'Stick with the no': Legal expert gives Justice Engoron advice on handling Trump
After initially denying him the right to give a personal speech during closing arguments at his civil fraud trial in New York, Justice Arthur Engoron relented at the last minute and let him speak — only to have to cut him off after a few minutes as he veered into attacks on the court.
It may have been a mistake on Engoron's part, suggested legal analyst Lisa Rubin on MSNBC Thursday; instead, she argued, he should have stuck to his guns.
"I have to say, when I saw that ... it's like what are we doing?" said anchor Chris Hayes. "It is really, there's a bomb threat at the guy's house. He's had his court staff members clerk, her life turned upside down, dragged, social media, email."
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"275 single-spaced cases of threat pages of threats," interjected Rubin.
"It just is this test," said Hayes. "This guy is a sort of, it's almost one in a billion of how rare it is to have someone who is that untethered and unmoored and shameless and sort of, I would say sociopathic. And you just have to say no and mean no. That's a lesson."
"Yes, and stick with the no," said Rubin. "Because if you don't stick with the no, they're going to railroad you time and time again. He will have far less success and doing that in federal courts, which are set up not to allow cameras in the courtroom or press conferences. Our litigants have more security in this courthouse, don't typically have email exchanges with the casualness we see here. That being said, the lesson of these trials is you know who we're dealing with. When someone shows you who is they are, as Maya Angelou said, believe them the first time."
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