I'd love to believe the following scenario took place

[mnmoderatedem]

trump's defense team did not wish to call any witnesses. But trump in all his belligerence and bluster insisted Costello testify, and his exasperated attorneys eventually relented.

And Costello subsequently inflicts considerable damage to trump's defense.

No insider knowledge or anything, just a gut feel. trump's buffoonery in legendary (Everything trump Touches Dies), and I can see him torpedoing his own case. Just the kind of thing the dumb ass would do.

[Ocelot II]

1. It would not surprise me at all to learn that's exactly what happened.

[Irish_Dem]

2. Do you think it is possible that Trump's lawyers are deliberately sabotaging

the trial? To get a mistrial or overturn on appeal or something like that?

The defense has been so obviously bad we have to wonder what the h is going on.

[onenote]

3. As has been pointed out, mistrials aren't granted for failed legal strategy

It has been repeatedly suggested that Trumps counsel are trying to set up an ineffective assistance of counsel appeal for Trump or that Trump will pursue such an appeal.

But as DUers who are experienced lawyers have pointed out, those suggestions are based on a misunderstanding of what constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel.

Overturning a verdict based on ineffective assistance of counsel is a very high bar to clear. The defendant would have to show that their counsel failed to meet the "minimum standard" of competence expected of counsel and that, but for counsel's deficient performance, there is a "reasonable probability" that the result of the proceeding would have differed. The minimum standard test is exactly that -- a "minimum" standard. Courts are loathe to second guess a defense counsel's choice of what witnesses to put on or what questions to ask because there is not necessarily one "correct" way to try a case.

[Irish_Dem]

6. I am not an attorney. That is why I am asking one.

This is the court of public opinion and the defense attorney behavior looks suspicious.

We are told they are excellent attorneys with good credentials before the trial.

Even those with no legal training can see they are not good attorneys.

So what are the logical reasons which would account for such behavior?

What are the criteria for ineffective assistance of counsel?
It sure looks like that is what is happening.

[Ms. Toad]

10. Criteria for ineffective assistance of counsel: You (and all the other attorneys on your side) were sleeping

during critical parts of the trial.

I'm not joking - it has to be almost that blatant. (Verdicts have been upheld in criminal trials where defense counsel was sleeping - just not during the critical parts).

[Irish_Dem]

16. So what you are saying is that even w/ the dismal Trump attorney behavior

it does not reach the level of ineffective counsel.

Good god. So even attorney sleeping is not enough. Has to be during critical parts and even that
might not be enough.

Ok so that is leaving us with Trump pressuring his attorneys to act in counterproductive
ways based on his psychopathology.

In my opinion he is crazy enough to do tis.

[Ms. Toad]

21. Yup.

Standards may have improved a bit since the case I'm recalling, but there has been at least one death penalty verdict sustained because counsel didn't sleep through the critical parts of the trial. Those standards are generally designed to ensure (whether it is expressly deliberate or not) that "scumbag criminals" never see the light of day - no matter how bad their court-appointed attorneys are.

(Not saying that all court appointed attorneys are bad, or don't care - but the system is designed so that indigent criminals don't really have a fair shot - even with a court appointed attorney who cares - and I know many who do. But the realith is that indigent defendants are generally represented by attorneys who are paid a fraction of what prosecutors are paid, they generally handle far more cases at one time (so they don't have enough time in the day to do a really good job), they generally don't have the budget needed to find/produce good evidence, etc. If we made the standards for overturning criminal convictions too lenient, we might actually have to reform the public defense system so that indigent defendants received the counsel to which they are legally entitled.)

[Irish_Dem]

26. Interesting.

The bar has to be high for ineffective counsel rulings to protect the public defender system.

It will be interesting to see if there will be a different set of standards for Trump in this case.

The problem for Trump is that I now believe he is much worse than in the past
and it is easy to predict that his appellate action will be just as crazy and dismal.

[WarGamer]

30. appreciate the explanation...

[onenote]

11. See post #5.

See also: https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=18938671

[Irish_Dem]

18. Thanks. This is the money shot:

"and that the defendant would likely have been acquitted had it not been for the inadequate representation."

[Whiskeytide]

15. They are competent lawyers. Their problem ...

… is that they don’t have a case on the facts and a marginal case - at best - on the law. When you’re faced with that bad hand, all you can really do is bluff - make a big show with drama and theatrics, and play for a hung jury.

