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Many law or legal analysts have weighed in on the Trump cases. As a result, the new term “lawfare” has been created. This has never happened before, a criminal trial against a former president and current political opponent. Among other things, the judge’s daughter owns a Democrat fund raising firm with Trump’s trial being used in emails. Over $90 million has been raised. The judge will not recuse himself.
The judge clearly takes sides
Merchan regularly rules against Trump. Attorney Alan Dershowitz wrote about this in the New York Post.
“In my 60 years as a lawyer and law professor, I have never seen a spectacle such as the one I observed sitting in the front row of the courthouse yesterday. The judge in Donald Trump’s trial was an absolute tyrant, though he appeared to the jury to be a benevolent despot. He seemed automatically to be ruling against the defendant at every turn.”
Merchan’s final instructions to the jury remove any facade of fairness. He said jurors don’t need to agree on the underlying crime.
Judge against the defense
Trump’s defense team said all 12 jurors need to agree. Fox News’ Harris Faulkner incredulously read the news, “He said that there’s no need to agree on what has occurred. They can disagree on what the crime was, among the three choices. Thus, this means that they could split 4-4-4 and the judge would still treat them unanimously.”
The jury doesn’t even have to agree on why Trump committed the crime. This is motive, which is a huge part of a conviction. It’s now gone.
The judge told the jury, “Intent means conscious or purpose to defraud. Intent does not require an intent to defraud any particular person or [entity], but a general intent to defraud.” The parody site The Babylon Bee had done something on this and it wound up being prophetic.
Trump looked resigned
He left the court room with, “Mother Teresa could not beat these charges. These charges are rigged. The whole thing is rigged.”
Trump-endorsed candidate for Congress Jerrod Sessler wrote on social media,
“Of the 10 Amendments in the Bill of Rights, half have to do with the criminal justice system. That is because our Founders knew that tyrannical governments would use the justice system as a weapon against their enemies. Clearly they had not envisioned a government as vicious as the current administration. Legal scholar Jonathan Turley called this trial a ‘canned hunt.’ I agree.”
The judge is allowing the jury to choose between a menu of options rather than agreeing unanimously on a single offense. In doing this, a prosecutorial bar has been lowered. On top of that, the state of New York is unfriendly to Trump. Trump nailed it when he said,
“It’ll be talked about in the history books. It’s a weaponized deal for the Democrats to hit their political opponents. This is all because of Joe Biden. And I don’t even think it’s him. I don’t think he’s smart enough to think about it. But it’s the people that surround him in the office. They’re smart. They’re facists, they’re communists, but they’re smart, and they’re ruining our country.”
