I’ve only been retired from the law for a few years, but it is becoming clear to me that the practice of law has changed dramatically since my days before the bench.
In the olden days, if you were taking a legal position in a case, you would try to convince the judge that your legal position was correct, or at least a reasonable expansion on existing law, and you would do so in a way that showed respect for the judge, since after all, it was he or she that would make the ultimate decision.
Apparently, it doesn’t work that way anymore, at least if the behavior of Donald Trump’s lawyers is any indication. Consider the latest. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure bar cameras in the courtroom. A number of media outlets have asked Judge Chutkan, the judge in DC, to nonetheless allow cameras in the courtroom. Trump’s lawyers have joined them, but they have apparently adopted a strategy consisting of citing no law in support of their position, announcing in advance that they intend to play to the television audience which is precisely what the Department of Justice said they would do, and insulting the judge, as a few excerpts from their brief establish:
“Every person in America, and beyond, should have the opportunity to study this case firsthand and watch as, if there is a trial, President Trump exonerates himself of these baseless and politically motivated charges,” said the filing.
It accused Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s team of violating Trump’s constitutional rights and attacked Chutkan for allowing “these attacks,” thereby “placing the interests of his political opposition” above his legal protections.
“These proceedings should be fully televised so that American public can see first hand that this case…is nothing more than a dreamt-up constitutional charade,” it said.
Bear in mind that they are asking the judge to set aside a decades old rule and make an exception in this case, so it seems a bid odd that in doing so they pretty much promise to disrupt the proceedings precisely because they are being televised, thereby causing precisely the harm the rule is meant to prevent.
The only conclusion one can reach, if one rejects the possibility that all of Trump’s lawyers are totally incompetent, is that, knowing they have no legal basis for their request, they are doing what they can to make their increasingly senile client happy and furnishing some lines he can use later to grift more money from his base.
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