- Donald Trump’s antics defined his civil court cases, including the recent New York fraud trial.
- However, Trump will soon be fighting off 91 charges across four criminal cases.
- According to former attorneys for Trump and the Trump White House, his lawyers will have to rein him in.
Storming out during closing arguments. Answering questions at his deposition with sassy retorts. Violating gag orders.
It’s hard to forget the antics of a fed-up Donald Trump, riled over the “witch hunt” he claimed he was facing during the proceedings of his recent civil trials.
In a case involving writer E. Jean Caroll, Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her by denying it. In two separate cases, a jury awarded Caroll a total of $88.3 million in damages. He denied any wrongdoing.
Trump was also hit with a $454 million fine in his New York fraud trial. He has denied any wrongdoing.
But former attorneys for Trump told The New York Times that his usual demeanor won’t fly in a criminal trial — or, in Trump’s case, his four criminal trials.
“I would expect Trump to try to act up,” former White House attorney Ty Cobb, who worked under Trump, told the Times. “He needs to be aggressively muzzled by the lawyers if he is to avoid offending the jury.”
Trump is facing a total of 91 charges across four criminal cases: the Stormy Daniels hush money case, the classified documents case, the January 6 Capitol insurrection case, and the Georgia false electors case. He has pleaded not guilty in all four cases.
Quickly approaching is the hush money case, in which Trump is accused of directing his former lawyer Michael Cohen to make a $130,000 payment to Daniels, a porn star who said she had an affair with the former president. Jury selection in the Manhattan trial begins on March 25.
Trump “and his legal team will continue to fight the Democrat-led witch hunts in the courts and at the ballot box,” Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, told the Times.
Per 14 attorneys who have either represented the former president or were in his orbit, many of whom spoke anonymously to the Times, Trump risks putting off the jury in a deeply blue city.
He and his criminal defense attorneys, Susan R. Necheles and Todd Blanche, must also avoid annoying the judge.
However, it seems they have already succeeded in doing the complete opposite during a February hearing to set a date for the hush money trial. Judge Juan Merchan, overseeing the case, insisted that the attorneys stop mentioning Trump’s schedule as a reason to delay the trial. Blanche did it anyway.
“Stop interrupting me,” Merchan said as Blanche continued to discuss Trump’s busy schedule.
Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours.
