As is evident to anyone with even half a brain, the Trump trial in New York City is a farce. What many may not know is how Donald Trump has been hunted since the day he declared himself a candidate for President a second time. We shall see the amazing coincidences that have followed since.
Joe Biden
Even before Trump announced his candidacy for a second term as President Joe Biden was all but ordering Merrick Garland to prosecute Trump. That set in motion a galaxy of actions with the single goal of imprisoning Biden’s political opposition all in the name of saving democracy.
Fani Willis
Indictments sprang up all over the place. New York changed a law specifically to allow E Jean Carroll to sue Trump. In Georgia Fani Willis is abusing a ridiculous Georgia RICO law to prosecute Trump.
Georgia’s RICO law is even more expansive than its federal counterpart—for example, it does not require multiple defendants or an extended timeline to establish a conspiracy. Former prosecutor Chris Timmons told ABC News, “Somebody could go to JC Penney, shoplift a pair of socks, walk next door to Sears and shoplift a second pair of socks, and they can be charged with RICO.”
Willis hired her paramour as chief investigator and it could be argued that Willis’ pursuit of Trump is merely a vehicle for the vacations she has taken with Nathan Wade. Trump is seeking to have her removed from the case.
Alvin Bragg
The case Alvin Bragg brought against Trump in NY is utterly pathetic. The FEC wanted nothing to do with the case.
The Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has closed its investigation into whether former President Trump
illegally made hush money payments to women prior to the 2016 election.
The FEC voted 4-1 to close the inquiry after failing to find that Trump or his campaign “knowingly and willfully” violated campaign finance law when his former attorney Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her from disclosing an alleged affair.
Bragg’s predecessor would not bring a case. Bragg himself stopped presenting evidence to a grand jury, which prompted some especially anti-Trump prosecutors to resign. The case was lame.
The strength of the evidence against Trump has been debated by attorneys in the office for months, CNN has reported. Some prosecutors, including Dunne and Pomerantz, believed there was sufficient evidence to charge, while others, including some career prosecutors, were skeptical that they could win a conviction at trial, in part because of the difficulty in proving criminal intent, people familiar with the matter said. On the one hand, some prosecutors believed Trump spoke with a lot of hyperbole, but it wasn’t clear whether they could show he acted with intent to defraud.
Prosecutors also didn’t have a victim who lost money from Trump’s misstatements, people familiar said, a matter that might give a jury pause. Still some attorneys believed strongly that Trump should be held accountable and that the case was worth bringing even if they might lose, the people said.
Matthew Colangelo
Colangelo, the lead prosecutor in the Bragg case, has been hunting Donald Trump for years. He chased Trump while in the NY Attorney General’s office and was refused the piled on demands he sought in a settlement. Biden began his journey to imprison Trump the day he took office, bringing Colangelo into his DOJ immediately (Jan 21, 2021) and making him number 3 in the DOJ. Biden obviously knew of Colangelo’s past history with Trump and wanted him to continue it in a federal capacity. Biden was pushing Garland to prosecute Trump in April of 2022 and by December of that same year Biden dispatched him to Bragg’s office to be the lead prosecutor in the Trump hush money trial. The number three man in the DOJ departed to work for a local DA.
Not a coincidence.
Juan Manuel Merchan
Then we come to Merchan, the “judge” in the Trump “hush money” trial. Of all of the things done to Trump during this farce, this one is the most egregious abuse of the judicial system. Judges are supposedly chosen at random for trial cases.
Fuhgeddaboudit.
Merchan was “randomly ” selected for the Trump, just as he was “randomly” selected to be the trial judge for Steve Bannon and “randomly” selected to be the trial judge for Allen Weisselberg. He was “randomly” selected for a reason – he supports democrats and hates Trump.
Merchan embodies the term “conflict of interest.” He has donated to Biden – not a lot, but that’s irrelevant. Jonathan Turley:
Merchan made a $15 donation to Biden’s election campaign in 2020, a $10 donation to a group called “Stop Republicans” and a $10 donation to a “Progressive Turnout Project,” according to data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Turley said that the small size of the donation was irrelevant.
“It is very clear, they say you can’t make political contributions and he did,” Turley said on “Fox and Friends” after co-host Ainsley Earhardt mentioned the donations. “And the fact it is ‘de minimus’ or small, really, I think, misses the point. You make donations to show your support, that is what that $15 did.”
“What’s also concerning for many is that Merchan was not randomly selected, he was hand-picked as the judge for this case, and many of us don’t understand it,” Turley continued. “You have a judge who is donor to the president, whose daughter is a major Democratic operative, you would think this would be an easy call, there are plenty of other judges.”
