Closing arguments in New York’s civil fraud trial against Donald Trump took place on Thursday, and despite having been officially barred from personally delivering his defense’s closing statements, the former president launched into an unauthorized rant before the court and Judge Arthur Engoron.
Sources told Rolling Stone that Trump had been rehearsing what he thought would be a blistering, dramatic conclusion to the case that will determine the fate of his business empire.
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Based on what the two sources relay to Rolling Stone this week, it appears Engoron’s assumption that Trump would use the forum to rave about his own grievances was right on the money. The former president’s private “rehearsing” of what he planned to say included haranguing the judge’s staff, railing against the New York attorney general as “racist” and soft on crime, claiming that the trial was an example of the Democratic Party and Biden administration supposedly trying to “rig” the 2024 election, and gratuitously boasting of the values of his sprawling business and real-estate empire, among other jabs and bluster.
Every time his defense has produced an argument or motion it’s built up like this perry mason moment, and uniformly the response from the Judge has been ‘no, that’s not legal, that’s not how any of this works, goddamn no’ so of course, yeah, the performances are for his base. But the theater, the act being played, is “oh man trump made this awesome closing statement and the judge didn’t even listen to him -” expecting Engoron to flip the laws of justice because Donny Mason’s legal skillz with his closing statement were just that fucking persuasive.
They live in a dream world, that’s what I was attempting to depict.