Former President Donald Trump is calling for the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in his Manhattan business records case, so the Democrat-led state can be stopped from interfering any more in the 2024 election.
He’s right: Enough is enough.
After a six-week trial, 12 New York jurors found Trump guilty Thursday on all 34 felony counts in a much-disputed case of falsifying business records in relation to payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels and others during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump on falsifying the records in the first degree, taking what are normally misdemeanor violations and making them felonies by alleging that the former president was seeking to hide an underlying crime.
But Bragg was not clear on what the underlying crime was, although he suggested when he announced the charges that it had to do with a reported $130,000 payment made to Daniels being a federal campaign finance violation.
Both the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department, which have jurisdiction over campaign finance law, reviewed the payments and declined to prosecute.
On July 11, Trump has to be back in Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom for his sentencing hearing, and the presumptive GOP presidential nominee isn’t happy about it.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday, “The ‘Sentencing’ for not having done anything wrong will be, conveniently for the Fascists, 4 days before the Republican National Convention.”
The convention begins July 15 in Milwaukee.
“A Radical Left Soros backed D.A., who ran on a platform of ‘I will get Trump,’ reporting to an ‘Acting’ Local Judge, appointed by the Democrats, who is HIGHLY CONFLICTED, will make a decision which will determine the future of our Nation?” the candidate asked.
“The United States Supreme Court MUST DECIDE!” Trump said.
Perhaps the quickest path to SCOTUS for Trump is if the judge hands down a prison sentence or some type of home confinement or restrictions about leaving the state of New York during a probationary period.
Trump’s attorneys could file for an emergency stay on the ruling at the Supreme Court, and if five justices agree, it could be granted while his appeal goes forward.
The lawyers might start at the federal circuit court level first and move up to the Supreme Court if the stay is not granted.
Former federal prosecutor James Trusty told Fox News host Mark Levin on his Sunday program, “I don’t rule out the Supreme Court getting involved just because of the uniquely historical and perhaps horrible context.”
In March, the high court stepped in to prevent states from keeping Trump off their ballots based on a claim he violated the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause.
Trusty noted it would be a “pyrrhic victory” if Trump won in the normal appeals process, perhaps 15 months from now, but the conviction and sentence ended up costing him the election in November.
“It is justice delayed being justice denied,” he said.
Levin, who served as chief of staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese during the Reagan administration, called what New York has done “quite diabolical.”
He pointed out Bragg’s office timed the case so it would fall during the heart of the 2024 campaign season and left no room to win on appeal following the normal process before the election.
“These are federal constitutional violations. This is why I think, Jim Trusty, the judge didn’t give a d***. That was of no consequence to him. The appeal process. Who cares? That will be after the fact, the damage will be done,” Levin said.
Multiple legal experts have pointed to Merchan’s jury instructions and the denial of testimony for former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith for Trump as violations of his constitutional rights.
The judge told the 12 jurors that if they found Trump guilty of violating New York tax law, federal campaign finance law (over which New York has no jurisdiction) or falsifying other business records such as bank records, they could convict the former president on the primary crime of falsifying business records.
In other words, the jury breakdown could be four-four-four in what they believed Trump did wrong, which is certainly not the unanimous verdict required under our system of criminal justice, George Washington Law School professor Jonathan Turley wrote in a piece for The Hill.
Should Trump appeal to the Supreme Court?
Merchan’s instructions raise grounds for appeal under the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, which states the defendant has the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.” In other words, one has to know precisely what he or she is being accused of in order to prepare a legal defense.
Trump posted on Truth Social ahead of Thursday’s verdict that Merchan did not allow him to present evidence that he had not violated tax law.
Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy said Wednesday on Fox News concerning Merchan’s jury instructions, “It’s really outrageous, because in a normal criminal case, every statutory crime has what we call elements of the offense.”
“Those are the things the jury has to agree on unanimously that were proved beyond a reasonable doubt,” he explained.
In this case, “What makes it a felony is that you’re concealing or committing another crime, and here the judge is telling them they don’t have to agree about what the other crime is,” McCarthy said.
ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams said regarding the jury instructions, “There are some real appellate issues here that are serious questions about why didn’t the defense even know what the charge was they were going to be applying, what law they were going to be applying?”
“So there were a lot of questions for the defense going into this, I think, as they were making their closing arguments, not even knowing sort of what the law they were going to be battling over was,” he said.
ABC’s chief legal analyst: “There’s some real appellate issues here that are serious questions … why didn’t the defense even know what the charge was that they were gonna be applying — what law?” pic.twitter.com/n3ZzViN7vk
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 2, 2024
Additionally, Trump has the right, under the Sixth Amendment, to “have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor,” which Merchan also denied.
The former president’s attorneys wanted to put Smith on the stand, but the judge so limited what he could testify to that defense lawyers decided it would be of no help to the case.
What the former FEC chairman said he was fully prepared to address was a question at the heart of the matter: Did a payment Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal attorney, made to Daniels qualify as a campaign expense?
And Smith’s testimony to the jury would have been, “No.”
“Federal law does not say that anything that you think might help you win an election is a campaign expense. Rather, it’s an objective test, in which things like polling, paying for staff, paying for headquarters, paying for advertisements and so on — those are campaign expenses,” Smith told Fox News host Laura Ingraham in March.
Based on the constitutional violations Merchan made, Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz believes SCOTUS can and should get involved in the case.
“If the court granted review in this case, they would reverse,” he said Friday on Fox Business. “And I think there is a way of expediting the appeal.”
Dershowitz advised Trump’s attorneys to go right to the federal appellate court level and seek an expedited judgment and then take it to the Supreme Court next, if necessary.
“The Supreme Court should take this case, should reverse the conviction and let the voters decide who should be president without the thumb of an illegal prosecution on the scales of the election,” he said.
Trump is right: It’s time for the Supreme Court to stop New York from interfering any further in this year’s presidential election.
