On Opening Statements and Sunflower Plantings

Trump New York Trial Diary, Day 5

Good Morning:

The media line outside the New York trial court this morning.

Before getting into today’s Trump Trial Diary, I want to start this dog shirt by reminding everyone that the third annual sunflower planting at the #GatesOfHell will take place on Saturday afternoon at 5:00 pm at the Russian embassy in Washington DC.

You should come.

This event began two years ago, shortly after the full-scale invasion, at the time of my first projection on the embassy. I was livestreaming the projection on Twitter; there were hundreds of people watching; and someone wrote in asking what my follow-up plans were.

I had given the matter exactly zero thought, but I wanted to keep the momentum going, So I blurted out something like, “We’re planting sunflowers Saturday afternoon across the street from the embassy.”

Quite to my surprise, a whole lot of people turned up. The good folks at US Ukrainian Activists helped organize it and turned out in force, as did the staff of the Ukrainian embassy—including Ambassador Oksana Markarova—and, of course, the Russians participated in their own inimitable fashion:

Indeed, over the course of the first summer, someone destroyed the sunflowers multiple times—and we planted them again.

Last year, for season two, we teamed us as well with the estimable Connor O’Brien, who lives across the street from the embassy and tended the sunflowers we planted all summer and well into the fall as a lovely garden named for the town in Ukraine in which he had served as a Peace Corps volunteer:

So Saturday, Connor, US Ukrainian Activists and I are teaming up once again to plant sunflowers.

Bring gardening equipment, sunflower seeds, sunflower seedlings if you can get your hands on them, mature sunflowers, cut sunflowers, snacks, and things to drink.

Also bring children.

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Okay, let’s turn to my day on Monday, which began standing in line outside of the courthouse in New York and ended at Seder at home in Washington.

I had dinner Sunday night with the estimable Tyler McBrien and the estimable Anna Bower to plot our first day.

Anna handled yesterday’s live-tweeting and sitting in the courtroom with Trump to observe things up close:

I manned the overflow room to focus on close note-taking and the words spoken.

Tyler hosted the livestream, which we did immediately after court adjourned:

Here is the podcast version, released yesterday evening:

Tyler and Anna will be back in court today, as I raced home for Seder after the livestream. We will all collectively write Wednesday’s dispatch.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is this capybara, who needs to stop catastrophizing:

capybaras_for_life

A post shared by @capybaras_for_life

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Trump New York Trial Diary, April 22, 2024

Getting the press corps and the public into Trump’s trial is a bit of an ordeal. People line up early in the morning, when it is still quite chilly, and they stand there. Hiring line sitters is all-but essential.

But then you arrive at the courthouse to relieve your line-sitter at, say, a bit before 7:00 am—and you think you’re going to stand there only a little while. And you wait. And wait. And, as they say in Casablanca, wait.

Objectively, 45 degrees is not all that cold. But 45 degrees when you’re standing in one place for the better part of two hours feels actually gets pretty chilly.

And so the press gets grumpy.

Trump leaves his New York residence, and we’re still standing outside. A bunch of protesters show up to greet the former president with chants of, “No one is above the law!” And we’re still standing outside. Nobody knows why.

I don’t reach my seat in the overflow room until seconds before the proceeding starts.