Trump's lawyers planting 'legal landmines' as Manhattan fraud trial looks to be a loser

As Donald Trump's bank fraud trial enters its third week, observers are noting the former president's lawyers appear to be employing a deliberate strategy of dragging it out for a multitude of reasons, one of which includes baiting New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur F. Engoron in an effort to bolster an inevitable appeal.

According to a report from the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, the case filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James looks to be a loser for Trump's legal team, so they are stretching it out to create problems for his other trials -- by making him unavailable to appear -- and handing him time to raise more money to pay his mounting legal bills.

As he notes, Trump's legal team of Alina Habba, Jesus Suarez and Christopher Kise are dragging their feet and doing their best to irritate the judge by relitigating rulings he has already made in the hopes that he will blow up on them and hand them an excuse to seek an appeal.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

As Pagliery put it, they are "littering" the trial with "legal landmines," with the Beast report stating they have, "...adopted a comically and deliberately irritating tactic. Anticipating a massive and detailed appeal, they have been asking long-winded questions about each line in each document—and repeating each question for every year from 2011 and beyond."

The report also notes that Trump is making infrequent appearances at the trial -- with another expected in the coming days -- as a way out of avoiding having to give depositions in other trials he is dealing with.

According to Pagliery, "By appearing in court during half of the first week at trial, Trump managed to squirm his way out of a potentially devastating deposition in his revenge lawsuit against his former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen," adding, "Trump, who’s known to say self-incriminating things under oath, would have been forced to answer damning questions about the way he employed Cohen as his mob-like consigliere for years. The Miami federal judge overseeing that case allowed him to skip a scheduled interview session to appear in New York for this trial—only to have Trump quickly ditch the lawsuit last week. And now he’s doing it again."

You can read more here.