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Donald Trump was found guilty today of 34 counts of falsifying bookkeeping records.
There was already little doubt when this trial began on April 15, 2024, with jury selection that this collection of Manhattanites would find Donald Trump guilty. Manhattan voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.
As the trial dragged on for weeks, keeping the 2024 GOP candidate on the sidelines, it became crystal clear that Judge Juan Merchan was the prosecution’s plus-one to this party. Merchan was all-in on the prosecution’s confusing, Jenga-like legal theory of the case and did all he could to hold up the rickety superstructure for prosecutors. Merchan allowed the prosecutor to testify to facts not in evidence in the five-hour-long closing argument, yet ruled out witness testimony that was helpful to Trump’s case during the trial.
It was an embarrassment of the “judicial” process. Lady Justice didn’t just peek under her blindfold; she gawked.
The list of reversible errors in this case will need a Lizzo-size binder to contain them all, but it will be too late for Trump in his run for 2024. Mission Accomplished for the Democrats, DNC, DA Alvin Bragg, Team Biden, and these prosecutors. It’s all they wanted. Trump will win his appeal, but from here on out, he will be known as “convicted felon” Donald Trump, just as the lawfare left planned.
Bragg won’t prosecute men who bash women in the head on the streets, the illegal aliens who beat up cops, or roll up a guy who sets people on fire, but by gawd, he fulfilled his stated goal to get Trump on statute-run bookkeeping charges.
By all means, go through the stories my PJ Media colleagues and I have written about this case in detail and consider that this case should never have been brought, but I think the seven-man, five-woman jury verdict comes down to ten main things that were the first things I thought of as closing arguments wrapped up.
Slapping Trump with a gag order.
Hiding the underlying crime from the defense until it was included in jury instructions.
Prosecutors putting Michael Cohen on the stand, knowing he would lie.
The judge shutting down Cohen’s former lawyer on the stand when he testified that Cohen had lied.
Allowing prosecutors to introduce, indeed testify, in closing arguments, that Cohen committed campaign finance violations, though the judge said they couldn’t.
