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this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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It depends.
Let's be realistic -- nobody on that jury cared about testimony from anyone other than Cohen and Stormy Daniels. The rest were just bureaucratic filler that most of the jury probably couldn't care less about.
Their attempts to discredit Stormy Daniels was considered by most to be a huge miss, as she seemed to hold up better on cross-examination than she was on direct. Most believe this is a result of Trump demanding the lawyers try to make her say that the sex never happened at all, rather than focusing on details that actually matter to the case or simply trying to get her testimony tossed on relevance grounds. In fact, they failed twice here: Had the defense just conceded that the sex act occured, her testimony may not have been allowed at all since she had little to nothing to contribute to the actual allegations. And after that, the judge likely would have declared a mistrial due to the prejudicial nature of her testimony if Trump hadn't put it in play in the first place by denying the sex happened.
They scored a pretty huge win when they got Cohen to admit that he stole money. And in the end, that still may save Trump if it creates enough doubt in even one juror's mind. But that was pretty much the only win they got, and even that was more of a "even blind squirrels occasionally find nuts" kind of way. The rest of their defense ranged from largely ineffective to incompetent, and their one and only defense witness seemed to do more harm than good if reports are to be believed.
So no, they didn't really defend him very well, but that's largely a result of them listening to Trump's demands instead of putting on a coherent defense. But they did get one really good shot in, and that shot alone may have been just enough to get the job done.
Thank you for the concise summary
Which was itself part of the defense strategy. In similar cases, the two sides would agree on the validity of certain pieces of evidence, making those technical witnesses unnecessary. But Trump probably told his lawyers not to admit to anything, which probably drew the trial out for a week or two, and forced the prosecution to have to cover every detail, in the hopes the jury would find it all too overwhelming.
There's no probably about it. There were a couple of reports out there that said Trump did exactly this just to drag out the trial and get the jury bogged down in all the red tape.
The ironic part is that they could have avoided much of the most damning testimony if they had just conceded that the sex had occurred. At that point, Stormy Daniels' testimony would probably have been disallowed entirely because it wouldn't be relevant, and the jury would not have the image of an orange man in a T-shirt and boxers getting spanked by a pornstar with a magazine seared into their brains.