“No one is above the law.” That is what we hear from Leftists and their accomplices in the media in justifying the Trump persecution. But no one is beneath the law either. Everyone deserves a fair playing field. Indeed, that is the primary responsibility of judges – to protect the rights of the accused from an all-powerful prosecutor. In the case of New York vs. Donald J. Trump, “Judge” Merchan (and I use the term “judge” loosely) didn’t just fail in his duty to ensure a level playing field, he was essentially an arm of Prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s team. Nearly every ruling, big or small, went against the President. There are more than sufficient grounds to reverse this travesty on appeal. It is doubtful, however, that President Trump will be vindicated by Election Day, which was the goal of the judge and prosecutor all along.
Merchan should never have been selected to be the judge in the Trump case in the first place. He contributed to Democrat candidates (and was sanctioned for violating the judicial ethics rules for doing so). His daughter, another left-wing activist, was fundraising off of the Trump persecutions. Merchan had at least an apparent conflict of interest, if not an actual one. Had Merchan had any integrity, he would have recused himself. Had the judicial system of New York been fair and competent, it would have forced him to step aside. Of course, in deep blue Manhattan, neither happened. But that is only the beginning of a trail of illegitimate decisions by this judge. In the long list of transgressions, here are a few examples of Merchan’s blatant bias:
He eliminated observant Jews, who are far more conservative than the average New Yorker, from the jury pool by holding keeping the court in session on Fridays. (Tellingly, he did not hold court on Wednesdays. Hmmmm… I wonder why?)
Merchan allowed for graphic testimony from a porn star. This case wasn’t about illicit sex. It was about how money was accounted for. Courts are supposed to prevent highly prejudicial testimony to come into evidence if it doesn’t add to the ability of a jury to find the truth behind the criminal charge.
The judge let prosecutors go far and wide in presenting their case, including putting a convicted perjurer on the stand who was caught in blatant lies. But when the Trump defense team wanted to put their own witnesses on to rebut the charges, Merchan either severely limited what they could say, or excluded them from the trial altogether.
Yet, most damaging were the jury instructions, which have a huge impact on the outcome of any case. This judge allowed jurors to use a cafeteria approach to finding guilt. A key element of the felony charges was that Trump had to have made accounting errors in furtherance of other unlawful activity. The prosecution was never required to identify what other conduct formed the basis of that underlying activity to obtain (or defend against) a felony conviction. Indeed, the judge said that if four jurors determined that the accounting was to commit tax evasion, and four found that was to commit federal election fraud, and another four found it was in furtherance of state election crimes, that would be ok. Unanimity wasn’t required.
Essentially, the judge used his position to make it easy for prosecutors to convict President Trump and nearly impossible for him to prove his innocence. And that came through loud and clear yesterday. The general rule of thumb is that juries deliberate about a day for every week a defendant is on trial. So, we should have expected a verdict in five or six days if they took their obligations seriously. This jury plowed through 34 charges in less than 13 hours – or less than 20 minutes of deliberation for each count. There is zero chance a serious jury could have considered all of the evidence for each charge and come to a thoughtful conclusion based solely on that evidence in 20 minutes.
The bottom line is that this verdict has more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. It will ultimately be reversed. But by then, the political damage will be done.
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