Key reason Donald Trump’s lawyers won’t put him on the stand during his hush money trial, expert says

Donald Trump’s legal team won’t put him on the stand in his hush money trial as he is a ‘very difficult guy to control’, a legal expert has predicted. 

The former president is facing up to four years in prison in the ongoing trial over whether he falsified business records in a bid to squash negative press in the run up to the 2016 election. 

He has repeatedly claimed he will testify to clear his name, but lawyer and professor at Syracuse University, Gregory Germain, told The Sun his lawyers likely won’t let him take the stand.

Germain said: ‘He’s kind of a bull in a china shop. He’s going to be bucking and you just don’t know what’s going to happen.

‘He’s a very difficult guy to control. His lawyers are going to be very concerned about putting him on the stand under oath.’ 

Prosecutors allege Trump was part of a scheme to falsify records to hide a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to stop her discussing an alleged affair with Trump before the 2016 election. 

He denies all 34 charges of falsifying business records.

He is also facing three other trials, with one, for election interference, to start in Georgia in August. He denies all the charges. 

There has been much speculation over whether the former President, the first to ever be prosecuted on criminal charges, will take the stand in the trial.  

Speaking with The Sun, Germain said: ‘The standard view of criminal lawyers is that you don’t want your client to take the stand.

‘It’s very dangerous for the client to take the stand because if they say anything that turns out to be false, the jury will think everything is false and convict them.’ 

His lawyers would not be able to control which potentially embarrassing questions he was asked, or how he would answer. 

Germain said: ‘I would be very scared if I was an attorney to put Donald Trump on the stand.

‘You can’t practice with him and get him to do the things the way you want him to do them.’

If it were Biden or Obama, it might be different, Germain said: ‘They are kind of likable and they’d be able to not get themselves in trouble.’

But he added: ‘I don’t think Trump is able to control himself in any way ever, so it’s just too dangerous to put them on the stand.’

The trial is entering its fourth week and is expected to run into next month. 

Germain said he thinks its unlikely Trump would be sentenced to jail even if convicted, he said: ‘I think if he sentenced him to jail it would raise a hue and a cry and a crisis.’