Donald Trump, ever the showman, did everything he could to turn his three-month New York bank fraud trial into a circus. And he intended to finish off this spectacle with a little less P. T. Barnum and a little more Perry Mason, dramatically closing the case on Thursday by making the exceedingly rare—and ill-advised—decision to deliver his own closing arguments.
Alas, reality isn’t a weekly, hour-long 1950s CBS television legal drama.
On Wednesday, just a day before the last scheduled hearing in the case, court filings revealed how talks completely broke down between Trump’s lawyers and Justice Arthur F. Engoron.
