And so, David, you were referring to this just a
little bit ago.
But the New York Times's new reporting on how the
former president has repeatedly complained about
Blanche's lead lawyer in this case.
As the Times reports quote,
he has griped that Mister Blanche,
a former federal prosecutor and veteran litigator,
has not been following his instructions closely and has been
insufficiently aggressive.
Mr. Trump wants him to attack witnesses,
attack what the former president sees as a hostile jury
pool and attacked the judge Meh Chang.
How do you square this with what
you as an attorney, how do you square this with
what your client wants versus what your responsibility and role
has to be as a a an attorney?
It's it's very difficult right because you have an obligation
to do what you believe is best for your client
where you have a a very high profile client telling
you he wants something different and this happens quite a
bit in these cases.
But Trump knew what he was getting when he hired
Todd.
Todd is a is a well known former federal prosecutor.
He's not a guy who's going to go in front
of the cameras.
He's not a guy who's going to wave his fist
around.
People thought this is what Trump wanted because he would
be doing this Trump.
So he wanted a different kind of lawyer to be
running his team and and you know Todd is running
the all the cases,
these three different cases. And so he's in a difficult
position because he needs to do what he thinks is
best for the case and also make the client happy.
It's a very, very tough spot he's in.
I mean by
Blanche has to have known who his client
is and how his client has acted and continues to
act.
I'm just wondering, how does the attorney team deal with
a client like that?
But then also, if Trump does get
what he wants, how does the prosecution handle a different
style of lawyering?
Well, look, I think this prosecution team has some real
experience knowing how
Donald Trump directs his lawyers as well.
And and the prosecution just has to keep his eyes
focused on the evidence that it's putting before the jury,
I think in this case.
And to David's point, you know,
look, Donald Trump has been Donald Trump and has not
changed one iota.
I think one of the reasons that Donald Trump presumably
picked
picked his his defense team is because he said these
are winners.
We know that Donald Trump likes to win.
He does have a high degree of confidence in his
own ability to decide how that winning happens.
And I think as we all know,
if you're going into surgery,
you don't want to be the one telling your surgeon
how to do the surgeons job and this is no
different.
But just like a surgeon might do,
if you're having a dispute with a patient,
you can say, look,
This is why you hired me.
This is what I'm here to do.
This is my best advice.
I'm going to do my job.
You know, at some point,
Donald Trump will make a decision about whether he wants
to keep working with any of the lawyers on his
team.
But he would be ill advised not to pay attention
to the advice of a very seasoned attorney like his
current team.
So David, I know that.
I mean in South Florida and really,
I mean everywhere, you are well known as being the
top of your field,
top of your game. I know that actually a former
president actually reached out to you that sometime.
Can you tell us what that was like?
Yeah. So we we met and we talked about me
coming into the case.
Ultimately, I decided not to for all sorts of reasons.
You know it. Maya's point about surgery is an interesting
1.
Edward Bennett Williams, the greatest criminal lawyer of the 20th
century,
used to tell his clients that he was like a
surgeon,
and he would put them to sleep at the beginning
of the case and wake him up at the end
and let them know that he won.
Trump's not asleep, although he is sleeping in the trial,
apparently. But he's telling his lawyers what they what he
wants
and apparently told them to take on certain things in
the opening statement,
which I was very surprised that Blanche's opening statement
took on so many difficult positions in the case.
To me, they should have really gone with a slightly
different defense,
very similar to the John Edwards defense,
which is Trump may have violated the good book,
but he didn't violate the legal book.
That was John Edwards successful defense.
But Trump is fighting on every single possible
thing. And that's what Todd had to open on.
What were you? What do you take away from that
meeting?
Well, I take away that he's very involved in the
case.
I'm not going to speak about,
you know, the specifics of it.
I can't. But he's he wants to be involved.
He is involved in the defense and that's OK.
Your client should be involved.
It's their life. It's it's difficult to tell them to
go to sleep and wake him up at the end
of the surgery.
It is their life. But at the end of the
day,
you as the lawyer need to do what's right or
you're going to lose control.
You're going to lose the case.
You're there for a reason,
and if the lawyer doesn't trust you,
if the the lawyer doesn't trust you to do the
good thing and the right thing,
then it's not a good.
It's not a good match.