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Chaos and confusion have become almost daily occurrences at E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against former President Donald Trump in Manhattan. On Friday, an angry Trump stormed out of the courtroom during closing arguments; this came moments after the judge in the case threatened to throw the 45th President’s lawyer out of the courtroom before closing arguments began. On Thursday, Trump took the stand in his defense—for a total of three minutes. Even though Trump said very little, the judge ordered much of what Trump said stricken from the record. Law and Crime Network anchor Jesse Weber appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to explain the reasoning behind Trump’s appearance in court.
“I think it was more of a PR point of view and a campaign point of view,” Weber told Berman and Riedel, in an interview that lasted almost twice as long as Trump’s testimony. “He’s going to go up and he’s going to say listen, look at this court, they don’t even allow me to defend myself. This is not America. I wanted to go up there, but this is all I’m allowed to say, and for people who are not following the case and the legal intricacies back and forth, it’s a great argument to make on behalf of Donald Trump. And I don’t think that he thought he was going to convince the jury one way or another, but he got to say whatever he wanted to say, as limited as it was.”
Meanwhile, the future of the election interference case against Trump in Georgia is now murky, as Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis is accused of having a relationship with one of the prosecutors of the case, a clear-cut red flag in Weber’s estimation. “What she’s accused of doing now… seems to show to me a terrible form of judgement, and if she is also brought up on ethics charges or an ethics complaint, she may need to remove herself from this case as a distraction. The idea that there are receipts, that she went on vacation with this lead prosecutor, and there are questions about if he even is qualified… that’s a problem in my eyes.”
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