-Surprisingly-Early case. It’s classifying a case by a piece of evidence.

9/ The reason Trump’s lawyers were able to pull the stunts they did today—and the reason Lauren Boebert, a generally low-intelligence person, was able to compellingly shout into a hot mic today that no one knows what the crime is here—is because of how media has framed all this.

10/ Consider that if I keep calling the above-referenced hypothetical First-Degree Murder case the Day-Tim-Got-Home-Surprisingly-Early case, you’re going to wonder what the crime is, right?

And if it’s a huge boon for the Republican Party for me to pretend that the crime here...

11/ ...isn’t *perfectly clear*, that moniker aids MAGA, right? Of course it does. Criminal law is complicated enough; when major media refuses to call a case by the name of the *crime it alleges*, it is deliberately confusing Americans in a bid to not offend over-sensitive MAGAs.

12/ It *also* greatly helps defense attorneys like me—or like I was for many years—as I will shortly explain.

Suffice to say, for now, that every single way this case has been handled so far benefits Donald Trump.

Literally *every single way*.

And I need to briefly cover that.

13/ This case can be termed Trump’s Falsifying Business Records case (the misdemeanor statute that led to the 34 charges thereafter *quite appropriately* elevated to felonies for the reason cited above) *or* his Election Fraud Conspiracy case (the statutory basis for elevation).

14/ Under no circumstances—ever—could a responsible media outlet operating under the journalistic ethics I taught for years as a journalism professor at University of New Hampshire call this a hush-money case.

That *deliberately* picks a not-illegal piece of evidence as a title.

15/ Paying hush money isn’t illegal.

In fact, when someone is being paid hush money, *if* there is a crime involved it is *likely* a crime being committed *by the person getting the money* or by *anyone helping them get it*.

Here, that would be Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen.

16/ See now how major media played us? By calling this a hush-money case, it ensured both that if we focus on what the phrase means as to Trump a reasonable response is HUSH MONEY ISN’T ILLEGAL and if we focus on who got or facilitated a payoff, THEY will seem like the criminals.

17/ So it’s in *that* context that Lauren Boebert could yell into a microphone that no one knows what the crime is here—because paying hush money indeed isn’t illegal—and Trump could establish as his defense (wait for it) that the real criminals here are...

...Daniels and Cohen.

18/ Trump got major media to frame this case *perfectly* consistent with his defense—which aids him politically if he’s acquitted *or* convicted.

(Well done, major media! You should definitely keep denigrating the independent journalists who have to clean up your messes daily.)

19/ But that’s not the only media framing that benefits Trump politically and even—as we’ll see—legally. Consider the following: in *every criminal case in America* it is illegal to obstruct justice, tamper with witnesses, or attempt to threaten/intimidate witnesses or jurors.

20/ These things are *already illegal* because (a) they’re statutory offenses under *any* circumstances, (b) any of them would constitute the commission of a new crime and new crimes violate standard bail conditions, and (c) they’re *also* bail-conditions violations on their own.

21/ What happened in *this* case is that Trump is *such* a career criminal and has *such* contempt for rule of law and was *so* unwilling to follow basic bail conditions and was getting *such* special treatment from everyone that his judge treated standard practice as an “order.”

22/ This is like the dad of a 5-year-old *so stupid* they’re incapable of putting on any cold-weather gear at all having to get down on the ground with them to manually put on their boots, snow pants, coat, hat and gloves.

Trump’s a lunatic baby and had to be dealt with as such.

23/ So Trump talking about his “gag order” was like him *bragging* about having to repeatedly take dementia tests: the so-called gag order was just what *every other defendant in America* has explained to them by their defense lawyer in seconds.

*Trump* had to get it in writing.

24/ And despite getting it in writing, he violated it 10 times without penalty ($10,000 in fines his small donors or other suckers will pay *isn’t* a penalty).

And he’s now violating it—as detailed at the link below—via a new illicit conspiracy.

🔗 (🔐): sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-don…

25/ In fact, this so-called gag order—that’s really just basic bail conditions written down for Trump as though he were a diapered, pampered infant—has been a *massive* boon for him and for his defense because of (notice a trend here) how U.S. major media has covered it thus far.

26/ We generally think of gag orders as *total*—an *actual* gag involving a discrete subject. Let me give you an example: during a criminal trial, jurors aren’t allowed to discuss the case outside the context of their duty as jurors.

*That’s* a gag order: clear, complete, total.

27/ Which is *precisely* why major media is acting as Trump’s advocate when it blithely refers to Trump’s written-down-for-baby bail conditions as a gag, and precisely why Trump says “gag order” as much as he can *and lies about it when he does*.

Because he *loves* that phrase.

28/ Though Trump can in fact talk *endlessly* about his case—he merely can’t attack jurors, witnesses, or family members of court personnel, the same as any defendant—and can even *viciously* attack Biden, Bragg, and Merchan as much as he likes, he pretends he has a total gag on.

