One of the few guidelines that every judge follows is that he or she will do everything possible to protect the safety and mental health of jurors and witnesses. The system requires rigid adherence to the rule because the system requires a “sterile” court proceeding where interactions between everyone involved are confined to those assigned to the people involved and necessary to give the defendant and prosecution (in a criminal proceeding) a fair trial.

Once again, Donald Trump put this rule to the test by attempting to shake the hand of a witness, a 38-year employee, Rhona Graff, his former personal assistant. Graff described Trump as a “thoughtful boss.”

The handshake may seem like nothing. It may not have resulted in anything, but it certainly violates the hard and fast rule that there will be no interaction between defendants and witnesses.

Newsweek’s Katherine Fung, is reporting from the courtroom and said that Trump’s attempt to communicate – even goodwill in a handshake with a long-known witness, left the courtroom confused. Fung was in a position to gauge the reaction in the courtroom but couldn’t see the reaction of the witness, Graff.

The prosecution must have seen the attempted handshake because they stopped the trial to speak to the judge quietly at a “sidebar.”

Newsweek’s report doesn’t include Judge Merchan’s reaction to the gesture after the sidebar, and thus, one might infer that he didn’t see anything that could impact the testimony. Merchan would certainly have dismissed the jury and addressed Trump if the matter had arisen as a very serious concern.

We know that Merchan has little patience for Trump’s attempts to communicate with anyone in the courtroom besides his attorneys because Merchan has already admonished Trump for attempted communication.

According to CNN, Trump attempted to communicate with a possible juror in the case:

Donald Trump was gesturing and audibly speaking in the direction of the potential juror who was being questioned, Judge Juan Merchan said after the juror left the courtroom.

“Your client was audibly uttering,” he told Trump’s lawyers. “I will not have any jurors intimidated in the courtroom.”

This, of course, leads to one of the biggest questions hanging over the trial.

Trump has been the king of every room he’s entered for at least the last ten years. People stood in his presence until invited to sit. They did not interrupt him. Indeed, Trump seems to have actively avoided the type of people who might not support him, hesitating to go to California after the wildfires because, according to one witness, Trump noted that Californians weren’t going to vote for him anyway.

Can he sit through these proceedings in which he is most certainly not in control of the room? Can he adhere to courtroom decorum? And if he can, does it take such an effort that it drains him, impacting his campaign, win or lose at trial?

We can’t know. We only know that Trump has walked the edge of the cliff through the entire proceeding. He has attacked the judge’s daughter (verbally, accusing her of political bias), earning himself a gag order. He has mini-press conferences outside the courtroom nearly every day, every one of which flirts with violating the gag order. He also communicated with a potential juror (And that one angered Judge Merchan).

This one – the handshake, may not have “shaken” the judge (Or maybe it did, but he didn’t want to dismiss the jury). But the question remains. Can Trump make it through this trial and possible pre-trial proceedings to come, with his sanity and vitality intact?

Oh, that, and can he control himself in the courtroom?

****
Jason Miciak is Executive Editor at Political Flare and an Editor at Large for Occupy Democrats, he can be reached at [email protected]