Trump’s Idiot Lawyers Just Shared Faulty Evidence in Fraud Trial

CantaloupeLifestyle@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 527 points –
Trump’s Idiot Lawyers Just Shared Faulty Evidence in Fraud Trial
newrepublic.com
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Trump’s lawyers also showed a slide claiming the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas is 64 stories. But an architectural drawing shows it likely has fewer levels because the floor numbers jump from eight to 16.

We can do that? Okay. My house is actually five stories. I've labeled the ground floor 1 and the upper story 5.

For tax purposes, though, the ground floor is -1 and the upper floor is 0 so it's a zero story house.

If you look closely, floor 13 is actually skipped in a LOT of buildings. It's unlucky

Skipping floor 13 is one thing, skipping 9,10,11,12,13,14, and 15 is quite another. And has anyone checked the mid-30s are really there? They could be placebo buttons.

Also in East Asian cultures, the number 4 is unlucky either because its pronounced the same or similar to “death”. So, they often don’t have floors with the digit 4.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia

I lived in a condo building in a high Chinese population city in British Columbia, Canada and there was no 4th, 13th or 14th floor.

I have tetraphobia. That's why I only buy milk and juice sold in bottles.

“My hotel doesn't have a 13th Floor because of superstition, but c'mon man... People on the 14th floor, you know what floor you're really on" "What room are you in?" "1401". "No, you're not. Jump out of window, you'll die earlier!"”

— Mitch Hedberg

This doesn't make it ok. Children are adept at pointing out the stupidity of adult discrimination, reminding them that people are dumb enough to discriminate against a fucking number is a good way to hopefully help them hold onto their memories of how idiotic some of our learned choices are.

So then...what about 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, and 15?

You are right though, I think nearly every tall building I've been in doesn't list a floor 13.

I thought those floors were there, but usually service floors?

Anecdotally, having to have to take the stairs down during fire drills, the number of steps between floors 15 -> 14 is the same number of steps from 14 -> 12.

I think it's simply that 13 is considered unlucky, so people won't rent/buy those properties, and it's cheaper to renumber the floors than to risk the floor being unoccupied or below market value.

It's not unlucky, morons think it is and do dumb shit like that

When I bought my house it was listed at 5 bedrooms. There are 3 bedrooms upstairs. I think the Master Bedroom (first floor) is actually supposed to be the living room, and the living room was a dining room.

The fifth bedroom is a room in the back of the house just off the driveway. It's uninsulated, the window is single pane, and none of the outlets are grounded. It's unheated. They had a scrap of carpet out there, but it was just covering the cement floor. I installed an insulated exterior door and threw away the solid wood one. I keep the lawn mower and snowblower out there.

“I just bought a 2-bedroom house, but I think I get to decide how many bedrooms there are, don't you? 

"Fuck you, real estate lady! This bedroom has an oven in it! This bedroom's got a lot of people sitting around watching TV. This bedroom's over in that guy's house! Sir, you have one of my bedrooms, are you aware? Don't decorate it!"”

Similarly, my house was listed as two and a half bath. The second “full” bath is a random shower, toilet, and sink in the basement just… there. Open to the rest of the basement. No enclosing walls. lol

To be fair, it must be pretty hard being Trump's lawyer. I imagine there's a lot of, "Is there anything else you should be telling us?" and "Are you certain of that or would you like to try remember more or double-check first?" conversations. Then you get in court and shit still goes terribly because your client's like a kid with chocolate on their mouth and told you he didn't eat the cupcakes.

When he was in the White House, two of his lawyers would never see him alone to avoid him lying to them and telling them different things.

To be fair, it must be pretty hard being Trump’s lawyer.

Actually, it's probably pretty easy.

You don't actually have to know what the hell you're talking about. All you need to do is be able to stand in front of a microphone, and parrot out all the usual Trump talking points on command.

You don't need to make coherent arguments in court. In fact, Trump doesn't want you to. You're acting for an audience of one, and it's not the judge. Your entire role, again, is to just regurgitate whatever Trump tells you to regurgitate.

You don't even need to win. Trump's overall success rate in court is abyssmal. But it doesn't matter because all Trump cares about is that you spent weeks or months repeating Trump's talking points on command.

Sure, little things like getting paid, keeping your reputation intact, avoiding criminal charges and disbarment, and being able to find work later might be a wee bit problematic, but the work itself is probably pretty easy. See what Trump says on TV? Just say that over and over and over and over.

He's going to care if he wins in the criminal trials, especially the one in Georgia he couldn't definitely pardon if he was president. He probably couldn't pardon the others because it's legally questionable whether a president can pardon himself, but he'll sure try.

I could be completely off base because what I'm about to say comes from memory of an article I read years and years ago, long before Trump in politics was ever a thing.

But the hypotheticals of what would happen if an elected President was in jail has been discussed before. The general idea that I remember reading was that yes, he wouldn't be able to pardon himself at either the state or federal level, but his incarceration would be superseded by his need to carry out his Presidential duties, effectively putting any criminal punishment due to him on hold. Sure, he'd still be a convicted felon, but he'd still basically avoid anything resembling actual consequences for his actions, and Trump would be perfectly OK with that. He'd be able to avoid consequences and would wear the conviction as a badge of honor.

And make no mistake: That's what Trump is going for. He didn't care about his impeachments. He hasn't cared about any of the civil trials he lost yet. He only started caring about this one once he realized he could turn the courtroom into a glorified MAGA rally. Being labelled with "convicted felon" would just be something else to add to the pile of things Trump doesn't care about. He'll fundraise off of it. He'll have laws changes to make sure he never has to actually serve a sentence even after his term ends. And in the end, as long as he doesn't actually have to suffer actual consequences outside of some reputational damage, he'll consider it a win.