I think they are also hoping a magat slipped in through voir dire and will foul up the works.

And of course they will appeal. It’s clear Тяцмp falsified records. But that’s a misdemeanor. The felony comes into play because the misdemeanor was committed in furtherance of another crime - election interference. But that is, in all honesty, a bit of a stretch. It’s a novel theory offered by the prosecution, and may have some weaknesses on appeal. That has possibly been their play all along.

[Irish_Dem]

19. Bad case, bad client. Makes attorneys look incompetent.

All they can do is hope there is a jury holdout.
Or they win on appeal. A long shot.

[brooklynite]

27. Why does the behavior look suspicious?

Trump insists that that he didn't know or have sex with Stormy Daniels and won't let his attorneys frame a different defense strategy.

[Ocelot II]

5. No. You can't get a mistrial by deliberately sabotaging your own case.

Along the same lines, a jury verdict is presumptively correct, and is seldom overturned on appeal. The purpose of an appeal is to bring up alleged errors of law on the part of the trial judge. If counsel doesn't object to a ruling by the judge, the error, if there is one, is waived and can't be argued on appeal. The screw-ups by Trump's lawyers were almost certainly caused by Trump himself, who was controlling their trial strategy - lawyers mostly have to do what their clients tell them to do unless it's something that's actually illegal. If it's just something stupid, the lawyer will warn the client that it's stupid and a bad idea but ultimately they still have to do it. Calling Costello as the last defense witness was epically stupid, but Trump probably insisted that they do it because he wanted more than anything to discredit Cohen. I'm pretty sure Blanche warned him that it was a bad idea. But you do what the client wants.

[Irish_Dem]

9. So Trump cannot file something for ineffective counsel?

It also seems unlikely his attorneys would risk their licenses to help out Trump.
But other attorneys have done so.

So if this is the case, then that does leave us with the strong possibility that Trump
is directing the case himself, straight to hell.

Thanks Ocelot.

[Ms. Toad]

12. He can, and almost certainly will file a claim for ineffective assistance of counsel.

Along with a whole bunch of additional claims in the appeal to which he (and any convicted criminal) is entitled. Ineffective assistance of counsel is pretty standard in a criminal conviction. BUT it is almost never granted - and nothing I've seen in this trial is even close to a successful IAC claim.

[Irish_Dem]

20. Thanks.

[Ocelot II]

14. Absolutely not. Ineffective assistance of counsel is a very high bar.

The lawyer has to be so incompetent as to have failed to meet the minimum standards of adequate representation, and the inadequate representation has to have been a substantial cause of the defendant's guilty verdict. There was a famous case where the lawyer slept through most of a capital murder case, and a Texas appellate court (of course it was Texas) found that even that wasn't ineffective enough to grant a new trial. That decision was finally overturned by a federal court, but you get the idea. Ineffective assistance induced by the client certainly isn't going to do it.

[Irish_Dem]

22. This means then that Trump is decompensating a great deal.

In the past he was not this reckless in court?
Not this crazy and foolish with his attorneys?

He is pressuring the attorneys to act badly and make poor decisions.
And this cannot be used as the basis for a successful appeal or other action.

I think Trump is going off the cliff.
Seriously.

[Ocelot II]

23. Trump thinks he's smarter than anybody else, including lawyers.

Obviously he doesn't think his decisions are foolish - and when everything predictably goes sideways he just blames somebody else. It was probably his idea to call Costello as a defense witness, but when the prosecutor ate Costello's lunch on cross-examination, it was Blanche's fault for not preparing him well enough, or the judge's fault for sustaining the prosecutor's objections, or Costello's fault for acting like a dick and pissing off the judge. But of course it couldn't have been Trump's own fault for insisting Blanche call Costello as his last witness.

[Irish_Dem]

28. Well yes, Trump's narcissism and grandiosity are evident.

Yes he thinks he is the smartest person in the room.
But the point is that his decision making is quite foolish and destructive.
More so than usual.

And yes of course the pathology is that he will blame everyone else for his bad
judgment.

My point is that he is getting objectively worse.

The stress is getting to him.
And the dementia is low layered on top of the narcissism and sociopathy.

Trump is cornered, flailing about.
He has lost his focus and ability to make simple decisions in a way that benefits him.

This kind of trajectory does not usually end well.
My gut is not good about outcome.

