An attorney for Donald Trump was chastised by the presiding judge today when she began yelling at the judge during the first day of testimony in the New York fraud trial against the failed ex-president and his company, the Trump Organization.
Attorney Alina Habba, who has already managed to screw up Trump’s defense by not marking a form to request a trial by jury (instead the case is being heard by Judge Arthur Engoron in a bench trial), was the guilty party when it came to raising her voice in response to Engoron.
New York Times reporter Susanne Craig said Monday on MSNBC that Habba attacked Judge Engoron for incorrectly valuing Mar-a-Lago at $18 million. The judge quickly set her straight.
“He said, hang on. I never said that. And he didn’t say it. His ruling that came down last week said that there have been valuations for property appraisal that put it at that price. It doesn’t mean it’s worth that. And I just found that that really struck me because that’s what Donald Trump and some of his lieutenants do. They say a lie and they repeat it over and over and over. And Eric Trump, the other night, was out tweeting about that valuation saying the same thing. And so the judge — there was a very heated back and forth and vocal back and forth between the two of them at the end of her remarks. And her audience was an audience of one. It was Donald Trump.”
That’s when Habba began yelling and was swatted down by the judge for that, too.
“She gets up and was very animated, was practically yelling to the point where, after she was done, the judge said to the next lawyer that came up to keep the volume down because it was so loud.
“And she was saying that Letitia James, she had run simply ‘to get Trump’ and this was just all about this vendetta that Letitia James has. And then she started in on repeating some of the claims that they’ve already gotten into trouble for.”
How do you know when you’re losing your case? When your lawyer gets smacked down by the judge because she can’t control herself in court.