29/ He says it at rallies to draw angry boos toward his political opponents. He says it in his impromptu courthouse rants to avoid taking questions about his case (which he *totally* could). He even tried to use the phrase—he likes it *this* much!—to explain why he won’t testify.

30/ His supposed gag order justifies—in the mind of the public—surrogates coming to court en masse to intimidate jurors with how many powerful people are in Trump’s corner, and *then* go outside to read speeches Trump personally edited that *violate his bail*.

It’s all so sick.

31/ What it *also* does—everything I’ve discussed so far—is turn a 1-week documents case that can be called either a Falsifying Business Records case or an Election Fraud case into a 3-ring circus in which Trump’s lawyers don’t need to do chaptered crosses and probably shouldn’t.

32/ If this were being seen as a Falsifying Business Records case, every time we heard that phrase we’d think...

...okay, so did the man falsify business records?

That’d seem like the operative *lay* question, right?

And the answer is that he *so* did. He so *obviously* did.

33/ Just so, if this were called an *Election Fraud* case, every time we heard that phrase we’d think...

...okay, so did Trump want to defraud voters in 2016?

That’d seem like the operative *lay* question, right?

And the answer—again—is that he *so* did. He so *obviously* did.

34/ This thread will run 100+ tweets, so this is just a brief mid-thread break to note that while of course this thread and its expertise are free, if you’d like to tip the author for his work, you can do so in seconds, in any amount, at the link below: sethabramson.net/pp

35/ So if you’re a prosecutor in Trump’s case, as an officer of the court you want the case called what it is: a Falsifying Business Records or Election Fraud case. You feel *the same* if you’re the judge on the case *or* a juror adjudicating the alleged criminal conduct here.

36/ But it’s *more than semantics*. The prosecutor, judge and jury want this case to be called a Falsifying Business Records or Election Fraud case for the same reason Trump *and U.S. major media* do *not*: because it underscores how boring the case should be in its presentation.

37/ A business records case focuses on... business records. All of the ones in play here are damning for Trump. So he does not want that.

An election fraud case focuses on... an election. Trump’s defense is that he was *angelically unaware* of the 2016 election in 2015 and 2016.

38/ So whereas prosecutors want—and the judge and jury expect—to hear the words business records and election fraud over and over *because those are the criminal statutes in play here*, and whereas these entities want the evidence to *come in* in a records/election-focused way...

39/ ...Trump, his attorneys, *and* major media want this to be a {*sparklers and streamers everywhere*} “HUSH-MONEY CASE!” because first, wow, how exciting that sounds, and second—this is where Trump and his attorneys come in—HUSH MONEY IS NOT ILLEGAL, so *what’s the crime here*?

40/ So Trump’s fake outrage over a case in which he *knows* he is guilty is served *gorgeously* by how the case is covered because (a) it makes his actions seem legal, (b) it makes the recipients of the payments seem shady (even extortionate!), and (c) it makes his prosecutors...

41/ ...seem like a bunch of partisan fools who brought this case without even knowing what the crime was!

If I didn’t love America or—I guess—have any ethics at all I’d look at the dark splendor of this spiderweb of bullshit Trump and major media have spun and call it beautiful.

42/ Don’t worry, friends, we are getting to Cohen’s testimony.

43/ When Cohen took the stand yesterday, legal analysts were *mystified* at how much Trump attorney Todd Blanche was jumping around from subject to subject. I was a little nonplussed too, I admit. This is the Trial of the Century; all eyes are on Blanche—as Trump won’t testify...

44/ ...in his own defense due to him being *hideously* guilty—and here he is dancing from subject to subject in the most important cross-examination of his life, with no chapters, no rhyme or reason, no arc, and frankly in a way it’s sort of difficult for the jury to follow. Why?

45/ The early claim was that Blanche wanted to wrong-foot a presumptively well-prepared Cohen by asking questions Cohen could’ve easily anticipated—which Blanche had no choice about—but doing so *out of order*.

It was a stupid claim that didn’t make sense to any trial attorney.

46/ I first testified as a federal criminal investigator in a federal criminal case when I was a teen (yes really; it’s a long story). What I learned prior to even my *very first time passing beyond the bar in a courtroom* (which separates the gallery from the field of play)...

47/ ...is that you can’t predict—and don’t try to predict—exactly what you’ll be asked. There’s no point in that. Oh, you might be able to guess at a subject or two, but even then not the *form* of any one question or when or how it will come. So you have to focus on your stance.

48/ By stance I mean your mindset as a witness. Why are you there, broadly speaking? How do you fit into the case of the party calling you? What threat (if any) do you pose to the *party opposite’s* case? What is the basis for your ethos as a witness (i.e., your moral authority)?

