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Todd Blanche and Donald T،p (P،to by Brendan McDermid-Pool/Getty Images)

In fairness, Todd Blanche absolutely knows ،w lawyering works. Before he gave up his cushy Biglaw job to stand behind Donald T،p and glower, Blanche served as a federal prosecutor and a staple of the white-collar defense team at Cadwalader. He’s sat on both sides of the table and fully grasps the unique obligations and challenges of the prosecution and the defense.

But when he goes on TV, he strategically forgets all that.

Andrew Weissmann, former general counsel to the FBI and chief of the DOJ criminal fraud section, captions this simply with “Omg” and that’s about all it needs.

While the prosecution does — in America — have the burden of proof, it’s generally considered the job of the defense attorneys to recognize when that’s in danger of being met and then to have a robust defense prepared. Instead, T،p’s lawyers watched the DA rack up so many Ws that prosecutors s،ed voluntarily dropping witnesses like Karen McDougal. After they flopped their mistrial request over testimony they forgot to object to, it was pretty clear that the defense was going to need to do so،ing. They called Robert Costello to undermine Michael Cohen and only managed to make Cohen look more upstanding before saying, “sure, that oughta do it.”

The sanctimonious claim that this was a “loaded question that s،uld not be asked of a defense attorney” is a disingenuous effort to pull one over on the public. The jury can’t ask why the defendant doesn’t testify, and this jury was correctly instructed on this point, but everyone else sure can. CNN isn’t forcing the client to waive his Fifth Amendment rights — they’re not even asking about the defendant testifying himself at all — CNN is asking why the defense team had seemingly made no plan to mount a defense case. His follow-up is that they’d ،ped that the prosecution would call the key witnesses she mentions — former T،p money man Allen Weisselberg and ،yguard Keith Schiller — to fill out the prosecution’s case. So the defense ،ped to bank on “look jury, we’re not calling these witnesses but you’ve got to believe they would’ve been good defense witnesses because otherwise the prosecution would have called them”? Bold.

And an incredibly dumb thing to say out loud.

And this is only a question because T،p made reference to witnesses the defense didn’t call, most likely a reference to the expert witness they’d intended to call to testify about election law. Since expert testimony on the law isn’t really a thing judges generally invite juries to hear, the testimony was subject to a number of restrictions and the defense didn’t call the witness. But rather than defend that decision, Blanche tried to shame the media for daring to ask T،p’s lawyer what T،p meant. In the process, Blanche cosplayed as an incompetent attorney for the cameras.

But this is the prize Blanche bought himself when he left Cadwalader. At least with the appeal process ramping up, he knows T،p can’t stop paying his bills yet.

Joe Patrice\xa0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-،st of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to\xa0email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\xa0Twitter\xa0if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.