A Glaring Example of VERY BAD Decision Making by Donald Trump
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Alina Habba, one of the many attorneys working on the numerous legal problems facing POSđź’©45 — aka 34x CONVICTED FELON, SEXUAL ABUSER, PHILANDERER, CHISELER IN CHIEF, SWINDLER, CHRONICALLY HABITUAL PATHOLOGICAL LIAR, BEST ALL-TIME LOSER — DJ Trump, represented him (as best she could, and apparently, that wasn’t good at all), being significantly responsible in large part for his courtroom losses, is, by any account, an “eye candy” attorney. That is to say, she’s easy on the eyes, attractive, lovely, etc.
While beauty, which remains in the eye of the beholder, has never been any requisite or prerequisite to be an attorney, it certainly never hurts.
But, by the same token, it doesn’t help.
Alina Habba, a lawyer for Donald Trump, speaks to reporters after he arrived at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Court House in Washington, DC., on August 3, 2023. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
And, of course, like a flower, beauty eventually fades. And, once it does, then what?
Take your pick of metaphorical euphemistic idioms: The Emperor Has No Clothes, Face the Music, etc., all which indicate some level of poor decision-making.
Donald Trump has a well-known penchant, proclivity, and predilection for lovely women. Numerous reports over the many years that We The People have been subject to his odiously noxious, boorish behavior indicate as much, which even he has mentioned on seemingly countless occasions, acknowledging almost as many times his sexual attraction to his daughter Ivanka.
In and of itself, appreciating female beauty is nothing injurious, harmful, or illegal, per se, but with him, it has exhibited itself as wantonly abusive practices, at least one of which he has been found guilty. That would be the GUILTY verdicts in both of the E. Jean Carrol defamation cases.
And then, there’s the case for which he was found GUILTY 34x for felonies (falsifying business records) in an attempt to cover up, using cleverly diverted “hush money,” his sexual romps with porn actress Stephanie A. Gregory Clifford aka “Stormy Daniels,” in order to illegally influence the outcome of the November 2016 General Election, which Joe Biden won. Finding that his “grab ’em by the pussy” remarks, as recorded by Access Hollywood released during his campaign, adversely affected his poll numbers (which he inordinately watches like hawk — Which way is the wind blowing today, kemosabe?), he conjured up a plan to “catch and kill” the story, using his influence with National Enquirer (parent firm American Media, Inc. (AMI)) owner David Pecker, which he feared would spell the end of his candidacy.
So with DJT, it’s his Achilles heel, and with his selection of Alina Habba to defend him, it has come to trouble him, and will haunt him for the rest of his life.
As a premier example of phenomenally poor lawyering skills, at one point, Ms. Habba was thoroughly “dressed down” by the judge in the bench trial in the 2nd E. Jean Carrol defamation case, and because of her shockingly un-lawyer-like behavior, comments, and remarks, was threatened by Judge Arthur Engoron with him saying to her, “You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup. Now, sit down.”
But to be certain, she’s not the exclusive example of poor choices made by DJ Trump.
Trump’s poor selection of attorneys is no secret among jurists, and he is considered anathema to many attorneys, for any variety of reasons, not the least of which is his well-known practice of cheating people whom provide products, goods, and services to him, most often, by not paying them. To further complicate matters for New York’s newly 34x convicted felon, numerous attorneys whom have worked for him have quit.
Longtime personal attorney and former Trump Organization Vice President, Michael Cohen, said, “In olden days, he would tell firms representing him was a benefit, because they could advertise off it. Today it’s not the same. He’s also a very difficult client in that he’s always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally.”
An attorney who has never been affiliated with Trump in any way, Neama Rahmani, a former Federal Prosecutor, has said, “Trump goes through lawyers like his daily Diet Cokes. First, Trump has a reputation for not paying his lawyers. And he is so toxic to half the population, that lawyers risk losing other business when they accept him as a client,“ [emphasis added, ed.] noting also that other attorneys have refused to accept Trump as a client, because he is “impossible to control. He’ll give public statements that are used against him, attack his former lawyers like Michael Cohen, and even go after the judges in his trials.”
Another one of Trump’s attorneys who lacks experience is Christina Bobb, Trump’s Custodian of Records, whose lawyering experience has consisted of hosting shows on the extreme right-wing One America News (OAN), an outfit fully sympathetic to Trump, and who was also present during the court-ordered FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, and signed a receipt for the list of documents taken as evidence. During her stint with OAN, she covered the Arizona Republican Party’s review of 2020 ballots, while simultaneously raising money for the recount -and- meeting with Trump advisors. Naturally, there’s no possible conflict of interest there, whatsoever. </sarcasm> Those same ballots confirmed Joe Biden’s victory in The Grand Canyon State. Her lawyering experience also includes being a former Judge Advocate General in the U.S. Marines. And that’s the bulk of it.
