Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz believes New York Judge Juan Merhcan will impose a prison sentence on former President Donald Trump on Sept. 18.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy agrees, but both added whether Trump actually goes to prison is another matter.
Trump’s sentencing hearing for his conviction on 34 business records violations was to take place on July 11.
However, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that presidents enjoy partial immunity from acts taken while they are in office, Merchan delayed sentencing until Sept. 18 to allow both Trump’s attorneys and Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to respond to the development.
On Wednesday, Merchan denied the Trump legal team’s motion to have the judge recuse himself, given his daughter Loren Merchan’s past work for Vice President Kamala Harris and current work for Democratic Party, CBS News reported.
Appearing on the Fox New program “Hannity” Wednesday night, Dershowitz said about the case overall: “The one rule that we have violated is the most important rule of all: A single standard of justice without regard to who the person is. You know, the Bible commands judges do not recognize faces. Do not recognize political parties. Do not recognize partisanship.”
“By the standards used by Judge Merchan to convict Donald Trump of a non-crime — you called it a novel crime — it’s not a crime at all. By that standard, the Bidens would be in jail for the rest of their lives,” he argued further.
Do you think Dershowitz is right?
Dershowitz does not want to see either Trump or the Bidens prosecuted.
“But if you apply the Merchan standard, the standard of the New York case where there’s no crime at all, where there’s an expired misdemeanor, where they turn that into a felony, by that standard, the kinds of crimes that Hunter Biden has committed are rampant and without a doubt prosecutable,” he said.
The legal expert would like to see the charges against Trump dropped, but does not believe that will not happen.
“What I predict is Merchan is going to sentence him to prison, but he’s not going to impose the prison sentence,” he said.
“He’s going to say, ‘I’m sentencing you to prison. You deserve imprisonment for this, but I’m going to suspend the sentence,’ or ‘I’m going to delay the sentence.’ So that way he gets his cake and eats it,” Dershowitz contended.
The Democrats will then be able to say, “Oh my God, the guy committed an imprisonable offense, but we’re not going to put him in jail, because if he’s put in jail then he becomes the hero and people will want to vote for him, because he has been a victim of injustice.”
Dershowitz concluded, “It is an injustice, and it’s a manipulation of our justice system to affect elections, and that’s wrong.”
McCarthy agreed, writing in a Wednesday opinion piece for Fox News, “If we may read the tea leaves, Merchan has already decided that he will deny Trump’s immunity motion.” The judge is to rule on Trump’s immunity motion on Sept. 16, two days before when the sentencing hearing is scheduled.
“There is, moreover, a high likelihood that [Merchan] will impose a prison sentence against Trump right after that,” McCarthy added.
“Merchan made so many outrageous rulings in the case that it would be foolish to expect him to change course now,” he argued, anticipating the conviction will be overturned on appeal.
However, Braggs’ prosecution of Trump has been about “politics, not justice,” McCarthy called out.
“The prosecutors and judge are not concerned about whether convictions ultimately get thrown out on appeal. And it’s not like Merchan is actually going to put Trump in prison; it is virtually certain that Trump will get bail pending appeal, so Merchan can appear to impose a stiff incarceration sentence without any real incarceration — at least for now, and probably ever.”
