"Trump defense suggests he was shakedown target, not hush money schemer/During contentious questioning of Stormy Daniels lawyer Keith Davidson, Donald Trump’s lawyers portray their client as the victim in the case."

 A headline at The Washington Post.

In the most contentious testimony yet in the criminal trial, Los Angeles lawyer Keith Davidson denied accusations that he flirted with extortion when he negotiated settlements with celebrities to keep potentially damaging stories out of the public eye.

By accusing him, Trump’s lawyers displayed a key element of their defense strategy: getting jurors to focus on the lawyers and middlemen....

Trump’s lawyers... tried to use Davidson to show that he was well versed in squeezing money out of celebrities, and that Daniels thought her chances of getting paid for her story would vanish after the 2016 presidential election, which she expected Trump to lose.

Fortunately, something of Trump's side of the story is coming out, but I do not trust mainstream media to tell us the story straight. We're not able to watch the trial, and we don't even get a transcript, just whatever the media see fit to report. And yet there seems to be this idea — among the Trump antagonists — that we the voters will allow this trial to substantially manipulate our opinion of the man. The case was brought to manipulate us. The presidential election is at stake. Give us a transcript. 

[CORRECTION: Even though I read the news every day, I had not noticed that the New York court system announced, back on April 22, that it would provide transcripts: "The court system is taking the novel step of posting the daily transcripts of the trial proceedings on its public website.... 'With current law restricting the broadcasting of trial proceedings and courtroom space for public spectators very limited, the release of the daily transcripts on the court system’s website is the best way to provide the public a direct view of the proceedings in this historic trial,' said Chief Administrative Judge Zayas."]

Back to the WaPo account of Trump's lawyer, Emil Bove, cross-examining Davidson:

Bove suggested that Davidson has spent years negotiating big-money settlements from celebrities such as Charlie Sheen and Hulk Hogan, and that his hardball tactics came close to extortion.

The purpose of Bove’s questions seemed clear — to show that, contrary to the argument by prosecutors, Trump was not a deep-pocketed bully buying the silence of women who made allegations against him. Instead, the defense team suggested, their client was a cash cow for opportunistic entertainers looking to bolster their careers and get paid once Trump became a candidate for national office.

Bove and Davidson squared off when the defense lawyer asked the witness if he once “extracted” a $2 million payment from Sheen, a movie and television star with a history of troubled behavior. Davidson argued that he did not “extract” money from anyone.... 

Asked next by Bove whether he arranged a settlement with Sheen, Davidson replied icily, “I’m not going to discuss that.”

There's no explanation of why (or whether) Davidson was allowed to refuse to answer. 

Bove then forced Davidson to admit that the FBI had investigated him in 2012, and conducted a secretly recorded sting operation, when Davidson was negotiating with Hogan for the return of sex tapes featuring the professional wrestler....

Bove also suggested that in another instance, in which a man was trying to secure a $100 million payment after claiming to have set up a high-profile boxing match, Davidson threatened the man that bad things could happen to him if they couldn’t reach an agreement.

“I would never, ever say that, and I did not say that,” Davidson shot back sharply.

I'd like some discussion of why Bove was able to ask that question. 

I'm going to give this post my "victim politics" tag. Is Trump the real victim here, the victim of Davidson, the extortionist? I wonder what  Charlie Sheen and Hulk Hogan think.

ADDED: Here's what the NYT did with the same material: "At Trump’s Trial, a Decade’s Worth of Celebrity Sleaze Is Exhumed/Donald J. Trump’s lawyers tried to paint Keith Davidson, the man who helped broker a hush-money payment for Stormy Daniels, as a specialist in extracting money from the famous."

An attempt to shake down the actor Charlie Sheen. Rumors that the Hollywood star Lindsay Lohan was in rehab. A lawsuit by Hulk Hogan, the former pro wrestler, against the gossip website Gawker for publishing a tape of him having sex. 

Testimony on Thursday at former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan dove deeply into the celebrity-obsessed digital media environment of the past fifteen years or so that helped fuel Mr. Trump’s rise to political prominence.

The lurid tales were introduced to the jury largely through the witness Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer who specialized in getting money for clients who had dirt on famous people. In his testimony, particularly as he was cross-examined, Mr. Davidson and a defense lawyer, Emil Bove, together led the jurors on a whirlwind tour of several gossipy and tawdry deals he had a hand in....

Oh! You see what the NYT is doing — minimizing this material as "sleaze" and "lurid tales." It's "gossipy and tawdry." We're 3 paragraphs in and we still have no idea of why this is relevant. One might think it's just a titillating distraction.

Mr. Bove questioned Mr. Davidson fiercely about several former clients and the arrangements they had reached with celebrities. Mr. Bove suggested that Mr. Davidson had tried to “extract” money from the boldface names his clients knew — a word that Mr. Davidson seemed to take offense at. 

Finally, the theory is presented: 

The purpose of Mr. Bove’s interrogation appeared to be to suggest to the jury that Ms. McDougal and Ms. Daniels may have sought to extract their own payments from Mr. Trump. But making that point required Mr. Bove to drag Mr. Davidson through some old patches of mud.

Bove was dragging poor Mr. Davidson through the mud. 

And so the jury heard about a “sex-tape broker” whom Mr. Davidson worked with while handling a video that featured a client, the reality TV star Tila Tequila.

The jurors also heard — at least a little — about how Mr. Davidson helped another client try to wrest a $2 million payment out of Mr. Sheen after she had claimed that “tortious activity,” as Mr. Davidson put it, had been committed.

“So you extracted sums of money from Charlie Sheen?” Mr. Bove asked.

“There was no extraction,” Mr. Davidson said.

Mr. Bove tried again: “You got Mr. Sheen to pay?”

Mr. Davidson refused to answer this time.

“That settlement would be confidential and I wouldn’t discuss it here,” he said.

That's where the article ends.