A panel of former federal prosecutors on MSNBC tore into former President Donald Trump's attorney Todd Blanche for trying to complain to the jury in closing about the prospect of Trump receiving a prison sentence — remarks that Judge Juan Merchan ruled to be completely improper.
"It is not lost on me that Todd Blanche took that chance, probably because Donald Trump wanted him to, with even Tiffany Trump there, two Trump sons are in the courtroom ... the fact there are three Trump adult children in the room does seem theatrically performative," anchor Joy Reid told former prosecutor Harry Litman.
"Yeah, and there's a couple more points to be made," said Litman. "First, the curative instruction you just instructed, Merchan says there may not be prison for this crime. You wouldn't normally tell a jury that. You would just say disregard punishment. He had so led with his chin, and Merchan was so livid that he did that. And second ... I agree. It's fundamental, and it speaks, I think, a little built of desperation. The idea is to try to gin up a hung jury or some kind of person to have sympathy. If you thought you had a decent shot at hung jury without that, I don't think you would engender the judge's ire in that way."
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Co-panelist and former prosecutor Joyce Vance promptly agreed with Reid's assessment that Blanche's behavior is "something you say when you think your client is going to be convicted. Don't send him to prison, please."
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"I think that's right. It comes across that way in large part," said Vance. "Look, the first line of defense for Trump's lawyers is to hope someone on the jury will believe the government failed to meet its burden of proof of get beyond a reasonable doubt. They just want the acquittal. They simply want to live to fight another day at this point in time. But the problem is, when that's your strategy, you do end up exposing a little bit of your soft underbelly to the jury."
It's particularly a bad look for a jury as "engaged" as this one, she continued. "This jury is meticulously following along ... even at this late hour, they're tracking with the evidence. And it's not lost upon them that Trump's lawyers have skirted some of the most important issues, the exhibits ... the failure to confront the details of Michael Cohen's testimony, and something that I think is surprising to all of us here and that shows that desperation is you would have expected them to parse through Michael Cohen's lies. If there were going to be ten reasons the government failed to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt, they should have all been Michael Cohen's lies. At the end of the day, they weren't. That's what the defense is riding on, and they simply seem to have failed to pull it off."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
Joyce Vance on Todd Blanche's closing argument www.youtube.com
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