Defendant Trump.

The last time I went into a courtroom and watched a politician defending himself against a criminal indictment was 1987, when I went to New Haven to watch the trial of Stanley Friedman, who had been leader of the Democrat(ic) Party in The Bronx and ended up doing a four-year stretch for the usual assortment of corruptions which always came with his job.

I had been on the staff of the New York State Assembly as Public Information Officer and in that capacity met Friedman on multiple occasions, both up in Albany as well as at his headquarters in The Bronx. Every time we met, I was impressed with Friedman’s self-assurance and the sense of personal importance that he projected, an image certainly helped by the large cigar and the thousand-dollar suit.

I went to the New Haven courtroom the day Stanley testified, and while he was answering questions from his attorney, Tom Puccio, he smiled at the jury, cracked a joke, and glanced around the courtroom as if he were fully in charge.

The judge, Whitman Knapp, called a break before Friedman’s cross-examination began. As the jury filed out of the courtroom, Knapp said to Puccio, “Counselor, please advise your client that if he gets back up here and continues to give us the same cock and bull story that he’s been giving us all morning, I’m going to stop the trial and direct a verdict.”