Trump's courtroom antics amount to 'throwing rocks at the judge': attorney

Donald Trump’s declaration Wednesday that he would “love” Judge Lewis Kaplan to toss him from his defamation trial is best compared to the actions of a playground bully, a legal expert argued Wednesday.

“Throwing rocks at the judge, so to speak, disrupting his courtroom, is very unlikely to help him legally,” attorney Renato Mariotti said on CNN Wednesday afternoon.

“Trump really wants to turn this trial into a circus.”

The trial in New York City’s federal civil court has brought Trump face to face with E. Jean Carroll, the writer he’s been found liable of sexually abusing and defaming, for the first time in years. He denies wrongdoing.

Trump is not required to appear in court but has done so, Mariotti argues, to distract from serious accusations levied by Carroll, namely that he raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s then lied about it as president.

Carroll testified Wednesday that she’s been forced to sleep with a gun next to her pillow as she received an onslaught of messages urging her to kill herself and threatening rape.

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Trump, meanwhile, hissedaudible insults in his attorney’s ear loudly enough to spur sanction from Kaplan.

“He wants the story to be the circus rather than a focus on the facts of the law,” Mariotti said. “It’s not a legal strategy it’s a P.R. strategy.”

While Trump may have succeeded in drawing attention away from Carroll’s charges, Mariotti believes the sacrifice will be his chance of appealing the jury’s ruling on damages, which could be as much as $10 million.

“The transcript will not look very good for the former president,” Mariotti said. “Making statements out loud in front of the jury is not something that judges would ordinarily permit a defendant to do.”

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