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Will Democrats learn a lesson in the law? We’ll soon find out.
A week after former President Trump’s landslide victory, a lawsuit is scheduled in a New York state court where the president-elect must continue to address 34 felony business record charges that a Manhattan jury convicted this spring. Must be. Judge Juan Melchan is scheduled to rule on President Trump’s motion to vacate the guilty verdict. Team Trump is calling on District Attorney Alvin Bragg to recklessly include evidence of official acts in his prosecution based on the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling that former presidents have a presumptive immunity for acts of official conduct. Because of this choice, they argue that the case should be thrown out.
Marchand, a Democratic activist, ruled against Trump with numbing regularity throughout the trial. Beyond the prologue, we should expect Mr. Marchan to deny Mr. Trump’s immunity claims. Then things get interesting.
In addition to issuing a discharge decision on Tuesday, Marchan expects to issue a ruling on the president-elect on Nov. 26. And while the lawsuit is absurd, it alleges that Trump falsified business records to hide the fraud. legal Non-Disclosure Agreement — Judge acquiesced to prosecutors’ farcical claims to jury that Trump conspired to steal the 2016 election. This will gradually increase the pressure on courts to impose a fixed period of imprisonment.
Trump, of course, never wants a verdict, and certainly not a moment of victory. He has some cards to play in that regard.
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Unlike most claims of negligence in criminal trials, immunity is subject to immediate review by the High Court, and the defense does not have to wait until after conviction and sentencing to appeal. In fact, that’s why Trump’s federal election interference case in Washington, D.C., has been on ice for nearly a year. Trump’s lawyers therefore argue that Marchan’s immunity decision should be open to appeal before sentencing through New York’s two-tier appellate stage and possibly to the U.S. Supreme Court. Probably. That may take a year or two.
Mr. Bragg would counter that this was an unusual situation in which the issue of immunity did not become a serious issue until after the trial. Therefore, the argument could be made that it would make more sense to move forward with sentencing and then go to appellate court, since immunity could be raised in addition to the many other appellate claims that President Trump anticipates. .
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It will be interesting to see how the New York courts decide on this matter.
Understand, even if Marchan is sentenced to prison, Trump is not going to jail. Although the charges are felonies, they are not serious enough to warrant immediate detention under New York state law. Trump will likely be granted bail pending appeal.
Given that Mr. Trump will not be sent to Rikers Island by a Manhattan judge in any case, it would be wise to postpone sentencing and allow Mr. Trump to proceed with his appeal for immunity. That would avoid the embarrassing situation of being convicted and sentenced just as the next U.S. president is about to take office.
Former President Trump appeared in a hush money trial on May 30th in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City. (Stephen Hirsch Pool/Getty Images)
If the appeals court does not suspend sentencing, Mr. Trump would be free pending his appeal, a process that would take more than a year.
Under these circumstances, the Department of Justice should ask the courts (state level and, if necessary, federal court) to halt further proceedings in the New York criminal case until the end of President Trump’s term.
This will not put Trump above the law. This incident will not go away. It would simply be postponed so that the states would not be in a position to interfere with the federal government’s ability to govern — a principle central to the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.
That being said, this incident should go away.
One might hope that the lesson Democrats learned from President Trump’s landslide victory is that the law is un-American. Voters were clearly unsettled by the Democratic Party’s use of law enforcement and the judicial process as a weapon against its main political opponents. Democrats would be wise to absorb that lesson and avoid pushing through legislation after Americans returned President Trump to the White House despite these allegations.
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By pardoning his predecessor and his successor, President Biden can set a strong example as a politician — finally able, on the verge of leaving office, to act like the unifying president he first promised. –. That would certainly make it easier for the public to accept the president’s inevitable pardon for his son Hunter, who is awaiting sentencing on gun and tax charges. It also could give Gov. Kathy Hochul the political space she needs to pardon Trump, citing support from New York progressives. If possible, Democrats may be reading into Trump’s gains in traditional constituencies in the Empire State.
The law was terrible for the country. The landslide victory the American people gave Trump should be his death sentence.
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