[Ms. Toad]

8. No. (This question has been asked and answered several times.)

If you deliberately sabotage things, you don't get a mistrial. You don't get to benefit from your own bad behavior.

Betting that you will win on appeal is also a losing strategy. Reversal on appeal is generally under 10%. Sabotaging the trial hoping to win on appeal is stupid. Not to mention that you build a case on appeal that you had an opportunity to present at the trial (but chose not to). So, for example, you can't bring in additional witnesses. You can't go back and ask the witnesses questions you forgot to ask. You can't add evidence (so long as it you knew - or could have known - about it at trial. So even if you believe you have a stinker of a judge, you have to build the absolute best record you can at the trial - because it is too late to do it if you wait for the appeal.

[Irish_Dem]

13. I am taking into account that Trump is crazy.

And he is not ruled by logic.

So I am trying to understand how his insanity fits into the legal paradigm.

I must have missed the other discussions about this.

[Ms. Toad]

17. His insanity, and refusal to be ruled by logic are irrelevant.

Ultimately, legal strategy (and obligation to know and follow the law in court, and to protect the client) are his counsel's responsibility - not his. Even when your client makes bad choices, as an attorney, you are still obligated to carry out your duties to the court. Making poor strategy choices might give rise to a civil malpractice claim by Trump (but bringing such a claim would also require him to waive attorney client privilege - so his attorneys could demostrate, for example, that Trump pressured them into making bad strategic choices), but none of the strategy choices are bad enough to be IAC.

(There have been two or three suggestions similar to yours in the last week or so.)

[Irish_Dem]

24. I am trying to figure how much Trump is decompensating.

And how his mental status has deteriorated.

How is his mental illness playing out in court?
How much is a function of the attorneys?
How much due to Trump?

But I needed some legal insight regarding various scenarios.

All the legal eagles are ruling out deliberate self sabotage for an ineffective counsel gambit.

That leaves the likely possibility that Trump is seriously decompensating.
And is much worse than in the past.

He has become so crazy he is forcing those around him to do some very destructive things,
destructive to himself.

This is a form of psychiatric self implosion.

[Ms. Toad]

31. I don't know that it is decompensating -

I'm not even positive he's much worse than in the recent past.

I do recognize the same peculiar fantasy world my spouse (with mild cognitive impairment) lives in. Once a story lodges in her brain, she absolutely believes it is true. I've known that for years - I listen to her talking about experiences that happened to me as if they happened to her, or telling tall tales about our daughter that make a good story which she absolutely believes after the first telling, as well as about her grandmother being in a coma for years (which she never was). I finally got confirmation about the last tall tale from her sister, when my spouse repeated the tale in front of her - and her sister looked at her as if she was crazy, and confirmed her grandmother was never in a coma. (And, typically, my spouse still doesn't believe her grandmother wasn't in a coma when her sister refused to authorize treatment for a UTI that ultimately took her life - in her mind, her grandmother was in a coma for years and not treating the UTI was a kindness.) Interestingly enough, I saw that process happen in her (long form) cognitive abilities test. They had her draw a picture from memory then, over a period of hours, repeat the drawing several times without looking back at the original. She drew several items incorrectly in the first drawing. Every single time she repeated the drawing, she made the same identical mistake.

And - I see that in Trump. Once he weaves the election theft tales (as an example), he absolutely believes them - and will tell them nearly identically ad nauseum. He does sometimes embellish them (multiplying numbers, for example) to make a better story - but the essence remains the same.

Unlike my spouse - he has the ability to have his underlings do his bidding. So I suspect his little brain had woven a tale in which Costello would support his case - and insisted his attorneys call him as a witness. They should have refused. Trump has an absolute right to trestify - but otherwise he doesn't have the right to control legal strategy. I think he absolutely believes he did nothing wrong. He probably also absolutely believes he did not rape E. Jean Carroll, or have sex with Stormy Daniels. That is just my opinion based on all too personal observations of cognitive issues he seems to share with my spouse. Having lived through it (still living through it), I recognize it.

Some things are newer (his more limited vocabulary, slurring his words, even scrambling people and events). But I don't think they played any particular role in the trial.

Trump has never understood the law. It was his counsel's job to make the proper strategy decisions (and get his buy in). But especially if your client insists on bad strategy, unless it is blatantly unethical (like suborning perjury), following your client's wishes is just another choice on which reasonable lawyers might differ. So not IAC.