Joyce White Vance, a now-retired longtime United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, wrote of Ms. Habba’s fundamental courtroom failures and obvious lack of legal skill on January 18, 2024, in her blog “Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance”:
“Yesterday, based on opening statements, I suggested that Trump’s lead lawyer, Alina Habba, might be in over her head. Her opening was inartful, emphasizing the established fact that Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll instead of refocusing the jury on the only issue that might help her client, whether Carroll’s damages can be properly attributed to him. While it’s not a very good argument—the first jury found against Trump and awarded Carroll $5 million—it’s the hand Habba was dealt, and she was off the mark.
“Today, her lack of courtroom experience was on full display. She failed to stand when addressing the Judge, and she failed to take her seat after he ruled—that’s the stuff of trial advocacy 101. She whiffed on the basics of the Federal Rules of Evidence repeatedly. She complained again about the way the Judge spoke to her.
“I don’t recite this litany to criticize Habba, although an important part of being a lawyer is understanding your limits and staying in your lane. Instead, I think her capabilities help us understand that Trump, who as a former president should have access to the finest lawyering the profession has to offer, does not. He is so toxic that most of the good lawyers won’t touch him. [emphasis added, ed.] It’s shocking that a former president is represented by a lawyer who doesn’t seem to know her way around a courtroom and continues to antagonize the Judge by violating his pre-trial rulings, especially since the lawyer on the other side is Roberta Kaplan (no relationship to the Judge), an A++ caliber lawyer.”
Ms. Habba’s primary legal experience lies not in trial law, but as general counsel for a parking lot management company owned by her husband, although she has sued a nursing home in a class action fraud suit, and represented a college student seeking a refund of tuition.
In the machinations that comprise “media” today, or as some call it “click-bait pseudo-news,” critiques of such root level source problems are not “sexy” enough to warrant public attention, aka “clicks,” which essentially translates into revenue for the hosting website, and so, those stories languish for lack of attention. But, it does NOT mean that they are not note-worthy, for they are.
Consider also the following:
Alina Habba, one of the many lawyers whom Donald Trump has hired to defend him in the numerous cases brought against him by Federal and states’ law enforcement officials, told reporters Thursday, August 3, 2023, that “everybody was made aware” that he lost the 2020 election — which is a cornerstone component of the case against him — which may depend upon the prosecution’s ability to demonstrate that Trump sought to overturn the election even though he knew he had lost.
Numerous legal and political advisers repeatedly told Trump that he had lost the election, but he continued to push his actions forward without regard to their recommendations.
Trump’s knowledge of his loss is integral to the case, because it demonstrates and proves that he was aware of the situation, so that he cannot claim any level of ignorance about the matter, as an element of his defense. In other words, it’s a metaphorical cornerstone of his defense.
Speaking to reporters assembled outside the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Court House on August 3, 2023 in Washington, D.C. after Trump arrived there for arraignment, Ms. Habba said,
“”But that doesn’t mean that was the only advice he was given. As anybody understands what happens in the Oval Office, there are a numerous amount of advisers and politicians and lawyers – not just one or two – that are giving you advice and telling you what they believe is true. So, he may not agree with Mike Pence. He may not agree with one of his lawyers. But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t other people advising him exactly the opposite. And the President has a right, as every one of us do, to listen to several opinions and make their decision.”
Peter Strzok, former , and Cpointed out that Ms. Habba had effectively echoed [aka, confirmed] the very criminal “allegation” against Trump. National Security attorney Bradley Moss” quipped on Twitter, writing, “Thank you for confirming an element of the crime.”
from: Legal expert: Trump lawyer just confirmed “an element of the crime” outside of courthouse.
Alina Habba declared “everybody was made aware” that Trump lost the election — a key component of the case.
By Tatyana Tandanpolie, Staff Writer
Published August 4, 2023 12:33PM (EDT)
https://www.salon.com/2023/08/04/legal-expert-lawyer-just-confirmed-an-element-of-the-crime-outside-of-courthouse/
Alina, Would You Rather Be Smart Or Pretty?
Smart people know a fool when they hear one.
February 12, 2024 at 11:03 AM
By Mark Herrmann
https://abovethelaw.com/2024/02/alina-would-you-rather-be-smart-or-pretty/
[EXCERPTED]
…
“In a recent interview, Alina Habba, who represented Trump in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, was asked whether she would rather be pretty, or smart.
“She said,
“Oh, easy! Pretty! I can fake being smart.”
— Alina Habba, Attorney for Donald Trump
“I have a (very smart) buddy (a law professor) who said folks had once administered a survey to people of all levels of intelligence, asking the respondents whether they’d rather be rich or smart. The stupid people who answered the survey said that they’d rather be rich; the smart people said that they’d rather be smart.
“Perhaps stupid people don’t know any better.
