Former President Donald Trump was convicted on all charges in the Manhattan criminal hush money case on Thursday, after the jury deliberated for less than 12 hours.
It didn't have to end this way for him, wrote former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti for The New York Times — it was a "very winnable" case for him and he blew it with his go-to strategy of "attacking everyone and denying everything," which doesn't work as well in a courtroom as it does at Trump's political campaign events.
"I have practiced criminal law for over 20 years, and I have tried and won cases as both a federal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney," wrote Mariotti. "I’ve almost never seen the defense win without a compelling counternarrative. Jurors often want to side with prosecutors, who have the advantage of writing the indictment, marshaling the witnesses and telling the story. The defense needs its own story, and in my experience, the side that tells the simpler story at trial usually wins."
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Trump barely put on any effective defense during the trial, only calling two witnesses, one of whom antagonized the judge. He chose instead to focus on his daily rants outside the courthouse, attacking the process and claiming he is a victim of a political hit job — and inside the courtroom, noted Mariotti, his team resorted to a "haphazard cacophony of denials and personal attacks."
"The powerful defense available to Mr. Trump’s attorneys was lost amid all the clutter," wrote Mariotti. "At the beginning of the trial, Mr. Trump’s team had a clear path to victory. He was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to the cover-up of a $130,000 hush-money payment that was made to the porn star Stormy Daniels. Yet the only direct evidence of Mr. Trump’s knowledge was the testimony of Michael Cohen — who has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and charges of bank fraud, tax evasion and campaign finance violation — who hates Mr. Trump and makes money off his public commentary on Mr. Trump’s legal woes. You don’t need to be a lawyer to see how this could be a powerful legal defense."
Trump's team spent some time personally attacking Cohen, wrote Mariotti — but "the defense made so many other points, and fought so many other things, that it failed to focus the jury on the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case and instead tried to fight everything and everyone, even when it gained little by doing so." That ultimately watered down any defense they might have had.
"Mr. Trump’s team was a reflection of its client, always attacking and never backing down," concluded Mariotti. "That playbook has worked for Mr. Trump again and again. For this trial and in a Manhattan courtroom, the attitude and strategy backfired."