49/ This determines your tone, timbre, volume, speaking pace, body language, reaction time, semantics, diction, idioms, grammar, all of it. *That’s* what a witness can prepare for—and perhaps *one or two* specific questions—but Michael Cohen was to face 2+ days of questioning!

50/ So no competent defense lawyer is going to throw out all the rules of cross-examination purely with the aim of *throwing off* a witness via question order.

That just seems totally silly to me.

But what if your defense benefits from wall-to-wall chaos and a *lack* of order?

51/ Remember: Trump is guilty; he has no defense; his attorneys (I promise you) know this and he (I promise you) knows it. If this becomes a business-records case he’s done; if it becomes an election-fraud case, he’s done. So what the defense team needs this to be, instead, is...

52/ 🎇🔥🎆🧨🎇🔥🎆🧨🎇🔥🎆🧨🎇🔥🎆🧨🎇🔥🎆🧨 A HuSh MoNeY CaSe!! 🎇🔥🎆🧨🎇🔥🎆🧨🎇🔥🎆🧨🎇🔥🎆🧨🎇🔥🎆🧨

Doesn’t that sound exciting? And good for ratings? And, maybe... *confusing*? And sort of like a *pox-on-all-your-houses-I-cannot-convict-just-one-person* kind of situation?

53/ Sure it does.

A hush-money case sounds like a season of the hit show FARGO, where everyone is basically a bad person and probably engaged in misconduct and anyone who comes to you as a viewer (like a prosecutor) and says just one person was to blame for it all seems foolish.

54/ The secret to going to trial when you’re a defense attorney without any defense to offer...

...is to not go to trial. You explain the situation to your client and they make the difficult decision to plead.

That’s what happens in *more than 90%* of criminal cases nationwide.

55/ And it’s a *good thing* that most cases plead out. Not because America would instantly go bankrupt trying to fund its criminal justice system were it otherwise—that’s not a good reason—but because it is *one* indication that *most* criminal cases were rightly brought *but*...

56/ ...*do* need someone working zealously on behalf of the defendant to make sure (a) only the *right* allegations/statutes are pleaded to (as prosecutors do often over-charge cases as a strategy) and (b) the defendant gets a just punishment.

That’s *much* of what attorneys do.

57/ But *sometimes* we get a *real sociopath* in the system.

Someone who’s been committing crimes for decades while preaching personal responsibility for everyone else. The sort of hypocrite who’ll burn in Hell if there is one and who’ll *never* take responsibility for anything.

58/ That’s what Donald Trump is.

59/ In that sort of situation—in my experience, this is maybe 0.2% of all criminal cases—your client *may* insist on going to trial with *no defense*, demanding that you violate the Rules of Professional Conduct to simply cause *total mayhem* in court.

Rank confusion everywhere.

60/ And here’s where we come to the surprise twist in this thread: what I just described is *not* what Trump is doing.

What he’s planning to do is much worse than this.

61/ Just as even a sociopath probably is going to obey his bail conditions out of sheer self-preservation but Trump has done exactly the *opposite* because he believes he’s permanently impervious to any consequences for anything he does no matter what it is, no matter how vile...

62/ ...Trump, like a sociopathic client, *is* going to push his lawyers to attack in the most disgusting ways witnesses he knows are telling the truth, *is* going to try to make seem muddy an actually pretty simple plan to falsify business records and steal a general election...

63/ ...*is* going to expect his attorneys to do all the basic stuff (e.g., undermine the credibility of witnesses the defendant had no problem with at all once upon a time, whose vices once made him *deliriously* happy because they served his vile, illicit, and vicious whims)...

64/ ...but then he’s going to introduce a turn at the end of it all that no one saw coming because it is *so obviously a criminal scheme* that it seems *beyond mad* to try to execute it.

(Think, by way of analogy, of Trump pretending to be cowed after his tenth bail violation...

65/ ...when in fact all he did was use that tenth bail violation as the launching-pad for *inviting powerful politicians from all across America to come to the courthouse and violate his bail on his behalf via statements he had carefully edited beforehand*.

Super *crazy*, right?

66/ Well, I think Trump’s defense is going to be well beyond that level of deviousness.

Which helps explain why the cross-examination of Cohen went the way it did today.

And this is where this thread *really* starts.

67/ This thread will run 100+ tweets, so this is just a brief mid-thread break to note that while of course this thread and its expertise are free, if you’d like to tip the author for his work, you can do so in seconds, in any amount, at the link below: sethabramson.net/pp

68/ One of the themes of this thread is that major media is aiding Trump’s trial plan deliberately, negligently, recklessly, or simply wholly amorally (i.e. just as he knows how to exploit media to gain popularity, they know how to do it to make money—and it’s the same strategy).

69/ Most recently, CNN ran a report about how the way the evidence has come in so far creates a *hole* in the understanding of the case the jury would naturally have (the writer referred to “two empty chairs” that now sit invisibly in the middle of the courtroom, oddly unfilled).

