Arriving from California - "We didn't come on purpose, but since we're here" - lawyer Andrea Dooley is one of the people who queue 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.
Today, the Republican candidate for the November election faces 34 counts of falsifying documents to cover up the payment of $130,000, just before the 2016 election, and hush up the alleged affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels. The Prosecutor's Office believes that the manipulation facilitated its victory. Trump pleads not guilty.
"We've gotten used to this constant madness", laments Dooley for the fact that, despite everything, Trump continues to be the elected Republican in the White House. "We have never had a case like this and I am glad that anyone is responsible before the law. We all know that absolutist authority is not good", he adds.
This happens on Friday, at seven in the morning. Two and a half hours until the start of the session. There are more than 150 journalists waiting to receive the card that will allow them to enter the federal courthouse in New York, in lower Manhattan. If the media interest is understandable, it is surprising how many ordinary citizens (many lawyers) want to attend this unprecedented chapter.
Trump, who is our daily bread, now lives in a different world.
He is used to being the master and lord, that no one dares to blow him, that he is the one who dictates the guidelines of those who move around him. He is suddenly caged in a courtroom, tied to the defendant's table and, for anyone in the courtroom, or in the annex (overflow, where he is followed by screens), he is more than patent that he cannot disguise his discomfort, his displeasure.
So it is understood that one of the relevant topics in the USA consists of the naps of Trump, 77 years old, during the statements of the witnesses, who have described how they collaborated with the then candidate to hide his alleged adulterous advances.
Before he feels demystified and falls off the pedestal, he'd better dream that he's in Michigan or Wisconsin, as he did on Wednesday (non-judgment day of the week), and proclaim that if he doesn't win the presidential election, he won't accept the result and he will have to "fight for the right of this country", a statement that does not need clarification after the attempt to perpetuate himself in power that he encouraged on January 6, 2021.
Many journalists attend the oral hearing carrying binoculars in their bags, some of which are opera model and others more like bird watchers.
They all serve the same purpose. Scrutinizing the former president, a man of a certain age whose eyelids seem heavy, is one of the objectives. There is unanimity in which Trump votes on his porn trial. His body language corroborates it. His eyes close for a long time and his body remains inert until his head falls off.
So much for laughing at his rival, President Biden, whom he dubbed "Sleepy Joe" to ridicule him for his age (81 years old, only three and a half years older), now it's the other one laughing of the "sleepy gentleman".
Trump walked away from this evidence. "Contrary to what the fake news media say, I don't fall asleep in this witch hunt... I just close my beautiful blue eyes, sometimes, I listen intently and absorb everything," he replied.
Thanks to a colleague leaving her binoculars, this reporter certified one of the naps on Friday. After several minutes without moving, not even a hair, he made a small snipe. 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 disgusts him. And not just because his name is clouded 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 this room his free will is subject to the will of Judge Juan Merchan, who leads the trial, who calls the accused "Mr. Trump" without using the appellation of "president" that Trump demands of the seus, who fines him ($9,000), threatens to send him to jail if he doesn't stop attacking witnesses or jurors and corrects him, something that cracks him up.
On Friday, the judge told him that his gag order does not prevent him from testifying at the trial, if he wishes, against what the defendant falsely aired, to the extent that he had to correct it.
He was still there, dozing, when Hope Hicks, 35, one of his closest collaborators in his 2016 election campaign and then in the White House, was called to the stage, although she eventually distanced herself. after sentencing on January 6.
He knows that she knows a lot. And although he congratulated her – he did what he did to protect Melania, he's a family man – he didn't dare look at him and sank down, cried and closed his eyes for a while. Hope endorsed the prosecution's thesis that Trump was behind the payments for silence made by Michael Cohen, then his lawyer (he would kill for him) and today his mortal enemy.
"We make history, but not in a good way", explains a spectator, another lawyer, already on the street, after the third week of the trial has come to a close. "It is a plague for the country. This man should be in jail."
