“Suicide mission”: Legal experts warn Trump’s plan to testify could turn into a “bloodbath”

Former President Donald Trump has claimed that he plans to testify in his defamation trial on Monday but it’s unclear whether he will actually show up.

Trump has previously made similar claims and then failed to appear, The Washington Post noted, raising questions about whether he would follow through on his vow in the case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll — the second defamation trial he has faced in recent months after a jury previously found him liable for sexually assaulting and defaming the columnist.

Legal experts warned that Trump taking the stand would be “something akin to a suicide mission,” the Post added, especially after tangling with Judge Lewis Kaplan over his courtroom outbursts.

Kaplan is “the worst possible draw for Trump” because he’s “really smart and takes no guff from either side,” veteran white-collar criminal defense lawyer Robert Katzberg told the Post.

“Even if you had the most pro-Trump judge in America overseeing the trial, Donald Trump should not testify. Multiply that by a million with Lewis Kaplan on the bench,” he said. “Given both his lack of any relevant facts as to the only issue remaining — the damages suffered by Ms. Carroll — and Donald Trump’s inability to control himself emotionally, he is begging not only to be debased before the jury, but contempt citations will be looming large.”

New York University Law Prof. Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor, told MSNBC last week that it is “still not clear that Donald Trump will, in fact, testify because I think that would be a bit of a bloodbath in terms of what he could possibly say in his defense.”

Trump “didn’t have the temerity to actually testify” in the first case brought by Carroll, “and the jury made a determination based on clear and convincing evidence that he had done this conduct,” Weissmann said.

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin noted on X/Twitter that Trump has “faked us out on testifying at least twice” — repeatedly threatening to testify in the first Carroll case despite never even entering the courtroom and then claiming he had no choice but to testify in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case before declining to take the stand in his own defense in that trial as well.

“We have to prepare that he is going to come, if for no other reason than the sheer logistics of how disruptive his presence in any courthouse or courtroom has been. However, my expectation is that, like he has before, he’s bluffing, that he will not come to testify tomorrow,” Rubin said on MSNBC Sunday.

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“That is in part because there’s a very limited range of issues about which he could permissibly testify,” she explained. “This trial is just about damages, it’s not about whether he sexually assaulted her, it’s not about whether he defamed her or even continues to defame her with each passing day of the campaign. So, ultimately, I predict he won’t come and, indeed, our folks in New Hampshire have not seen any indication that he’s preparing to testify by taking the time for witness prep.”