Reaction to the indictment of President Donald Trump strongly suggests that in an impartial court, the judge might dismiss the charges.
The problem: Juan Merchan is an immigrant from Colombia whose daughter is a street soldier in the Biden Mafia and worked for Vice President Kamala Harris.
In other words, even if critics are right about leftist Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg and his vague indictment on a crime that he doesn’t name, Trump might still be convicted.
That’s equally as worrisome as what liberal law professor Jonathan Turley says is the politicization of the law to ruin one man, that man being Orange Man Bad.
Turley: Target Trump
Looking at the 34 felony charges against Trump for falsifying business records to hide hush-money payments to two women, Turley opened his review of Bragg’s indictment by quoting Oscar Wilde: “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.”
Noting that Bragg took Wilde’s advice, Turley wrote that Bragg “knew that he had no criminal case against Trump”:
However, after running on bagging Trump for some crime (any crime), Bragg knew that many would not care if he had a basis for a criminal charge. He would be lionized to be the first person to ever indict a former president in the blind rage against Trump.
After charging Trump with 34 counts, Bragg insisted that he will convict Trump of the “crime to promote a [political] candidacy through unlawful means.” He insists that he will prove “attempts to violate state and federal election laws.”
The problem, as Turley and others have repeatedly said, is Bragg’s using a “flawed legal theory to essentially litigate a federal election violation that the Justice Department opted not to charge.”
Bragg, Turley says, doesn’t have a case:
We now have the indictment, and it is basically what many of us anticipated. It is a series of stacked counts of falsifying business records for the purpose of influencing the election. The indictment seems to address the lack of legal precedent with a lack of specificity on the underlying “secondary” felony. Bragg has done nothing more than replicated [sic] the same flawed theory dozens of times. This is where math and the law meet. If you multiply any number by zero, it is still zero.
If the New York bench retains any integrity, this case will be thrown out as legally improper with an admonition to Bragg and his office for politicizing the criminal justice process. That, however, may be asking a lot of state judges who are elected on both the trial and appellate levels. They also may prove to be lawyers on the Wilde side.
Bragg’s indictment “is the denial of the core legal principle of blind justice” and “would not have occurred for anyone other than Donald Trump. It is not just selective prosecution, it is exclusive prosecution for Trump and Trump alone.”
Analyses at Vox and Axios explained that Bragg must prove that Trump committed crimes with which he has not been charged and do not appear in the indictment. One is a federal crime that Bragg has no legal power to prosecute.
As well, as Trump attorney Alina Habba explained to Fox talker Tucker Carlson, Trump was in the White House in Washington, D.C., and had won the election when he committed the alleged crimes, i.e., that he tried to influence the election by paying off two women to shut up about affairs. The indictment alleges that Trump funneled the payments through former attorney and convicted criminal Michael Cohen in 2017.
“Where was President Trump in February 2017?” Habba asked:
What we do know, Tucker, is that he was sitting in the Oval Office. Now explain to me how that’s campaign finance interference, how that affected the election, when everyone knew about Stormy in 2016. It makes no sense on its face.
Plus, the statute of limitations has expired on the misdemeanor falsification counts that Bragg is attempting to transmogrify into felonies.
Last month, another Trump attorney, Joe Tacopina, said that Trump did not falsify records and paid the women with personal money.
“He made this with personal funds to prevent something coming out false but embarrassing to himself and his family’s young son,” Tacopina said. “That’s not a campaign finance violation, not by any stretch.”
Apropos of Turley’s commentary, even the president of El Salvador knows what Bragg and his leftist backers are trying to pull.
“Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted,” Nayib Bukele tweeted:
But just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate.
The United States ability to use “democracy” as foreign policy is gone.
The Judge
Despite the obvious legal problem with the indictment and what is clearly Bragg’s attempt to deep-six Trump as a 2024 presidential candidate, a victory for POTUS 45 is no sure thing.
The judge’s daughter is a hard-bitten leftist.
“Loren Merchan, the 34-year-old daughter of the Manhattan judge, is partner and president of Authentic Campaigns, a progressive digital firm, and worked on several high-profile Democratic campaigns — including for President Joe Biden,” the Daily Mail reported:
Merchan worked as the director of digital for Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign from February 2019 until December of the same year, according to her LinkedIn.
Merchan’s firm, Authentic, continued working for Harris and then-candidate Joe Biden after the eventual first-ever female vice president ended her unsuccessful campaign for president and joined Biden’s ticket.
Understandably, Trump worries that Merchan can’t and won’t be fair, in addition to the venue for the trial: Deep-blue Manhattan.
“I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris and now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign and a lot of it,” Trump told supporters at Mar-a-Lago.
“Very unfair venue,” Trump complained on social media, “with some areas that voted 1% Republican. This case should be moved to nearby Staten Island.”
He called Merchan “highly partisan” and said his family are “well-known Trump haters.” The judge, he said, was an “unfair disaster” on another case involving Trump. “Kangaroo court!” he exclaimed.
Biden-voting liberal law professor Alan Dershowitz agrees with Trump.
“There’s no possibility he can get a fair trial in Manhattan, a borough that went, you know over 80, close to 90 percent against Trump,” he recently said:
The case has to be moved to a place like Staten Island or upstate New York, where judges and jurors won’t come home to their family and be worried that their family will never talk to them again because they’re responsible for letting Trump run for president.
In other words, even if Trump were convicted in Manhattan, he would have a strong appeal based on the constitutional requirement that defendants receive a fair trial.
