Will Judge MarchantJail President Trump or Dismiss the Case?

Will Judge Merchan escalate lawfare by sentencing President Trump immediately to jail? Will New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg pull the plug on the New York City case? It won’t be July 11, 4 days before the National Republican Convention. The Supreme Court Monday in the executive immunity case cast a strong shadow on the New York case and the federal prosecutions of President Trump. New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan has a dilemma. He presided over the New York City Trial of President Trump on bogus charges with the intent of convicting the President. Judge Juan Merchan was a respected jurist until he presided over the Trump Trial. He thought in his mind that his duty was to save America from the second coming of the “evil” Donald Trump Presidency. He could have sentenced President Trump to jail on July 11, 2024 with the intent of crippling President Trump’s campaign. He may have felt compelled to do so. The other attempts to derail the Trump Campaign have failed. Thursday’s debate shows America that President Biden is a dementia shadow of his prior self. On the other hand, Judge Merchan is not stupid. He knows his case will ultimately be overturned, if not by the appellate courts of New York, then by the federal courts on numerous constitutional grounds. That hasn’t bothered him up to now. The grounds for reversal are almost infinite: Constitutional Violations Evidentially Jury Instructions His problem is that he sees the Trump Campaign is headed to headed to victory, perhaps a landslide. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Toney was a highly regarded jurist when he penned the Dred Scott decision, a ruling which lives in infamy. He thought in his mind he was resolving America’s slavery problem. Instead he drove America into the Civil War. Toney was Chief Justice of the United States. Judge Merchan is a trial judge in New York City. The hubris of thinking he could effectively disqualify the nominee of the opposing political party is mind blowing. Judge Merchan is not, so far as we know, a corrupt judge, but reflects much of the New York legal establishment. The trial and conviction are the result of a host of constitutional violations by the judge. Let’s start at the beginning. With a series of inexplicable coincidences. Judge Merchan presided over the Trump tax case, the criminal prosecution of the Trump organization bookkeeper, and of President Trump himself. Judge Merchan is scheduled to preside over the upcoming prosecution of Steve Bannon. Judge are normally assigned to cases by lottery, but someone, perhaps the judge himself, assigned these cases to Judge Merchan. He knows what he has to do. Judge Merchan is bound by the United States Constitution. The Sixth Amendment provides the right to a trial “by an impartial jury.” The Supreme Court held in the 1966 case of Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333 (1966) that a defendant is entitled to a change in venue for venues with inherently prejudicial publicity. His first constitutional mistake was to deny a change of venue to President Trump. The New York Times, the premier newspaper in New York City has the constitutional right under the 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan to denigrate President Trump in its editorials, op-eds, and even in the news columns. It has done so for four years fueling a hostile environment for President Trump. The composition of the jury pool was very liberal. Only 23% of New York City voters cast a ballot in 2020 for President Trump. Yet the jury selected apparently excluded all conservatives from it. Judge Merchan failed to sequester the jury at any time – not during the entire trial, the last week including closing arguments, or especially the five days between the closing arguments and the jury instructions. He also did not forbid the jurors from going on the internet, TV, or print media during this period. They would have heard a lot negative about President Trump from their “friends and neighbors.” President Trump has a penchant for speaking out. Judge Merchan hit him with a gag order, but did not limit the prosecution or Michael Cohen, the hostile witness who makes money by denigrating President Trump. Judge Merchan ruled New York law does not require specificity of the underlying crime. He may be right. I don’t know New York Law. New York may not, but the Constitution clearly does! The Sixth Amendment requires the accused “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.” The defendants need specificity so as to be able to defend themselves. Judge Merchan’s failure to force the prosecution to identify the charge or to require proof beyond a reasonable doubt brings to mind Kafka’s “The Trial” as well as violating the Constitution. Many of the underlying, not specified charges are protected by Executive Immunity. The whole case is contaminated. Judge Merchan should have recused himself. Judges have opinions and views, but they are expected to project objectivity on a case before them. He three times contributed to the Biden Campaign or the Democratic Party. The amounts were de minimis and New York held he did not violate judicial ethics. Then we have his daughter, Loren Merchan, who is President and a shareholder in Authentic Campaigns, which worked on Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign, the Biden-Harris campaign, and for Representative Adam Schiff, earning large sums in the process. Family actions, in theory, do not relate to a judge’s conduct and impartiality, but the Second Circuit just reversed the decision of a federal district judge to dismiss a multi-million antitrust suit against ten banks including the Bank of America. The judge’s wife owned about $15,000 in Bank of America stock. Judge Merchan violated a fundamental, albeit mostly uncodified, foundation of the Rule of Law: NOT ONLY MUST JUSTICE BE DONE, BUT IT MUST APPEAR TO BE DONE! Judge Merchan knows though that in the normal course of judicial proceedings the reversal will not occur until after the election. He also knows, I assume, that federal courts do not normally intrude on state court criminal proceedings until the state proceedings are ended. He would have done his job. The question is: Will Judge Merchan finally do the right thing and set aside the verdict on September 6? or Is Judge Merchan so locked into jailing President Trump on September 18? He wants to imprison President Trump, but the wise course for him would be to grant the motion to dismiss the case on September 6, castigating the Supreme Court for forcing him to do so. Alvin Bragg achieved his goal. He got a felony conviction of President Trump. He should pull the case before it is reversed. Call it a victory and walk away.