If Donald Trump gives evidence it will be the death knell of his defense in the Stormy Daniels hush money trial, an attorney has said.
Lawyer and New York University law professor, Andrew Weissmann, said that prosecutors would use thousands of Trump's previous lies against him if he testifies.
Speaking on Inside With Jen Psaki on MSNBC, Weissmann said that he was confident that Trump lawyer, Susan Necheles, would throw herself in front of the witness stand rather than let Trump testify.
Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor, said that "everyone should know that a defendant has no burden to testify" and that the jury will be told that and they cannot use a defendant's silence against them.
However, he said that all defendants have the right to testify and Trump has "a lot of hubris".
He said that a prosecutor would be "licking [their] chops" with anticipation if Trump decides to testify.
"The amount of cross examination material is thousands of prior inconsistent statements, that's a polite way of saying lies. There are a lot of prior acts. So his taking the stand would really be a death knell to the case," Weissmann said.
Newsweek sought email comment from Trump's attorney on Monday.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is the first former president in United States history to stand trial in a criminal case. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The prosecution seeks to prove that before the 2016 presidential election, Trump paid, or discussed paying, two women—adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal—not to disclose his alleged affairs with them. He denies affairs with either woman.
As part of the "pattern of behavior" narrative to back up those claims, prosecutors allege that a payment was made to a former Trump Tower doorman who claimed to know that Trump allegedly fathered a child with another woman.
Prosecutors say National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc. bought the rights to the doorman's story following an agreement between an executive and Trump to look out for negative stories about the then-presidential candidate. Trump has denied all the allegations and says he is the target of a political witch hunt.
Weissman said that Trump's hubris was seen in the E. Jean Carroll case, where Trump was sued for $5 million for sexual assault and defamation.
Weissman said Trump "thought he knew better" than his own lawyers and believed he could defend himself when Carroll sued him a second time for defamation.
In that second case, a jury awarded Carroll over $83.3 million, Weissman noted.
In May, 2023, a New York jury found that Trump did not rape Carroll, as she had asserted, but he had sexually assaulted her. The jury awarded her $5 million for defamation and sexual assault.
Trump countersued Carroll, saying that the jury had decided her rape allegation was false. In August, 2023, Judge Lewis Trump dismissed the counterclaim, saying that rape and sexual assault are both "felonious sex crimes". He added that Carroll's allegations have been shown to be "substantially true."
In January, 2024 a second New York jury awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million for defamation for Trump's continued denial of the sexual assault. Trump has posted a $91.6 million bond for an appeal.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more
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