John Dean, former White House counsel for the Nixon administration, said Friday that former President Trump’s offer to testify in his New York hush money trial is just “bravado for his base.”
Dean told CNN anchor Boris Sanchez he suspected Trump’s legal team was trying to dissuade the former president from testifying, when Sanchez asked.
“He is not a good witness,” Dean said, referring to Trump. “He’s — the few times he’s been on the stand and in depositions at some length, we can see he’s not a good witness. So, this is a lot of bravado for his base, because there are, obviously, political implications of great dimension for him, in this trial and the others.”
Trump has previously said he would testify in the hush money case a few times.
“Yeah I would testify, absolutely,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida earlier this month. “It’s a scam. It’s a scam, that’s not a trial.”
Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the hush money case, said earlier this month that Manhattan prosecutors can question the former president about previous decisions in civil lawsuits, including his E. Jean Carroll and civil fraud cases — both of which also occurred in the Empire State — if he testifies.
The hush money case, which began last week, marks the first criminal trial of a current or former American president. Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in relation to reimbursements to then-fixer Michael Cohen, who paid an porn actor Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump, which he denies having.
Following the second day of jury selection in his trial, Trump referred to the reimbursements as a “legal expense,” putting some blame on his accountants.
“I was paying a lawyer, and we marked it down as a legal expense — some accountant. I didn’t know,” Trump told reporters. “Mark it down as a legal expense. That’s exactly what it was. And you get indicted over that?”
A recent CNN poll found that a majority of Americans believe former President Trump is being treated differently than most criminal defendants in his hush money case.