John Dean, former White House counsel to the Nixon administration, said Friday that former President Trump’s offer to testify at his secret trial in New York is just “bravado for his base.”
Dean counted CNN anchor Boris Sanchez suspected that Trump’s legal team was trying to dissuade the former president from testifying when Sanchez asked.
“He’s not a good witness,” Dean said, referring to Trump. “He… the few times he has been in the dock and on the stand for some time, we can see that he is not a good witness. So this is a lot of bravado for his base, because there are obviously huge political implications for him, in this trial and others.”
Trump had already said he would testify sometimes in the case of silence.
“Yes, I would testify, absolutely,” Trump said during a joint press conference with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this month. “This is a scam. It’s a sham, it’s not a trial.”
Judge Juan Merchan, presiding over the silence case, said earlier this month that Manhattan prosecutors can question the former president about past rulings in civil cases, including E. Jean Carroll and civil fraud cases — which also occurred in Empire State. – if he testifies.
The silence case, which began last week, marks the first criminal trial of a former American president. Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with reimbursements to then-fixer Michael Cohen, who paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump, which he denies having had.
After the second day of jury selection at his trial, Trump referred to the reimbursements as a “legal expense,” placing some blame on his accountants.
“I was paying a lawyer and we marked that off as a legal expense – some accountant. I didn’t know,” Trump told reporters. “Mark this as a legal expense. That was exactly it. And you were indicted for this?
A recent CNN poll found that most Americans believe former President Trump is being treated differently than most criminal defendants in his hush-money case.
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