[Irish_Dem]

35. I think Trump is demonstrably worse.

Even when compared to his behavior in the EJ Carroll case.

Yes but your spouse is entirely different from Trump.
We cannot compare the two.

Trump is a severe narcissistic personality disorder.
A ruthless and dangerous sociopath.
Long term drug abuse and addiction.
Now with an obvious dementia.
And he is facing tremendous ongoing severe stress.

I see a distinct decline in his functional level over the past 6 months.

This not typically the kind of situation that ends well.

[Ms. Toad]

37. I agree there are other things going on with Trump -

Just not things that I think influenced this trial. What he believes is true in this trial seems very much the same as my spouse - a story he once told himself that became true in his mind the instant he told it. Other things (narcissim, sociopathy) influenced how he used his distorted view of reality to influence the behavior of others (like his attorneys). Those seem pretty much unchanged to me.

What I do see as demonstrably worse is primarily his command of langauge.

[Irish_Dem]

39. If the DU attorneys are correct about the legal strategy,

it is 100% certain that Trump is functioning in a much worse way than he did for the EJ Carroll trial.

The attorneys cannot have it both ways. They cannot all agree that Trump directed his attorneys in such a
way as to make them lose his case so spectacularly. But then say his pathology did not influence the trial.

The attorneys in the EJ Carroll case were not so egregiously bad at the hands of Trump.
So we can clearly see Trump is deteriorating if he indeed is the one who forced his attorneys
to behave in such a dismal way.

We don't know if Trump actually believes all of his stories. I can make a case that he does not.
This is demonstrated by his own behavior. He spouts a story, then changes it the next day.
This is not someone who believes his own nonsense.

Narcissists believe their lies. Sociopaths know they are lying.
So we probably see a combination with Trump because he is both a narcissistic and a sociopath.

We know that Trump did this way before his dementia. So we cannot state this is new behavior due to
his cognitive slippage.

My goodness, Trump's command of the language or lack thereof, is the least of his problems.

[Ms. Toad]

40. It's not binary.

The law is what the law is.

Trumps normal (for as long as he's been on my radar) M.O. of coercing people to do his bidding hasn't changed. If he wanted Costello on the stand, the chances were extremely good that Costello was going to be on the stand. That's not a decline - that's just the way Trump (and those around him) operate. As to how the attorneys in E. Jean Carroll operated - there is a huge difference from this case. In this case, Trump was forced to be in court every day to monitor what his counsel was doing. In this case he had no escape - and, thus, was more likely to impose his world view on them. It was also a civil, rather than criminal, case.

As to your distinctions between narcisists and sociopath - it is not an absolute distinction. I have a brother who is a diagnosed sociopath. While he is certainly capable of lying to further his own goals, he also absolutely believes his own lies.

[mopinko]

32. i suspect his lawyers hate him. y else wd they b reading insults about him all the time?

i mean, questioning cohen, how many mean tweets did they rly need in open court?

[ms liberty]

4. I believe it. He's terrible at decision-making and too arrogant to take good advice from others.

[Irish_Dem]

29. I think he is worse than in the past. Much worse.

Trump is not doing well at all.

[oasis]

7. "Only the best people"

[brooklynite]

25. Why would Trump want Costello to testify?

[Johonny]

34. In the GOP friendly testimony he gave in congress

That he did while Cohen was testifying, he came off as strong and bold and gave Cohen a lot of shit. FOX played up his appearance. He seemed like the right guy to say everything Trump wanted to say about Cohen without testifying himself.

Unfortunately the prosecution was ready for the man and made him look like the mob style hire he was. GOP and FOX don't battle test a man for testifying at a trial as Trump found out.

[magicarpet]

36. Because trDUMP thought Costello had the fire in the belly,..

... coupled with the blind MAGA loyalty to everything trDUMP.

The hope was that Costello would get on the stand and tear Cohen to shreds and trash any testimony Cohen made against trDUMP.

trDUMP thought Costello was the ace up his sleeve to turn the entire trial in the Orange Fuhrer's favor. The jury would then acquit. trDUMP would ride the wave of acquittal right back into the Oval Office carried on the shoulders of his cheering MAGA buffoons.

trDUMP's fevered dreams once again failed to materialize but rather exploded in his orange pancake makeup face.

[Tribetime]

33. Everything he touches dies.You can bet it was his decision

[Wounded Bear]

38. Completely plausible...nt