During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance made the case that, if Donald Trump's attorneys thought letting their client rant and rave in Judge Arthur Engoron's courtroom on Monday was an effective defense strategy, they were sorely mistaken.
Speaking with MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire, the former prosecutor predicted the penalty the former president and his family will pay will be the dissolution of the Trump Organization in the $250 million financial fraud trial.
With Lemire noting that both Trump and his lawyers spent a great part of the day provoking Judge Engoron, he then asked, "What's your take on that strategy, and do you think it can be effective for the former president?"
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"If that was the strategy, Jonathan, it was an utter failure," she quickly answered before adding, "and here's why."
"As you all have been discussing, this is a bench trial, where the judge sits in for the jury. If there was a jury in the box, the judge would have been forced to restrict Trump's answers; he would have directed Trump as a witness to answer the question. He would have been moving to strike any of these extraneous comments Trump continued to make which weren't admissible and which were prejudicial," she explained.
She then elaborated, "If you are Trump's lawyers, sitting at the counsel table, you are watching your only hope of surviving this case — which is the appeal — you're watching it fade away."
"The Trump Organization is liable," she asserted. "In essence, the Trump Organization as a business will be shuttered. They will remove its certificate to operate."
"On appeal, they would have argued, Trump's lawyers, that that decision by the judge was misplaced; he shouldn't have found fraud as a matter of law," she continued. Yesterday, because the judge let Donald Trump ramble, Donald Trump conceded that point. That means that this decision should survive appeal, and the Trump Organization, as Trump has operated it for all these years is at an end."
Watch the video below or at this link.
MSNBC 11 07 2023 07 08 36youtu.be
