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Everything that King Midas touched turned to gold. And everything Donald Trump touches, it seems, turns to... well, whatever things turn into when they are hopelessly corrupted. We'll go with "soot," but you can feel free to sub in some other undesirable commodity that starts with "s" and ends with "t."
There was some Trump legal news late last week that we waited to write about because it involves a certain amount of... opinion, for lack of a better description. But we are now persuaded that the early reporting was justified. So, we'll first pass along that on Thursday, in the ongoing New York trial, former Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg was on the stand and asserted that he took very little interest in the valuation of Trump's penthouse in Trump Tower, as it was a small portion of the asset portfolio.
There is one small problem with this claim from Weisselberg: it appears to be an outright lie. Or, to be more precise, perjury. While the trial was on its lunch break, Forbes published a piece it had been working on, one that makes very clear that Weisselberg often had a great deal of interest in the value of the penthouse, taking steps to either make it more or less valuable depending to whom he was talking. The Forbes article lays out the evidence, which includes documents in possession of the magazine's staff.
The former CFO did not re-take the stand after lunch, but Justice Arthur Engoron said he could be recalled by either set of attorneys. We suspect that the plaintiffs will be having a chat with the folks at Forbes so they can get a copy of those documents. Weisselberg, for his part, could be looking at another visit to the graybar hotel. And it does not help Trump's case if one of his primary advocates proves to be untrustworthy and unreliable.
Meanwhile, down in Miami, Judge Aileen Cannon finally got around to holding the hearing about potential conflicts of interest when it comes to one attorney representing multiple defendants in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. And about halfway through the hearing, she got angry with the prosecution and adjourned. So it is that a question that could well have been resolved weeks ago will linger for at least another week, or two, or three.
It struck us as very unlikely that pros like the lawyers on Jack Smith's team would be guilty of an offense worthy of shutting down a hearing. Further, Cannon has already engaged in behavior that looks an awful lot like foot-dragging. That said, we are not experts in federal criminal procedure, so we held off to wait for the opinions of people who know better than we do. And now, several of them have weighed in (see here or here for examples) and opined that Cannon's behavior is irregular. Given her other decisions, it gets harder and harder to avoid the conclusion that she's trying to drag things out without making it look like she's dragging things out.
That said, it is Trump's bad luck that he is under indictment in three other jurisdictions. And so, one very friendly judge, if that is what Cannon is, will not be enough, by herself, to save his bacon. (Z)