Alina Habba’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day in Court
Trump lawyer Alina Habba was reprimanded a whopping 12 times during the former president’s defamation trial on Thursday for her combative and bizarre behavior.
Presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan has already ruled that Donald Trump defamed E. Jean Carroll after she revealed he sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s. The current trial is just to determine how much Trump owes her in damages. Carroll is seeking at least $10 million.
Habba spent her cross-examination trying to prove that the bulk of Carroll’s emotional harm—in the form of death threats and intimidation—happened in the hours before Trump weighed in, so he shouldn’t be on the hook to financially compensate her. But things started on the wrong foot immediately when Habba referred to the window between when Carroll’s accusation was released and when Trump responded.
“I was asking you about the five-hour gap—” Habba began.
Kaplan cut her off, saying, “Five hours have not been established. You might be well advised to refer to ‘the gap.’”
Soon after, Kaplan admonished Habba multiple times in a row, first for questioning the very premise of the case and then for being “argumentative” with her questions.
As part of her strategy, Habba began reading abusive tweets about Carroll aloud. Kaplan tried to stop her, and when Habba refused, Kaplan had to tell her twice to “move on.” He then said it again when Habba tried to argue that the people who attacked Carroll before Trump’s statement couldn’t have been emulating the former president.
Things got extra testy when Habba asked if Carroll made a “good amount of money” from her writing now. Kaplan pointed out that Habba’s descriptor was vague and subjective.
“This is Evidence 101,” he said.
Habba and Kaplan continued to lock horns for the rest of the morning, including when Habba again questioned established facts. She asked Carroll how many subscribers she had on the subscription-based publication platform Substack, which Kaplan reminded her Carroll had already answered on Wednesday.
When Habba tried to argue that a video Trump made might not really have been about Carroll, Kaplan shut her down again. “He said, ‘Whole thing is made up.’ That’s not about her?” Kaplan said. “We’ll pass over this for now.”
Kaplan also admonished Habba for raising objections that were of “dubious value,” for not listening when he sustained objections against her, and for still trying to read more tweets out loud.
Habba has irritated Kaplan every day of the trial thus far. The two repeatedly butted heads on Wednesday over Habba’s disruptive behavior in the courtroom, resulting in Kaplan admonishing her 14 times. And during opening statements on Tuesday, Habba almost immediately violated the rules Kaplan had set about what Trump’s team can and cannot say.
