“You don’t say ‘jeez’. And then if you don’t like my ruling, you don’t give me side eye, and you don’t roll your eyes,” he told the witness.
Mr Costello seemed to make a face at Justice Merchan as he scolded him, sparking another fiery response from the judge.
“Are you staring me down?” he barked shortly.
“Clear the courtroom,” Justice Merchan said, prompting court officers to shout at the dozens of members of the public and reporters to leave immediately.
I’ve been following the trial pretty closely, he’s been very fair so far. He tries to keep everything exactly on the charges and the law. The prosecutors haven’t wanted trump to go to temp jail because then it would be about the circus around that and not the fraud charges. They want him to go to real jail, like Cohen. Any time the prosecutors or the defense step out of line, the judge goes at them pretty hard. The judge doesn’t want this case overturned.
For example, the defense accidentally inferred that Cohen didn’t speak to trump directly about stormy and the payments. The prosecution wanted to put in a photo from one of the media news outlets that shows trump and the person Cohen was speaking with together at the exact time it was supposed to happen. The defense didn’t want that pic to go through and were fighting pretty hard about it. The judge agreed with the defense about its vague tie to it. The prosecution said they’ll bring in the exact guy who took the video and then the defense went with the original photo because video of trump speaking with cohen on the phone would have been introduced. The judge is strict to the law and having respect for his position.