After all Donald Trump is human just like you and me (The Daily Haberman)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/27/nyregion/trump-trial-defense-lawyers.html

https://archive.ph/YyV9k

Echoing Their Client, Trump’s Lawyers Pursue an Absolutist Defense
Donald J. Trump demands praise and concedes no faults, denying his lawyers time-honored defense tactics.
By Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich, Maggie Haberman and William K. Rashbaum
April 27, 2024 Updated 9:03 a.m. ET

Donald J. Trump is a thrice-married man accused of covering up a sex scandal with a porn star after the world heard him brag about grabbing women by their genitals.

But when Mr. Trump’s lawyers introduced him to a jury at his Manhattan criminal trial this week, they dwelt on a different dimension: “He’s a husband. He’s a father. And he’s a person, just like you and just like me.”

Mr. Trump is known to be mercurial and prone to outbursts. In private, he has dressed down lawyers in several of his cases, even questioning their entire strategy just minutes before they were set to appear in court, people who have seen him in action say.

Inside the criminal courthouse, Mr. Trump has been better behaved, and more subdued, save for one episode during jury selection that drew a rebuke from the judge. Mr. Blanche also appears to be resisting some of his client’s interjections; when Mr. Trump poked Mr. Blanche on the shoulder at the defense table, he shook his head and brushed off the former president.

The pestering is unsurprising from a man who values control and is unaccustomed to sitting still. And Mr. Trump, whose litigious streak has thrust him in and out of courtrooms for decades, knows more about legal proceedings than the average defendant.

But he is hardly a master of procedure, and this case presents a unique test to an armchair litigator: After years of filing and fighting lawsuits, it is his first criminal trial. With three other criminal cases against him mired in delay, it might be the only one he faces before Election Day, underscoring the stakes of the proceeding.

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