70/ Specifically, the chairs a juror might expect two men—Keith Schiller and Allen Weisselberg—to occupy.

71/ At the same time CNN was running this piece, it and other major media outlets were alerting us to whispers that—as expected—Trump is going to insist on putting on a defense rather than (as a few people who don’t know him well floated) resting immediately after the State does.

72/ These reports all say that, per the whispers, Donald Trump is likely to call a *third* person—another man—to testify as a witness for him: Robert Costello. The implication major media makes in reporting these whispers is that a third empty seat in the courtroom is Costello’s.

73/ What two things do these three men all have in common?

1⃣ Keith Schiller
2⃣ Allen Weisselberg
3⃣ Robert Costello

I will wait a moment.

74/ If you guessed that all three men have been employed by Trump, and that in the course of their various compensated employments—Schiller as a bodyguard, Weisselberg as a Trump Organization executive and Costello as a spokesman—all three men have *lied for Trump*, you’re right.

75/ And now it seems entirely possible that all three men will be called as witnesses for Trump.

And it seems entirely possible that all three men will tell exactly the same story.

And it seems entirely possible that that story will exculpate Trump of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

76/ And if this comes to pass, all three men will be testifying under the shadow of Donald Trump having enriched them in various ways in the past.

And if this comes to pass, all three men will be testifying under circumstances in which they know Trump could enrich them *again*.

77/ At stake in their testimony would be not just whether Trump goes free...

...but whether he again becomes one of the two or three most powerful human beings on Earth.

You think there’s a lot at stake in who Trump calls in his defense, and what they say, and how they say it?

78/ It was Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller, paid handsomely by Trump, who told Congress that *yes*, Donald Trump’s hosts in Moscow in November 2013 *did* offer to send prostitutes to his room, but he *laughed off the suggestion* as something Trump would have *no interest in*...

79/ ...and then, that very night—so sad!—*abandoned his post* outside Trump’s Ritz Moscow suite for the first time *ever* and therefore (so sad, Congress!) simply *cannot say* whether anyone went into or out of Trump’s room that night...including Russian prostitutes.

Look it up.

80/ Schiller was testifying under penalty of federal felony charges for lying. So did he lie? I take no view. I only know that every piece of evidence we’ve ever seen indicates some prostitutes went into that room—and that Keith Schiller *never* abandons his post at Trump’s door.

81/ Know who was working Trump’s door the night Stormy Daniels says she had sex with Trump—an event he insists didn’t happen?

Keith Schiller.

82/ Okay, but what this case is *really* about is whether Cohen *unambiguously* said to Trump *before the 2016 election* that he had handled the Daniels payoff in a timely fashion to ensure it was resolved pre-election.

So... who was on the call in which he supposedly said that?

83/ The participants in that allegedly inculpatory October 2016 phone call:

1⃣ Michael Cohen
2⃣ Donald Trump
3⃣ Keith Schiller

This fact was focused on *heavily* by Trump’s defense attorney Todd Blanche today.

Smell what I’m cooking? (Or what *Trump and Blanche* are cooking?)

84/ It’s in this context that major media, whose framing of this case has aided Trump at every turn, is now saying that Keith Schiller is one of the *empty chairs* that Trump could do his jury a *solid* by filling—the same media that gave Schiller a free pass during Trump-Russia.

85/ Oh, shoot! Did I forget to mention this? washingtonpost.com/politics/compa…

86/ And did I forget to mention *this*? emptywheel.net/2020/09/08/who…

87/ Donald Trump has made Keith Schiller a *very* rich man.

Schiller is 100% loyal to Trump.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Schiller has lied for Trump before during an official proceeding.

You could be forgiven for thinking Trump could make Schiller even richer.

88/ You certainly should understand Schiller to have had a long, lucrative relationship—whose exact terms are oddly... vague?—with the political party Trump runs.

You certainly should understand that major media is now saying that Trump can, should and even *must* call Schiller.

89/ Why—major media says—it’d only be the *decent* thing for Trump to do! He has to *help this jury* work its way through a morass of evidence...

...that has become so *darn* confusing! (How did that happen?) Trump needs to call Schiller. Schiller will clear everything right up!

90/ Of course, if Schiller could clear everything right up, the State would have called him as *their* witness, right?

Unless—{gasp}—they think he’s a lying PoS who would say anything to save Trump?

Unless they *want* him to be a *Trump* witness so they can *cross-examine* him?

91/ Forget it, I’m probably just imagining things.

Let’s move on to Allen Weisselberg—another witness major media wants Trump to call so that certain things can be cleared up for the jury (so helpful, that Trump! If only this “hush-money case” weren’t so confusing!)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

92/ You may recall that Allen Weisselberg has actually gone to *jail*—multiple times—for lying.

