This past week, we have been privileged to witness one of the most extraordinary episodes in American legal history. In a trial of a former president for a crime no one has yet defined (including the witnesses and lawyers), a former porn star took the stand, at which point she was sidetracked into testifying that she had once believed her house had been haunted, until she discovered that the “ghost” in question was an overgrown possum.
Yes, this really happened. No, we are not making this up. Stormy Daniels, who has apparently decided that she wants to compete with E. Jean Carroll for the role of Donald Trump’s Ghost of Christmas “Hard Pass,” somehow got cross-examined into talking about the paranormal. Which, on one level, we don’t find surprising: rather like the ghost in Stormy Daniels’ house, most of the incidents described in her testimony are clear figments of her imagination. Or perhaps in the imaginations of the prosecutors who coached her, given that she admitted to rehearsing her testimony with their help.
However, knowing that Daniels admitted she was coached by the prosecution, we find it very hard to believe that things got quite this silly. Granted, it’s not as if Daniels couldn’t address the alleged haunting – in previous interviews, she famously described the ghost-which-was-really-a-possum in as a “non-human thing with tentacles” (which, if nothing else, makes us wonder whether her career has a future in Japan) – but one has to wonder why, given quotes like this, the prosecutors let her take the stand.
It’s not as if their case would have fallen apart without her: that “honor” belongs to debarred lawyer Michael Cohen, whose testimony proved, at best, suggestive but inconclusive. Daniels, on the other hand, was only the beneficiary of the alleged “hush money” payments; she wasn’t privy to any incriminating conversations about the motive behind those payments. If President Trump were on trial for soliciting her “services,” that’d be one thing, but he’s not. He’s on trial for the legal arcana behind how she was paid. What’s more, Daniels arguably perjured herself on the stand, when she claimed that she had felt threatened by Trump during their tryst, an allegation which was refuted by… Stormy Daniels in an interview with Bill Maher in 2018. As President Trump himself might say, they’re not sending their best.
Which brings us to the actual question we have after watching not just this debacle, but the numerous other issues which have beset practically every case against President Trump: is this a joke?
No, seriously, is Ashton Kutcher going to pop out and tell us we’ve been punk’d at the end of this? Because increasingly, we’re beginning to think there’s no other possible explanation for the utterly bizarre, and easily avoided problems that seem to be cropping up with the Left’s legal cases against President Trump. To be honest, the whole thing reminds us of Herman Cain’s 2012 campaign for president,