Donald Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba’s courtroom skills during the former president’s civil defamation trial was a “comedy of bumbling errors,” attorney Harry Litman said on Sunday.
Habba has recently gained attention for representing Trump in his civil defamation trials brought against him by former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of defaming her when he repeatedly claimed she was lying about allegations that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store changing room in the 1990s. Last year, a jury found him civilly liable for abusing Carroll and defaming her for comments he made in 2022, ordering him to pay $5 million in damages. On Friday, a jury ruled in another case based on comments he made in 2019, ordering the former president to pay $83.3 million in damages.
Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, has maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings, even after the first jury found him liable for sexual abuse.
“Absolutely ridiculous! I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party,” the former president wrote in part about the verdict on Truth Social, his social media platform.
In an interview with MSNBC’s host Alex Witt, Litman, who previously served as a U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and deputy assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice (DOJ) during the Clinton administration, discussed Habba’s courtroom skills by calling attention to what he says are a “comedy of bumbling errors,” adding that she “tussled” with Judge Lewis Kaplan on the case.
“They’ve been a comedy of bumbling errors for many months, but she does seem to be perfectly chosen to be the wrong lawyer in the courtroom. She got generally mocked for not having the basic skills, which I think is true, but more than that, she tussled with the judge. she tussled with, you know, everything about the proceedings. She was Trumpian,” he said.
Newsweek has reached out to Habba’s and Trump’s office via email for comment.
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Habba has had several tense exchanges with Kaplan, who oversaw Carroll’s civil defamation cases. At one point during the second trial, Habba protested that she did not “like to be spoken to that way” after being told to “sit down” when a request to delay the trial over the funeral of Trump’s mother-in-law was rejected.
On Sunday, Litman criticized Habba’s skills by suggesting that she added to Trump’s rough week due to her counseling as she doesn’t seem to have the “chops” or judgment in how to try this kind of case.
“You need to portray that you don’t have contempt, and you need to try—good luck to you—making him a sympathetic figure. I do think part of the…a rough week he had was having chosen a counsel who doesn’t seem to have — it’s not just chops, but kind of judgment about how you try a case like this when it’s already been established and you may not quibble that your client has sexually assaulted the plaintiff and then lied about it.”
This comes after Habba mishandled an attempt to kill evidence that the jury may have found important in the second defamation lawsuit and in potential future trials.
On Thursday, Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, submitted into evidence a video of the former president that was borrowed from a January 17 Newsmax clip.
“I have no idea who [Carroll] was and nor could I care less. It’s a rigged deal. It’s a made-up, fabricated story,” Trump said in the video.
However, in another exchange with Kaplan, Habba, who previously said she had no objection to the video, later said, “We met and conferred and objected.”
In response, Kaplan then told her to “have a seat” after telling her, “This just came in without objection.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.