Lying... *for Trump*. .apnews.com/article/weisse…

93/ And here was Round 2: thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-organ…

94/ OK, everyone settle down. Weisselberg may have lied for Trump countless times and gone to jail for it multiple times, but there’s *no* evidence—as there was with Schiller—that Weisselberg *may* have in the past (or be in the future) getting rich off i—msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-…

95/ Ah. I spoke too soon.

96/ That’s right, the Trump Organization struck a deal with Weisselberg that will *instantly* deprive him of *hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars* if he testifies in Trump’s case.

Sorry, correction: if he testifies *against* Trump in the case. He can testify *for* him.

97/ This thread will run 100+ tweets, so this is just a brief mid-thread break to note that while of course this thread and its expertise are free, if you’d like to tip the author for his work, you can do so in seconds, in any amount, at the link below: sethabramson.net/pp

98/ You know what? I think I’m being paranoid here. So let’s just turn to Robert Costello—the third witness major media wants Trump to call in his defense. You know, just to help out this jury that got confused for some reason. There’s certainly no way to— newsweek.com/michael-cohens…

99/ Wait a minute, you’re saying Robert Costello was Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer while Giuliani was trying to steal the 2020 election via Kremlin agents in Ukraine—with Trump’s knowledge of it all? You’re saying Trump used Costello to shut Cohen up, and maybe get him to lie for Trump?

100/ You’re saying Costello is a known Trump agent who repeatedly lied for Trump as a Trump campaign spokesman—including at key moments where telling the truth could have *devastated* Trump’s political career?

You’re saying Costello is *Bannon’s lawyer*? bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

101/ You’re saying Costello has a history of jumping between wearing a lawyer’s hat and (as he wants to do for Bannon) suddenly declaring himself a witness in his client’s defense? Like... exactly what will be happening if he testifies on Trump’s behalf at the trial in Manhattan?

102/ And you know how much of all this major media has written about recently, as it helpfully suggests—boy how great for ratings!—that Trump call Costello, Weisselberg and Schiller to tell jurors the unvarnished truth about critical evidence in the Manhattan case?

*None of it*.

103/ Another unprecedented solid for Trump.

104/ So now Trump doesn’t have to testify. His media-termed “hush-money case” got confusing—exactly as expected (hoped?) for the sake of ratings, treating Trump with kid gloves, and backing Trump’s political play as a perpetual victim—and now the Three Trump Wise Men will fix it.

105/ That’s one way this plays out. And it certainly would offer the best explanation yet of why the cross-examination of Michael Cohen has been bizarrely chaotic—but has repeatedly emphasized events involving Schiller, Weisselberg, and Costello. Three men the State *can’t* call.

106/ The State can’t call them because it believes they will lie for Trump again—as they have before. The State can’t call them because it believes Trump—and/or the Republican Party—has paid them to lie for Trump before and may well do so again. But those aren’t the only reasons.

107/ The State *also* cannot allow itself to be in the position of doing a *direct* examination of *any* of these Trump men, as opposed to a cross-examination.

On direct examination you cannot lead the witness, which puts the *witness* in full control rather than the questioner.

108/ This is why we need more criminal defense attorneys who are no longer practicing to write threads on these Trump cases. *Currently* practicing attorneys have to be extremely carefully about discussing anything political, because they could piss off current or future clients.

109/ The fact of the matter is, there’s a viable Trump strategy here: call witnesses you believe will say whatever you want them to—men you know the State can’t call—and then, when the State calls them liars, point to Michael Cohen and say, “Well, it’s all a wash then, isn’t it?”

110/ Hopefully it’s clear now why I implied, earlier—before all the snark—that Donald Trump is a sociopath who makes run-of-the-mill sociopaths look Zooey-Deschanel-level hyper-earnest.

Because Trump has repeatedly—over and over—escaped prosecution for Obstruction and Tampering.

111/ As someone who covered the Trump-Russia and Trump-Ukraine scandals daily for years, I can’t tell you how many Obstruction or Witness Tampering charges could’ve flowed from those cases. The dozen Special Counsel Mueller identified were the tip of an iceberg—the full figure...

112/ ...would’ve easily topped 50.

Indeed, there could’ve been investigations into Trump obstructing or tampering with not just Stormy Daniels, not just Michael Cohen, not just Allen Weisselberg, not just Keith Schiller, not just Robert Costello, but *dozens* of his ex-lackeys.

113/ And each time I said, he needs to be charged. You or I would be, so he needs to be. If he isn’t, he’ll keep doing it—and become more audacious about doing it.

I said these things while taking near-daily fire from major media for allegedly being irresponsible in my analysis.

114/ So now that Trump is *finally in a criminal trial*—after the scores of times he *should’ve* been in the past, going back decades of Fraud/Theft the powers-that-be let him off on, and major-media coverage likely enabled—what do you think he’ll do? With his freedom at stake?

