Control my client? Your Honor, please!
Afull day of frantic spinning couldn’t alter the fact that Monday was not a terribly good one for Donald Trump, who spent much of it with District Judge Arthur F. Engoron, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and her various prosecutors, or as they’re known in MAGA World, Scam the Sham and the Witch Hunters.
Predictably, what transpired in those critical hours in a Manhattan court room was spectacle enough to overload the news cycle, as well as legally significant enough to scuttle any remaining delusions about the business genius of the Trump Organization, but I’ll remember it for one incredible question posed by the judge.
The incredible question
Frustrated by the former Buffoonatic-in-Chief’s windy offtopic testimony while still in its first theatric hour, Engoron asked Trump attorney Chris Kise, “Mr. Kise, can you control your client?” Ex-squeeze me?
Please tell me that was a rhetorical question.
If not, the short answer is no, the longer answer is no one has ever controlled this person, and the ultimate answer is rolled into in a potentially democracy-shattering presidential election that just crept to within a year. Control Donald Trump? With respect, Judge Engoron, that’s been a losing proposition since the 1950’s, when Trump’s hapless parents tired of his chronic insubordination and the disruptions caused by his constant fighting and bullying and shipped him off to reform school, or at least that’s what the Trump siblings called New York Military Academy because it was not prestigious like St. Paul’s, where Freddy, the eldest, had been enrolled.
You can find the particulars in Mary Trump’s book, “Too Much and Never Enough,” still the best Donald explainer among the mountain of books on the 45th president. Here’s part of Page 49:
“Though Donald’s behavior didn’t bother Fred (his father) – given his long hours at the office he often wasn’t around to witness much of what happened at home – it drove his mother to distraction. Mary couldn’t control him at all, and Donald disobeyed her at every turn. He talked back. He couldn’t ever admit he was wrong; he contradicted her even when she was right; and he refused to back down.”
You know, like Monday.
The pathology remains
Whether it’s at age 7 or 77, the pathology remains, which is part of the reason it’s so hysterical to see Trump’s performance on the stand this week couched as some kind of legal “strategy,” designed to unnerve the judge, enable an appeal, or even goad the court into jailing him to trigger a fundraising windfall for the 2024 campaign.
Save it; there’s no strategy. That’s Trump, out of control, always the victim, a menace to any authority aside the generational dictatorship of his own needs. His lawyers can’t control him, White House lawyers couldn’t control him, the law itself can’t seem to control him, and the Constitution of the United States that he swore to preserve, protect, and defend could not control him any more than E. Jean Carroll could control him in a Bergdorf’s dressing room.
Contrary to the instant analysis from his sycophant lawyers and Fox News lapdogs, Trump did himself and his business no favors as Monday wore on.
He admitted to reviewing the documents in question, the ones with inflated values designed to induce larger bank loans than would have come his way with honest appraisals. He signed off on them. He answered “everybody,” when asked directly who in the Trump Organization was responsible for detecting and preventing fraud.
That’s funny. Asked essentially the same thing last week, Don Jr. said not me, Eric Trump said not me, and Ivanka will be the star of Not Me Wednesday. Further, former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg did such a good job with fraud detection and prevention that he wound up in Rikers.
Judge Engoron has already found that the Trump Organization committed fraud; the proceedings that continue this week are mostly to fix the penalty, which is expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The only part of this that really irks Trump is the myth-busting, specifically the myth of his own business acumen and accomplishments.
The snowflake
“The fraud is her,” Trump yelled in court, pointing at the Attorney General. And “He called me a fraud (pointing at Engoron) and he didn’t know anything about me.” And “This is a very unfair trial, very, very.”
Always the victim. “They’re mean to me.” The snowflake’s snowflake.
The subtitle of Mary Trump’s book is “How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man.” When it was published four years ago, that seemed maybe a little dramatic. No more.
“I beseech you to control him if you can,” said the judge on Monday, “If you can’t, I will. I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.”
Of course, he did nothing of the sort. Just like the last 70 years.