@JimB said:
@mattbbpl said:
@JimB: Holy shit, you think the prosecution has threatened Trump to not testify?
They did, they told him that if he testifies they will bring up his other cases which have nothing to do with this trial.
I just read the court transcripts for 22 April. They discuss this between pages 825 and 832 of the transcript, including about 5 pages from the judge discussing principles of law and fairness.
So I can confidently say the prosecution never threatened Trump.
Instead, here's what was discussed:
The basic idea is that if a witness is going to testify in court, the other party can question their credibility. That can include discussing their past crimes or criminal acts. That's how courts work. Before the jury will hear a witness, they need to be satisfied the witness will tell the truth.
It gets more complicated when the witness is the defendant in a criminal trial. The prosecution IS allowed to bring up past crimes to challenge their credibility, and there are many past cases where this happened.
There is a risk that discussing past crimes might unfairly influence the jury. So to mitigate the risk, the trial judge can set limits on which cases can be raised, how they can be discussed, and how the jury can use them.
So in this trial, the prosecution wanted to discuss 6 cases. Menchan said they could discuss 4 in a limited way, only when challenging Trump's credibility. The other 2 cases can't be discussed at all. Trump's lawyers didn't challenge this decision.
TLDR? It's not a threat. It's the normal functioning of the law. If Trump wants to testify, his credibility will be challenged, and the jury will probably hear that e.g. Trump was found guilty of fraud. That's the risk any defendant takes when testifying.
Log in to comment