Alina Habba repeatedly clashed with New York judge Lewis A Kaplan in court for the former president’s civil defamation trial
Remarks made by Donald Trump lawyer Alina Habba in a recent interview about “faking being smart” resurfaced after she endured two tough days in court during her client’s civil trial for defamation damages.
Ms Habba repeatedly clashed with New York judge Lewis A Kaplan in court on Tuesday and Wednesday, during the former president’s civil trial to determine damages for defaming columnist E Jean Carroll.
These included the response to repeated objections, and her failure to stand up when making them, as well as continuing to petition for a postponement of the trial so that the former president can attend the funeral of his mother-in-law.
After a further attempt of the latter on Wednesday, Ms Habba was issued a sharp rebuke from Judge Kaplan. She responded by asking the judge not to speak to her in that way.
“I don’t like to be spoken to that way. And we are going to be here for several days,” she said. “I am asking your honour to please refrain from speaking to me in that manner.”
Let’s be realistic. She was hired because (a) no lawyer with any desire to keep their reputation intact would touch this case with a 10 foot pole, and (b) because she looks like a smaller, more pissed off version of Melania. Which means he didn’t hire her for her legal skills. He hired her because she’s a starstruck, young lawyer hoping to be able to boost her career and he sees an opportunity to get her into bed.
And she has two goals, neither one of them involve winning the case. (1) Spew out as many frivilous monkey wrenches into the works as possible, knowing full well the judge is going to rule against 99.9% of them, so Trump will be able to leave the courtroom every day and twist those rulings in order to show that the judge is “biased” against him in his glorified campaign rallies, and (2) To delay as much as possible until after the election in hopes that Trump wins and is just able to make everything go away.
(And yes, including the state stuff. If he wins the election, he would just hand-wave it away and basically tell the states “You’ve made your decision, now let’s see you enforce it”, and he’d most likely be correct in his belief that either the states would lose any appetite for trying to enforce anything, and the courts would likely say that the need for him to carry out his presidential duties supersedes the states’ needs to enforce punishment and that they’d have to wait until his 2nd term is over before pursuing him if they wanted to try.)