Prior to deriding her courtroom skills, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman suggested Donald Trump might be thinking about dropping controversial attorney Alina Habba after taking a massive $83.3 million hit in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial.
Speaking with MSNBC host Alex Witt, the attorney jokingly called Habba's courtroom skills a "comedy of bumbling" because it appears she has no idea how to conduct herself in a courtroom.
Before he got to the point, he noted that Trump was "brought to heel" by the massive penalty imposed by a 9-person jury.
"He [Trump] has not publicly mentioned E. Jean Carroll since the ruling. Could he be putting himself on some sort of defamation budget?" host Witt joked.
"Yeah, I think so," Litman replied. "And I think it is significant because it shows him having been brought to heel. You saw his supporters saying, 'He doesn't take any crap. He does what he wants and gets away with it.' Here, he did what he wanted but didn't get away with it; he got socked once a little bit and now very harshly."
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"I think maybe Alina Habba, maybe in his own mind, that's a path I can't go and I've been burned very severely, we will see," he continued before adding, "But I think it will be a really encouraging sign that the legal system can actually constrain him."
Addressing Habba later, he continued, "She does seem to be perfectly chosen to be the wrong lawyer in the courtroom. She got generally mocked for not having the basic skills, which I think is true, but more than that, she tussled with the judge. she tussled with, you know, everything about the proceedings. She was Trumpian."
RELATED: Habba's closing 'did the seemingly impossible' and made Trump's 'position worse': expert
"You need to portray that you don't have contempt, and you need to try — good luck to you — making him a sympathetic figure," he proposed. "I do think part of the, you know, a rough week he had was having chosen a counsel who doesn't seem to have — it's not just chops but kind of judgment about how you try a case like this when it's already been established and you may not quibble that your client has sexually assaulted the plaintiff and then lied about it."
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