It was spontaneous because no one could have predicted that response, and, again, that’s the kind of response that comes becomes the witness isn’t prepared. It’s the kind of response that, in a debate, might score a point. But it’s not a debate because the examiner always gets the final say. As the examiner, I get to decide when the sequence of questions is over. And so saying something like that just opens up the witness to the kind of follow-up question that I gave him.

And, again, this is one of the smartest people in the world. It’s not like he couldn’t understand that. It is more, I think, that he just wasn’t prepared and no one had gone through with him the nature of this process and why this requires so much patience and discipline on his part and how he can’t try to control the dialogue. Trying to control the dialogue is not only gonna fail, it’s gonna put him in a worse position.