Marchan’s daughter profits from the trial
The former chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee alleged that the daughter of the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York has raised nearly $100 million for Democrats, including President Biden and Vice President Harris.
This has raised concerns about potential political bias and conflicts of interest.
Specifically, the judge’s daughter works as a consultant for a prominent Democratic fundraising firm, and her financial interests are tied to the success of candidates and causes opposed to Trump.
democrat Dan Goldman, who was counsel against Trump in impeachment proceedings and coached Michael Cohen prior to his testimony, is a client of Loren Merchan.
Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik has filed an ethics complaint against Mechan.
Throughout the trial, Merchan has made several dubious decisions. He has attempted to gag Trump but allowed Cohen to badmouth Trump and beg for donations on TikTok. He allowed Stormy Daniels to testify during which she would describe alleged sexual positions and techniques. Her testimony added zero probative value to the case.
It is suggested that Merchan has made “reversible error”:
“I got to tell you, I think this judge may have already committed reversible error,” Turley told “Fox and Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt. “He could try to amend it, he could try to change it in his instructions, but that jury has now been told repeatedly that there are federal election crimes here, strongly suggesting that the payment to Stormy Daniels did violate federal election laws. That’s just not true.”
Merchan would not allow former Federal Election Commission Chairman Brad Smith to testify:
The problem for Trump is that Judge Juan Merchan does not want to hear from Smith. Early on, Merchan barred Smith from testifying about virtually anything that had anything to do with the Trump case. He barred Smith from testifying about the campaign finance laws at the heart of Bragg’s charges against Trump. He barred Smith from testifying about anything except general facts about the job of the FEC or the definition of some common campaign terms. In the end, the Trump team decided it was not worth calling Smith to testify under what amounted to a judicial gag order.
Then we have this problem, which I have noted previously:
That would create a weird situation: a local district attorney in New York prosecuting federal law. “One would say Bragg is outside of his lane, but in this case, he’s on a completely different highway,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News in March. “This is an effort by a state official to effectively prosecute a federal crime, a crime that the Department of Justice decided not to prosecute.”
Bragg has no jurisdiction for Federal cases.
Alan Dershowitz, not a Republican and certainly no Trump supporter, was aghast at what he saw in the courtroom:
I have observed and participated in trials throughout the world. I have seen justice and injustice in China, Russia, Ukraine, England, France, Italy, Israel, as well as in nearly 40 of our 50 states. But 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 lost his mind when Cohen’s former lawyer Robert Costello was testifying:
Many experienced lawyers raised their eyebrows when the judge excluded obviously relevant evidence when offered by the defense, while including irrelevant evidence offered by the prosecution. But when the defense’s only substantive witness, the experienced attorney Robert Costello, raised his eyebrows at one of New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s rulings, the court went berserk.
Losing his cool and showing his thin skin, the judge cleared the courtroom of everyone including the media.
For some reason, I was allowed to stay, and I observed one of the most remarkable wrong-headed biases I have ever seen. The judge actually threatened to strike all of Costello’s testimony if he raised his eyebrows again.
That of course would have been unconstitutional because it would have denied the defendant his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses and to raise a defense.
It would have punished the defendant for something a witness was accused of doing.
Even if what Costello did was wrong, and it was not, it would be utterly improper and unlawful to strike his testimony — testimony that undercut and contradicted the government’s star witness.
The judge’s threat was absolutely outrageous, unethical, unlawful and petty.
Moreover, his affect while issuing that unconstitutional threat revealed his utter contempt for the defense and anyone who testified for the defendant.
There has been no evidence presented that Trump committed a crime. All that has been shown is that Michael Cohen committed several crimes for which he is not being prosecuted.
Merchan has afforded the prosecution to dirty up Trump with irrelevant and useless witnesses and at the same time stifling the defense by disallowing exculpatory evidence and witnesses. Should somehow a guilty verdict be rendered this case will never survive dismissal on appeal. There has been presented no credible evidence of a Trump crime. The judge has sullied himself and abused the justice system. His legacy is cemented.
There are two lawyers in the jury. They are on trial just as much as is Trump.
In the midst of this disaster it is worth remembering- Biden said he was going to use any means necessary to stop Trump
LAWFARE: Biden telegraphed from the start he’d use the legal system to prevent Trump from taking power – FBI raids, arrests in four jurisdictions, trial after trial; will Biden succeed? pic.twitter.com/GkGICrlTGW
— @amuse (@amuse) May 22, 2024
Constitution be damned
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 40 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 45 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter who is in the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
