'Can't help himself': Lawyer shows how Trump is tanking his chances in fraud case

Donald Trump is blowing any chance he has in the New York civil fraud trial with his "deranged behavior," wrote attorney Mark Herrmann for The Daily Beast.

This comes after a chaotic day of testimony including the former president's one-time attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, during which Trump ended up being fined $10,000 for violating a gag order against attacking court staff — the second time he had purportedly done so.

"When you’re the defendant in a trial without a jury, you really want the judge to like you. The judge may in the end rule against you, but you shouldn’t encourage the judge to want to hammer you. Any lawyer will tell you that needlessly antagonizing a presiding judge is just stupid," wrote Herrmann. "Judges try to be fair, and they try not to let their personal feelings interfere with their rulings on the law. But judges are also human. Judge Engoron has already ruled against Trump before trial and is now deciding how badly to punish Trump for his misdeeds. Any rational defendant would, in this situation, be on his best behavior. Not Trump."

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Already, Engoron has ruled against Trump in part on summary judgment, finding Trump and his two adult sons liable for civil fraud by inflating the value of their assets, and the trial is mainly about determining whether New York Attorney General Letitia James gets her requested relief of $250 million in fines and the dissolution of the Trump Organization.

"Perhaps he can’t resist the publicity that he gets from attacking the judge and his clerk during trial. Perhaps Trump is affirmatively trying to antagonize the judge, so that the court’s final decision is particularly harsh. This may help Trump politically — or make the opinion weaker when Trump ultimately takes his appeal," wrote Herrmann. "Or perhaps Trump simply can’t help himself. He’s spent a lifetime attacking those who don’t accommodate him, and he’s not able to break that habit."

Ultimately though, he continued, "the legal reality is the same: When the judge speaks, Trump should listen." And the fact that he is refusing to do so is "just plain crazy."