Trump's fraud trial speech should set alarm bells ringing for Jack Smith: op-ed

Donald Trump's “defense strategy” that resulted in his impromptu speech at the closing of his fraud trial Thursday is likely to cause significant problems in the cases being overseen by special counsel Jack Smith — especially the D.C. Jan. 6 case, Slate reported.

The D.C. case is a jury trial, and jurors' ability to filter out Trump's histrionics is questionable, according to Slate's Robert Katzberg.

"In this regard, it must be understood that in criminal trials when something improper is said in the jury’s presence by either counsel or a witness, the judge will pronounce it 'stricken from the record' and instruct the jurors to 'disregard' it," Katzberg writes.

"Repeated violations can be met with warnings of contempt or actual contempt citations. While in almost all circumstances these steps are more than sufficient to ensure the trial proceeds smoothly and properly, what the New York civil litigation has made crystal clear is the fact that Donald Trump’s behavior — and that of at least some of his defense lawyers — cannot be controlled in the standard way."

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The D.C. judge overseeing the Jan. 6 election interference case, Judge Tanya Chutkan, will likely have an extremely difficult time insulating the jury from improper behavior and inadmissible statements Trump has demonstrated in his New York civil case.

Chutkan's trial is expected to be the most publicized in history, so she'll have to work overtime to make sure the jury isn't tainted by outside forces, according to Katzberg.

"Based on what we have witnessed in the New York civil case, it is all too predictable that in the best opportunity to finally hold Donald Trump responsible for his criminality, there will be any number of times when the unique but entirely appropriate limitations Chutkan will be forced to impose on the conduct of the trial will be the basis for Trump lawyers asking for a mistrial and demanding her removal from the matter,' he wrote.

"The more times this happens, the more problematic things will become."

Read the full article over at Slate.