Donald Trump received legal advice from one of his former attorneys on live television on Wednesday, and it didn’t cost the ex-president a penny.
Timothy Parlatore, who in May left Trump’s legal team over strategic disagreements in his classified documents case, explained to CNN’s Jake Tapper why Trump boasted that he was “absolutely” willing to take a stand and testify before a jury during one of those sessions his upcoming trials would likely backfire.
“Personally, I don’t like it when one of my clients takes a stand in criminal proceedings,” Parlatore explained. “It’s not something they’re obligated to do, and I’ve generally never seen a client take a stand unless they’ve previously undergone and passed a very rigorous cross-examination by me.”
“Most of the time, when they go through that process, they’re like, ‘Tim, stop it, take some time off, I don’t believe it myself.'” “I’m not going to testify,” he added. “I can’t imagine it’s a good idea here.”
Tapper recalled Trump’s testimony in writer E. Jean Carroll’s civil suit against the former president, in which she accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.
During his videotaped testimony, Trump mistook Carroll in a photo for his second wife Marla Maples and defended his infamous taped remarks “Access Hollywood.” A jury found Trump guilty of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll.
Tapper said it would be risky to put Trump on the witness stand to defend himself.
“It is,” he said. “And that’s sort of an example of why. It’s an uncontrolled environment, you don’t necessarily know what the customer is going to say, even a very experienced customer can say things that they will later regret.”
“A trial is a presentation before the jury where you can control everything as much as possible, and that presents an uncontrollable risk. Try to avoid it,” the attorney added, noting that Trump still does Right to do so, even if his lawyers say it’s the “worst idea in the world.”
Republican frontrunner 2024 Trump has also been charged in the Stormy Daniels hush money case and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election outcome nationwide and in Georgia.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges.