Donald Trump’s criminal trial is well underway in New York City, and inside the Manhattan courtroom, the former president’s lawyers are doing their best against overwhelming evidence. But just outside the courtroom, the defense attorneys are saying very little about the case, while their client seems eager to try parts of the case in public.
The New York Times reported over the weekend:
Donald J. Trump spent the bulk of the past week in a Manhattan courtroom, standing trial as the first American president to face criminal prosecution. He is accused of falsifying business records to cover up an affair with a porn actress ahead of the 2016 election. Even though he did not take the stand as opening statements got underway, he took to the cameras to argue his case each day the court was in session.
The Times highlighted several of the key claims the Republican has pushed over the last week or so, including:
- “Nobody’s been able to say what you’re supposed to call” Michael Cohen’s hush-money invoices.
- Cohen “got in trouble. He went to jail. This had nothing to do with me.”
- The Federal Election Commission “took a total pass on it. [FEC commissioners] said essentially nothing was done wrong or they would have done something about it.”
- “I’m not allowed to defend myself, and yet other people are allowed to say whatever they want about me.”
- “This is all a Biden indictment.”
None of these claims is true. In fact, they’re demonstrably ridiculous. Most don’t even make sense to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the basics of the allegations.
The prosecutors’ indictment has made the details of the hush-money invoices plain; Cohen’s hush-money payments obviously have a great deal to do with his former client; the FEC is deadlocked, but it never exonerated Trump or absolved him in this case; the former president is facing a gag order, though that hasn’t stopped him from defending himself practically every day since he was charged; and the idea that President Joe Biden is orchestrating a local criminal case in New York is absurd.
But “Trump lies a lot” isn’t exactly a breakthrough story. Given his track record, it’d be a bigger surprise if the presumptive GOP nominee managed to tell the truth about the case. What strikes me as notable, however, is how the former president’s allies might respond to fact-checking like this. They are, after all, going out on weak limbs, telling the public that this case is meritless and that Trump has nothing to worry about. If that were true, why is it, exactly, that the suspected felon is lying uncontrollably about the basic details? If this doesn’t make his sycophantic allies a little nervous, they’re not paying close enough attention.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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