115/ With the presidency at stake? With his brand at stake? With his remaining years at stake? With his reputation at stake? With his capacity to destroy the lives of his enemies at stake? With the continued adoration, now and forever, of an openly *pro-crime* cult—MAGA—at stake?

116/ Thus ends the second act of this thread.

There is a third one.

117/ This thread will run 150+ tweets, so this is just a brief mid-thread break to note that while of course this thread and its expertise are free, if you’d like to tip the author for his work, you can do so in seconds, in any amount, at the link below: sethabramson.net/pp

118/ When you’re a criminal defense attorney and you’re *forced* to go to trial with no defense whatsoever—which rarely happens, because our system is horribly broken but even *it* is not *that* broken—you must ensure that jurors focus on scattered moments, not actual narratives.

119/ Your goal is to stage maybe 50 to 75 “isn’t-that-odd?” moments for the jury, each one almost like a one-act play whose only aim is you leave jurors with a furrowed brow and perhaps even shaking their heads back and forth imperceptibly. None of the plays need to be connected.

120/ This is not as hard to do as it sounds.

Life is complicated. People are complicated. Memories are complicated. Emotions are complicated. And *some* criminal cases—maybe hush-money ones, but not business-records ones—are also complicated.

So they naturally confuse us a bit.

121/ Don’t get me wrong: numbers—and the documents they often appear in—can confuse and even be used to lie. But as they tend to appear in trial evidence (that is, as they tend to be admitted/presented) they usually clarify more than confuse. But eyewitnesses? Often the opposite.

122/ Because eyewitnesses are people, which means they’re stuffed with those things we *know* can get confusing (especially for jurors, who definitionally have no prior knowledge of the people before them): emotions, memories, events, relationships, personality traits, and so on.

123/ But what if I said to you—as a former longtime criminal defense lawyer who eventually came to help train other defense lawyers (and even, as a pre-law undergrad professor, some future defense attorneys)—that there’s a way to present an eyewitness to a jury *like a document*?

124/ You may recall me writing in this thread about how, as a federal investigator who testified in federal criminal cases—years before I became what I am now, an indie journo who’s doing his fulltime job before you right now—I had to think about my stance. My *unifying posture*.

125/ I couldn’t know any cross-examination questions in advance, but I could think about who and what I was to/in the case at bar in a unified way—one productive of a single stance that’d help me make sense of what I was doing and perhaps help the jury understand why I was there.

126/ In trial advocacy, criminal defense attorneys have opportunities to *help* their witnesses—witnesses like I used to be—in doing just this: presenting themselves to the jury as a discrete element of a unified narrative with a clear arc.

They do it in opening statements, say.

127/ They do it in closing statements too. They do it at the beginning of direct examinations, which are more or less an opportunity for a witness to introduce themselves—including their credentials and the general type of work they do (and did for the case). Which brings me...

128/ ...to what I admit is only a tangentially related detour. I promise it’s brief.

After I was an investigator, I was a criminal defense lawyer; after I was a criminal defense lawyer, I was a publishing poet; after I was a poet; I was a professor; after academia, a journalist.

129/ In all those writing-forward pursuits—even as a pre-law/journalism professor, I did a lot of writing instruction as well as a lot of work in post-postmodern cultural theory—I was fascinated about meaning-making apparatuses...and how they are mostly broken in the digital age.

130/ Even my social media presence has been, from the very start, a very self-conscious experiment in testing the boundaries of how digital media allows us to make meaning (hence these antisocially long threads, which do *not*—truly—merely come about because I like my own voice).

131/ I wrote a trilogy of poetry books—The Metamodern Trilogy—that’s hundreds of pages long, reads nothing like poetry, and is again about how we make meaning (including of ourselves) in this era. And if you’ve read my bio, you’ve noticed something... sethabramson.net/bio

132/ ...which is that it is both 100% TRUE and also 100% PREPOSTEROUS. It is far too long; far too immodest; far too all-over-the-place; and, if you read to the end, you will quickly see that it’s *far* too personal. That’s because every word of it is 100% TRUE, and it is also...

133/ ...a work of *nonfiction* creative writing intended to make a *theoretical* point consistent with my research into metamodernism: that no matter how much I tell you about myself, I remain incoherent—we all do—to other people in the digital age. I can give you every fact...

134/ ...about my legal career—every word 100% TRUE—and people will still lie about me if it suits them, because while the truth matters to most of us individually, it no longer matters to the *systems* we participate in. If we want to “get” someone online... it’s no holds barred.

135/ A couple days ago a fellow lawyer wrote—as a fact—that I’d only been a lawyer for 6 months. He wrote—as a fact—that I’d hardly ever been in the room for a murder trial, let alone *won* multiple homicide cases.

And nearly 100% of the commenters cheered his deliberate lies.