“Years ago, when I clerked in the Ninth Circuit, we often received subliterate briefs from lawyers who later stood up and humiliated themselves at oral argument, unable to comprehend, let alone answer, the questions posed to them. Out in the hallway after argument, you’d hear some of those lawyers tell their clients, “I couldn’t have done any better! I guarantee that you’ll win this appeal!”
“Perhaps stupid people don’t realize that they’re stupid.
“I’ve spent hours of my life in rooms with exceptionally smart people, and I’ve spent hours in rooms with stupid people. I’m here to tell you this, Alina: It is easy to fake being smart — in a room filled with stupid people. But it extraordinarily difficult, and perhaps impossible, to fake being smart in a room filled with smart people. Smart people know a fool when they hear one.”
“Anyone who says otherwise has probably never been in a room filled with smart people. Or perhaps they’ve been in a room filled with smart people and, like my Ninth Circuit advocates, not realized that they had embarrassed themself by flaunting their stupidity.”
…
[NOTE: That “stupid people don’t realize that they’re stupid” is called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, for researchers Drs. David Dunning and Justin Kruger, PhD, who in 1999, developed a methodology of assessing individual competency of a research subject’s self-assessment of their own ability, and found that cognitive bias generally accompanies incompetent people, who are more prone to overestimate their ability or skill, while competent individuals typically underestimate their own ability, or skill. It is a type of inherent cognitive bias which can be present in anyone, but smarter people generally have enough self-awareness to know that they do not know certain things, while those who do not acknowledge their own self limitations, are blind to their own inadequacies. Encyclopedia Britannica writes this about the topic:
“… psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the effect is explained by the fact that the metacognitive ability to recognize deficiencies in one’s own knowledge or competence requires that one possess at least a minimum level of the same kind of knowledge or competence, which those who exhibit the effect have not attained. Because they are unaware of their deficiencies, such people generally assume that they are not deficient, in keeping with the tendency of most people to “choose what they think is the most reasonable and optimal option.”
“In the studies reported on in their paper “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” (1999), Dunning and Kruger tested the abilities of four groups of young adults in three domains: Humour, logic (reasoning), and grammar. The results supported their predictions that, as compared with their more competent peers, “incompetent individuals … will dramatically overestimate their ability and performance relative to objective criteria”; that they “will be less able … to recognize competence when they see it” (whether their own or someone else’s); that they “will be less able … to gain insight into their true level of performance” by comparing their own performance with that of others; and, paradoxically, that they can improve their ability to recognize their own incompetence by becoming more competent, “thus providing them[selves] the metacognitive skills necessary to be able to realize that they have performed poorly.””
More succinctly put, stupid people don’t know they’re stupid, because in order for a stupid person to know they were stupid would require some level of self-knowledge, which would, of necessity, require making a comparative assessment to others using themselves, the self. And if they had that ability, they would not be stupid, and would acknowledge their own shortcomings.
And it is the Dunning-Kruger Effect which helps explain, in part, Donald Trump’s behavior.
Donald Trump is a man with deeply-rooted insecurities which have plagued him, and shaped him, from childhood.
His use of superlatives, his well-known inability to ever admit error or mistake, no matter how minuscule, is also evidence of his pathologically damaged psyche.
Trump’s consistent overuse of superlatives is reminiscent of a report from North Korea published Australia’s Herald Sun in 1994 on now-late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il — father of Kim Jong-un, the current North Korean dictator — who, upon playing his very first game of golf, performed an amazing feat, one that no man, no woman, has ever done.
“In 1994, Pyongyang media reported that Kim Jong-il shot an amazing 11 holes-in-one to achieve an unprecedented 38-under-par game on a regulation 18-hole golf course – on his first try at golf. Reports say each of his 17 bodyguards verified the record-breaking feat.”
Of that stunning stroke of unparalleled golfing perfection, Larry Brown Sports Senior Editor Steve DelVecchio wrote on December 20, 2011, that “we now realize that North Korea’s former leader is likely the greatest golfer to ever live. Most golfers go through life hoping they can experience a hole-in-one. Kim Jong Il got to enjoy 11 in one round. I’m speechless.”
Feelings of inadequacy, of rejection, of never being able to measure up, never being able to please, or to meet the expectations of the people closest to him in his formative years — namely, his now-late father Fred — have “matured” in a sense, insofar as those bugaboos have haunted and taunted him in the cavernous vacancies of his mind for the better part of his now-78 years. They are part and parcel of who he is, and he will likely never change, nor acknowledge it. Colloquially, what were once vices, are now habits.
But the point is, that Trump consistently erroneously overstates his ability, mistakenly thinking that he is the best of anything, and everything, when he is anything but. And, he is blithely unaware of it, too stupid to have any degree of introspection to discern otherwise — a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
“I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.”
— DJT November 2015
“They don’t know much because they’re not winning.”
— DJT, June 2016
What odd things for Corporal Bone Spurs to say.
Warm Southern Breeze 
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