Update: Sentencing was delayed until November 26.
Trump’s sentencing, which would be the first of any former president, is scheduled for Nov. 26.
Trump’s attorneys believe his election as president compels the dismissal of his criminal prosecutions.
“The stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern,” Trump attorney Emil Bove wrote in an email to the judge.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s (D) office agreed to delay the proceedings.
Original Story
The judge who presided over President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal trial, Juan Merchan, is expected to issue a ruling Tuesday that could either turn the case on its head or put Trump on a collision course with sentencing.
The long-awaited ruling on whether evidence shown at trial should have been shielded from jurors due to presidential immunity could have profound consequences for the case.
We will publish the ruling here when it is announced.
Trump’s legal team, led by Todd Blanche, referencing the landmark immunity ruling out of the Supreme Court, demanded Trump’s conviction be set aside and his sentencing canceled. They argued jurors should never have heard testimony related to Trump’s communications with former White House communications director Hope Hicks or his former executive assistant and director of White House Operations Madeleine Westerhout.
Prosecutors argued in response that the Supreme Court ruling didn’t apply to evidence shown at trial. They also said the material protested by Trump’s lawyers was “a sliver of the mountains” of evidence the jury considered.
The trial was lawfare. The judge deprived Donald Trump of his rights and told the jury they didn’t have to be unanimous on what he was guilty of. Alvin Bragg, who won’t prosecute minority criminals, took a federal non-crime, used state laws, and tried it in a Manhattan court. Trump ended up with 34 felony convictions because his accountant putting Stormy’s payoff down as legal expenses 34 times. Trump never used campaign money.
The trial rested on a so-called second crime that was underlying the first.
THE ANALYSIS BY A YALE PROFESSOR
Yale Professor Jed Rubenfeld said Donald Trump was never told what the second crime was. He has a case for an unconstitutional verdict, and the entire case must be thrown out.
It wasn’t until Judge Merchan gave his jury instructions that Judge Merchan described the second crime. Mechan said Mr. Trump falsified business records to conceal the second crime, violating a New York election law statute.
However, under the Constitution, the accused is entitled to know the crime he is accused of before the trial so he can defend himself.
Trump’s attorneys raised it, but Merchan rejected it, basing it on New York law. However, the Constitution trumps New York law. The Constitution does require it under the Sixth Amendment, making the whole case unconstitutional.
The court violated the statute of limitations, Merchan’s conflicts of interest, and Trump’s 6th Amendment rights.
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This judge should be disbarred, take his license to practice law away and press charges against him.
I’d say a first year law student can see all the problems of this case. I even saw a lawyer on a podcast try to weave some legality into the decision, only to concede after being pummeled with legal facts. Undoubtedly this was the reason to have “lawyers” on the jury. There would be no legal counter argument to their asinine opinions. The average person would ‘assume’ a “lawyer” would be “accurate” in their opinions.
It is cases like this that demands when a prosecution loses a case they should be required to pay all legal costs plus restitution and other compensation. Maybe if prosecutors had to ‘pay up’ there wouldn’t be such cases.
Trump should find a way of disbarring, making Merchan lose his licence to practise, then Trump should sue Merchan for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ideally Merchan would be in prison but I don t think that can happen.