Arrived from California – “We didn't come on purpose, but since we are here” – lawyer Andrea Dooley is one of the people who lines up early to experience something historic.
Donald Trump is the first president or former president to be tried in a criminal case, something unprecedented in the history of the United States.
The current Republican candidate in the November elections faces 34 charges for falsifying documents to cover up the payment of $130,000 just before the 2016 elections and silencing the alleged affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels. The prosecution believes that manipulation facilitated his victory. Trump pleads innocent.
“We have become accustomed to this constant madness,” Dooley laments over the fact that, despite everything, Trump remains the Republican nominee to the White House. “We have never had a case like this and I am glad that anyone is held accountable under the law. “We all know that absolutist authority is not good,” he adds.
This happens on Friday, at seven in the morning. There are two and a half hours until the start of the session. There are more than 150 journalists waiting to receive the card that allows them entry to the federal court in New York, in lower Manhattan. If the media interest is understandable, the number of ordinary citizens (many jurists) who want to attend this unprecedented chapter is surprising.
Trump, who is our daily bread, now lives in a different world.
He is used to being the lord and master, that no one dares to blow at him, that he is the one who dictates the guidelines of those who move around him. Suddenly he sees himself caged in a courtroom, tied to the accused's table, and for anyone in the courtroom, or in the annex (overflow, where it is followed by screens), it is more than clear that he is not You can hide your discomfort, your displeasure.
Thus it is understood that one of the relevant issues in the US consists of the naps of Trump, 77, during the statements of witnesses, who have described how they collaborated with the then candidate to hide his alleged adulterous advances.
Rather than feel demystified and see yourself fallen from the pedestal, it is better to dream that you are in Michigan or Wisconsin, as you did on Wednesday (the day of the week when there is no trial), and proclaim that if you do not win the presidential election you will not accept the result and will have to “fight for the right of this country”, a statement that does not require clarification after the attempt to perpetuate himself in power that he encouraged on January 6, 2021.
Many journalists come to the oral hearing carrying binoculars in their bags, some are opera model and others are more of a bird watcher's model.
They all serve the same purpose. Scrutinizing the former president, a man of a certain age whose eyelids seem to be heavy, is one of the objectives. There is unanimity that Trump rests on his porn judgment. His body language corroborates this. His eyes close for a long time and his body remains inert until his head falls off.
He laughed so much at his rival, President Biden, whom he baptized “Sleepy Joe” to ridicule him for his age (81 years old, only three and a half years older), now he is the other one who laughs at “Sleepy Don.”
Trump stood up to this evidence. “Contrary to what the fake news media says, I don't fall asleep during this witch hunt... I simply close my beautiful blue eyes, sometimes, I listen intensely and absorb everything,” he replied.
Thanks to a colleague lending him her binoculars, this chronicler certified one of the naps on Friday. After several minutes without moving, not even a hair, she dozed off. On other occasions, one of his lawyers, Todd Blanche, notices and whispers something in his ear.
It is possible, from a psychological point of view, that this is a denial of his inability to control a narrative that bores him. And not only because his name is tainted by his association with Stormy Daniels in an alleged sexual relationship in 2006, which he denies, shortly after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son together.
Not only because in that room his order and command are subject to the will of Judge Juan Merchan, who directs the trial, who calls the accused "Mr. Trump" without using the nickname "president" that Trump demands of his people, who imposes sanctions ($9,000), threatens to send him to jail if he does not stop attacking witnesses or members of the jury, and corrects him, something that upsets him.
This Friday the judge told him that his gag order does not prevent him from testifying at trial, if he wishes, contrary to what the accused falsely stated, to the point that he should have rectified.
There he continued, dozing when Hope Hicks, 35, was called to the stand, one of his closest collaborators in his electoral campaign in 2016 and then in the White House, although in the end she distanced herself by condemning on January 6.
He knows that she knows a lot. And although she congratulated him – he did what he did to protect Melania, he is a family man – she did not dare to look at him and broke down, cried and her vision was suspended for a while. Hope supported the prosecution's thesis that Trump was behind the hush payments made by Michael Cohen, then his lawyer (she would kill for him) and today a mortal enemy.
“We are making history but not in a good way,” says a spectator, another lawyer, already on the street, as the third week of the trial closes. “It is a plague for the country. “This man should be in prison.”
