There it is: Donald Trump has already lost this criminal trial
When it was revealed that former National Enquirer boss David Pecker would be the first witness for the prosecution in Donald Trump’s criminal trial, it was widely believed that he was merely there to corroborate the testimony that more central witnesses would give later. Instead Pecker ended up laying out how he and Trump criminally conspired to rig the 2016 election by using fake news and suppressing real news, even as Trump cooked his books to cover it up.
Pecker’s testimony alone was probably more than enough to convince the average jury to convict Trump. This meant that Trump’s only hope was if his attorneys could get Pecker to fall apart and discredit himself during cross examination.
Trump’s legal team took some small swings at Pecker on Friday, suggesting that this or that minor detail might have been off. But none of it did anything to discredit Pecker’s believability. Then the prosecution did a redirect with Pecker which only helped to further nail Trump. So if anything, the defense’s attempt at discrediting Pecker only ended up making the prosecution’s case stronger.
And that’s it. There it is. Trump’s only realistic chance of getting acquitted just came and went. Now that David Pecker’s testimony is going in the books as highly credible, the jury is also going to see the likes of Karen McDougal, Stormy Daniels, and Michael Cohen as credible when they take the stand and help corroborate Pecker’s story.
In this kind of criminal case, the idea is that so many witnesses for the prosecution are telling the same story, the jury only really has to find one of them credible in order to find all of them credible. And even if the jury does end up having a specific problem believing one of the witnesses, it doesn’t matter due to the redundancy of the testimony.
In other words, after David Pecker landed such a gut punch this week, one of the upcoming prosecution witnesses can blow it, and we’ll still be looking at a conviction. It’s in the bag. These other witnesses will merely be piling on. Flukes can happen, but realistically speaking, Trump has already lost this trial.
