Donald Trump has nixed his best defense
A lesson on hamstringing
There are five tendons attached to the back of the knee. They are crucial to standing, walking, running, and jumping.
Ask anyone is sports medicine what happens when you pull a hamstring and they will use words like “debilitating” and “painful”.
That’s just noun stuff though. As a verb, hamstring is far worse. To hamstring someone means you have crippled or handicapped them and effectively put them in a very small box. Obviously, being hamstrung is debilitating and painful.
It’s probably not a good idea to hamstring someone who is trying to help you. Like your lawyers. In a criminal defense case. Where you are charged with 34 felonies.
Meet Donald Trump and his lawyer, Todd Blanche.
Donald Trump has a defense in the “porn star payoff’ case. It’s not a great legal defense, but it is a great political defense.
“In 2006, I fooled around a couple of times. I didn’t want my marital straying to interfere with my presidential campaign. Normally, I use NDAs with people I work with. It’s not something you can really do when you’ve had an affair. Buying their silence over what I regarded as personal and intimate was necessary.
“And I relied on my lawyers and accountants to do the paperwork.”
It also makes cross-examination easier. Concede the act of infidelity and focus on who made the person who made the payoff and who did the paperwork. Michael Cohen is the key witness against Donald Trump and the person who will take the stand with the most baggage (he has a perjury conviction).
Nope. Donald Trump has insisted that Todd Blanche emulate this guy.
The guy on the left is Roy Cohn. He was a disturbingly vile and vicious person.1
Some of the things Roy Cohn taught Donald Trump. Double down on your lies and never concede anything.
So, in a trial, where a guilty verdict on the felonies could lead to years in prison, Donald Trump has hamstrung Todd Blanche with the following:
“I don’t know either of these women and I certainly never had sex with them.”
The problem with that approach is not simply disproving the affair, it’s having to explain paying roughly $280,000 to two women Donald Trump claims not to know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn