Former President Donald Trump will not be allowed to deliver his own closing argument in his civil fraud trial in New York on Thursday, the judge overseeing the case said.
Judge Arthur Engoron told Trump’s attorneys that the former president must submit to certain restrictions if he wished to address the court, which Trump’s team did not agree to. The judge said that Trump would have to limit his statement in court to “what is permissible in a counsel’s closing argument, that is, commentary on the relevant, material facts that are in evidence, and application of the relevant law to those facts.”
An email thread added to the case’s docket Wednesday showed negotiations between Engoron and Trump’s attorneys. After extending his deadline for a response, Engoron wrote Wednesday afternoon that Trump would not be allowed to speak.
“Not having heard from you by the third extended deadline (noon today), I assume that Mr. Trump will not agree to the reasonable, lawful limits I have imposed as a precondition to giving a closing statement above and beyond those given by his attorneys, and that, therefore, he will not be speaking in court tomorrow,” the judge wrote.
Who is the “they” you’re talking about here? That’s a pretty dangerous dangling modifier. If you’re talking about his lawyers, I think by now it’s pretty clear that they are anything but careful. They’re desperate and grasping at any straws they can.
Even the huge bluff that this was, the idea of allowing Donald Trump himself to deliver the closing arguments would amount to nothing but a gigantic clown show, and it was obvious from the start, that no judge in the right mind would allow this to happen. At best, Trump, and maybe his lawyers, thought that they could playoff being shut down as some sort of free speech suppression argument. But even that is a tremendous mountain of bullshit.
We don’t like to dangle.