136/ You’re not a human being to anyone on the internet. It’s simply *not possible*—not in the way it is in meat-space.

People do not matter here—basic decency does not and *cannot* matter—as it does out in the world.

And that relates to Michael Cohen more than anyone realizes.

137/ When I say a person can be made to seem like a *document* at a criminal trial, it’s because criminal defense attorneys are in a sense engaged in the same conduct poets are, and professors are, and journalists are... all the careers I’ve had that people think are unrelated.

138/ Michael Cohen is a stranger to the jury, just as I am—we all are—to people on the internet. And Donald Trump needs Cohen to *remain* a stranger to the jury, just as he needs all of us to dehumanize one another and not be real to one another on the internet. He needs *chaos*.

139/ The unifying narrative in every word Michael Cohen utters on the witness stand in this criminal trial is very simple. It’s so simple that it could be a document.

Say, a business card, even. Something like this, perhaps:

I AM THE MAN THAT MY BOSS DONALD TRUMP NEEDS ME TO BE

140/ Every corrupt thing Michael Cohen did for *years*—vile things, illegal things, profane things, perhaps even some terrifying things—he did because he was lost in the world 20 years ago (he knew he wanted to be successful, but didn’t know how to get from A to B) and met Trump.

141/ Bragg’s prosecutors are tasked with the hardest thing: to make a complex, dynamic, unfinished, paradoxical man *make sense* to a jury. It’s the same impossible task we engage in online, failing at it so often some of us—like me in my bio, for instance—*perform* that failure.

142/ Trump and his attorneys have a different task. A much easier task.

They simply need to stage 50 to 75 one-act plays involving Michael Cohen that make him seem so chaotic, so untrustworthy, so incoherent, so discomforting, so *toxic* that you discard everything he ever says.

143/ When media wants to take down an indie journo, they do the same thing. They work to turn into incoherence, chaos, and toxicity what’s finally just the irresolvable complexity of living. And they usually win at what they’re trying to do, as it’s far easier than its opposite.

144/ The cross of Cohen today was actually pretty bad for Cohen. And for the State. Because the task was not a hard one.

145/ Blanche showed how improbable it *seems* that Cohen could remember inculpatory moments in conversations with Trump when he can’t remember all sorts of more recent conversations. Which... is life, right? That’s how we *all* are. But it’s *easy* to make it seem untrustworthy.

146/ Cohen remembers the turning-point conversations in his relationship with Trump—a relationship he thought would end with him *finally* finding the success he always wanted, as personal attorney to a President of the United States—because *he’s the man Trump wanted him to be*.

147/ Blanche was able to *finally* get Cohen angry—as anyone who’s spoken to Cohen even once (and I have, more than once) already knows is the shibboleth for accomplishing this—by asking him about the cases that led to him going to prison. Those cases absolutely enrage Mr. Cohen.

148/ They enrage him because they represent failure. But they also enrage him because he went to prison after Trump repaid Cohen’s years and years of loyal service with betrayal.

Cohen made himself into the man Trump wanted him to be—a *monster*—and Trump kicked him to the curb.

149/ Trump doesn’t want the jury thinking about what it must say about *Donald Trump* that Michael Cohen molded himself into the man we see today to *better serve Trump* and be the man Trump needed him to be.

Because that would confirm that Donald Trump is the *greater* monster.

150/ Taken as 75 disassociated drops of poison splattered onto a courtroom floor like a crime-scene Rorschach test, Cohen is incomprehensibly awful. A maelstrom of chaos that couldn’t possibly support a conviction in this or *any* case that relies on his testimony to any degree.

151/ Cohen’s backroom dealings with Maggie Haberman, unpacked today; his thirsty attempts for a pardon; his long-running feud with a 14-year-old stalker (really); the fact that he—odiously—surreptitiously recorded clients; his use of lousy “access journalists” like Haberman...

152/ ...to seed positive stories about Trump in the media; his use of fake, AI-generated court cases in his post-disbarment attempts to get his prison sentence reduced; his embarrassment and bitterness at Trump treating him like a dog... all of it, taken individually, hurts him.

153/ It might even hurt him enough that *if* Trump were to bring on one (Costello)—or two (Costello and Schiller) or three (Costello, Schiller, and Weisselberg)—defense witnesses to tell the same absolutely batsh*t crazy story of Michael Cohen allegedly manufacturing this case...

154/ ...as vengeance against Trump for mistreatment of him—the theory being, which Blanche won’t ever say plainly, because it’s so preposterous—that Cohen and Daniels conspired to destroy Trump over events he actually knew *nothing* about—Trump could maybe get an acquittal, here.

155/ To be sure, Team Trump will be counseling him to either (i) rest after the State rests; (ii) call a single campaign-finance expert to say he did nothing wrong; or (iii) call that expert and *one* fact witness (like Costello) before resting.

