The political motivations in civil and criminal lawsuits driven by Democrats against Donald Trump are not credibly deniable. Inevitably then, some developments in these cases are unfair to him. Some developments, however, merely seem to be unfair because the former president and putative Republican 2024 nominee is fitting them into his campaign’s argument that his opponents have weaponized the judicial system against him.
In the latter category are claims that Trump and his lawyers waive — i.e., that they fail to raise until after any underlying issue has been resolved against him. Yesterday — three days after the end of the second jury-trial in the E. Jean Carroll lawsuits that have been going on for five years — just such a claim emerged: Trump’s lawyer in Carroll II, Alina Habba, filed a letter-brief with Judge Lewis Kaplan, suggesting that Kaplan should have recused himself because of his allegedly close personal ties to Carroll’s main lawyer and one of that lawyer’s assistants.
Comments