Idk, assuming you have bills to pay you'll want to be able to get paying work in the future (especially since TFG won't be paying), which is harder if googling your name comes back with nothing but clown pictures.

Sure thing, but his behaviour around lawyers has been known for decades and yet they still took this utterly impossible to represent client. Fuck them.

a kid with chocolate on their mouth and told you he didn't eat the cupcakes.

"Donny, Donny!" "Yes Papa?"

If this ever gets made into like a docuseries or movie, future generations aren’t going to believe that the legal team of a former President in a civil case was this incompetent.

Like there’s no way to make said movie and not have it be a comedy of errors.

It's the Trump candidacy, presidency, and aftermath were a TV series, we'd be yelling at the writers to make it more realistic.

Someone explained to me that fiction needs to be believable, but reality has no such constraints

There will almost certainly be a season of American Crime Story about this one day, but unfortunately not until after it's over. It will be over one day, right?

It will. One criminal charge sticks and Trump's done. He's old enough that any of them would be an effective life sentence, and the rest will be bookkeeping.

My money's on this being the only way the GoT writers think they can redeem themselves...

Now hear me out: Arrested Development, Trump version. Think about it. A family of horrible, dumb people dragging each other down. The family father getting caught doing illegal stuff and running the dumbest defense ever. The idiot lawyer holding a press conference on a shitty parking lot next to a porn shop because noone bothered to check if it was the right Four Seasons (still the funniest thing to happen in the last 2,000 years). I can totally see Eric Trump saying "Illusion, Ivanka. Magic is something a whore does for money."

The only thing missing is someone decent enough to play Michael (which is saying something, because even Michael was a horrible person).

Henry Winkler shows up. "I've got some experience defending 'light treason'! "

I was actually thinking Jeffrey Tambor would be a great pick for Pence.

Tambor could do a great Rudy Giuliani.

Rudy needs someone more erratic, small, short and with a scrunched up face

It’s fairly easy to understand, though - his cases are hopeless because he’s plainly guilty. He expects his lawyers to lie for him, endangering themselves, make frivolous arguments, and try anything to delay cases. It raises their profile, but makes them look bad to normal people, and then on top of it, he will simply ignore bills to avoid paying anything. Therefore he’s only left with desperate, incompetent or dumb lawyers. Because nobody reputable would want a client like that.

Therefore he’s only left with desperate, incompetent or dumb lawyers

No, they're dumb. You're not entitled to legal counsel for civil trials, only criminal ones. That means any lawyer who represents him in the New York case is choosing to do so.

Of course they’re doing it voluntarily. What I mean is the group of people willing to work for him is small at this point. And obviously Trump isn’t capable of representing himself.

Title it "Fucking Morons" and make it as serious a documentary as possible.

It'd be like Dr Strangelove. Start out writing a serious movie, but there's so much inherently funny stuff to work around that you have to give up and make it a comedy.

Trump's lawyers: Banks should have done their own due diligence for his properties themselves. We even put a disclaimer to not trust us!

Also Trump's lawyers: Failed doing due diligence on Trump's properties in court.

I wonder if their slides had a disclaimer to not trust their evidence.

The Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, explained to Forbes a month ago that 40 Wall Street has 63 floors of commercial space, but “when you add the space from 63 to the cupola, the building totals 72 floors.”

I'd be interested in seeing what that space actually is. Are they going to start arguing over the definition of a floor? Is this going to turn into Bill Clinton's famous "define is" situation?

Well, Clinton's situation was actually pretty smart lawyering on his part. So I'm guessing if Trump's team is successful it would be more like a Johnny Cochran prepping OJ situation.

Right, Bill and Hillary are both lawyers in their own right. That particular incident may have sounded bad to the public, but Bill knew he was in court. Something of the opposite of Trump, who keeps playing to his public base even when he's in court.

As far as I can tell, idiot lawyers is all he hires.

Idiot lawyers are all who are still willing to work for somebody who may not pay them.

What is a cupola in the context of a modern city tower and how does it add 8 stories? Is this usable space or is this literally just a nine story spike on the tower?

I’ll bet their plan is to be so incompetent he can get a mistrial.

Being terrible at their job isn't grounds for mistrial. People are entitled to a defense, not a good defense.

But they probably don't know that, since they're terrible lawyers.

LOL if that were true half the prison population would be on the street right now.

Too late for that. The Trump organization has already been found liable. This is the damages phase. They're doing everything they can to say "okay, it was fraud, but not that much fraud" at this point and the Trump family are all trying to claim they had no idea what happened in their own company.

They're filing for a mistrial, anyway. Which is probably their best move at this point. It probably won't work, but it's their best move.

I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to do that repeatedly until they scored a bribable judge.

The lady on the team looks like she ate WAY to much of a mushroom chocolate bar lmao. She looks like she tripping somewhere next to Jupiter 🤣

That's Alina Habba, a lawyer who doesn't understand how to do her job. Isn't it odd that Trump doesn't fire her for being incompetent? And isn't it odd that she has a similar look to his current wife? 🤔

Odd? Everything about Trump is odd. He’s the definition of it

To me it kind of looks like a person missing something... like a soul.

Having shitty lawyers can be a defense on appeal.

Just saying

Not for lawyers he specifically hired. He chose them, and he'd have to prove why he would have won with effective counsel. Good fucking luck with that - there isn't a lawyer on earth that could win this case for him.