But that is not what Trump wants.

156/ This thread will run 175+ tweets, so this is just a brief mid-thread break to note that while of course this thread and its expertise are free, if you’d like to tip the author for his work, you can do so in seconds, in any amount, at the link below: sethabramson.net/pp

157/ With so much at stake—and given his pathologies—Trump would want proxies on the stand speaking his words to jurors: his lies to contradict the true words of Daniels and Cohen.

Because as much as Trump made Cohen, he made the choices that made Daniels what she is to him now.

158/ As I detailed in my Daniels thread—below—Trump stalked Daniels like a predator; trapped her in his suite (with Schiller on the door as guard); left her no escape route; slept with her when she clearly didn’t want to sleep with him; then lied about it.

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1788324850685083673

159/ When he was paying off (per Bannon) 100+ mistresses to preserve his image for the Christian evangelicals he had only contempt for in 2016 and still, Daniels wanted to be in the queue and—presumably because she *didn’t kiss up to him enough*—he chose to defraud her, instead.

160/ He plotted—as he usually does—to commit the crime of (depending on the jurisdiction) Theft By Deception or Felony Fraud by signing a contract he’d no intention of honoring. Even at the doorway to becoming (maybe) president, he had to screw with Daniels *one more time* first.

161/ And because Trump is—*always*—the greater monster, he made an enemy of Daniels. Just as he made an enemy of Cohen. The only reason Pecker—who he repeatedly screwed over—didn’t become an enemy is because Trump decided to make it up to him by introducing him to rich Saudis.

162/ Trump only did that for Pecker to keep him quiet and—more so—because Pecker’s media assets might be in a position to continue to aid him going forward. Once he was POTUS, Daniels and Cohen held no utility for Trump; they were discarded like bedraggled, overplayed-with dolls.

163/ So I don’t presume to know if Trump or his attorneys will emerge victorious in the planning of the Trump defense going forward. For now, there will be Cohen redirect and recross next week—maybe for a full day or day and a half—then some mid-trial motions that will be denied.

164/ The whisper is that Trump will put on a defense; he will have at least one witness. But no one knows if it could be more than that. It will depend on how scared and/or angry Trump is. But there’s zero—again, zero—chance Trump will testify. He was never (ever) going to do so.

165/ Trump has seemed to be in a better mood the last two days, according to eyewitnesses in court. He believes that prosecutors will be unable to explain to the jury that Cohen being who he is is *proof* of Trump’s guilt—because helped make him who he is—rather than exculpatory.

166/ Trump was sleeping less today; he even smirked a couple times—Trump’s version of a smile; remember that the man has no sense of humor and rarely smiles (and *never* earnestly)—and he was paying attention to his monitor more.

He even appears to have looked directly at Cohen.

167/ This is certainly an indication that he feels confident. And the more confident he is, the easier it will be for his attorneys to convince him not to ask them to suborn Perjury. And the fewer witnesses he will put on in his own defense.

168/ But I want to underscore, again, that if Trump is happy it’s because he and major media—working in implicit tandem—achieved one goal: make this case *enough* of a circus, and *enough* of a so-called “hush-money case”, that jurors could be just confused enough about it all...

169/ ...to take the position every guilty-as-charged defendant and no-defense-available defense attorney longs for: a degree of confusion and consternation and chaos that lends itself to a statement of doubt (an acquittal) rather than certainty (a conviction). And sowing doubt...

170/ ...is something Trump does so cataclysmically well that he couldn’t do it better if he were the actual Antichrist—the actual Serpent slithering down the actual Tree of Knowledge in the first Garden. If Goodness seeks narrative, its opposite abides in unintelligible disunion.

171/ I see Cohen and see a story—a man whose actions were all of a piece, make sense, and have a clear origin-point. You could believe absolutely nothing good of Michael Cohen and you *still* would believe that he *never* would betray Trump and would *always* keep him up-to-date.

172/ And if prosecutors know what they’re about, not only will they request a hearing on Trump’s Direct Contempt in editing his proxies’ bail condition-violative statements every day in court, they will tell the jury that the Book of Cohen *isn’t a long one*... as Trump wrote it.

173/ Because the Book of Cohen is a book *within* the Book of Trump; read the former and you better understand the latter, even if Trump never testifies.

By the rules of agency—a legal term and principle—*most* of Cohen’s worst offenses were done as an *agent* of this defendant.

174/ So was the second day of Cohen’s testimony bad for the State? Yes, if it sees the field—people, meaning, and life—the way Trump wants all of us to, as an unintelligible disunion that can produce only doubt. But if it sees, or even *hopes* for, a different road, it *can* win.

175/ I hope you found this thread informative, illuminating, and entertaining. I’m doing my level best to bring my various forms of expertise to bear as an independent journalist. If you decide you’d like to tip me for my work, you can do so easily here: sethabramson.net/pp

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