The conviction of Former President Donald J. Trump on all 34 Counts of charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday, May 30, 2024, was based upon a Rube Goldberg-like indictment where a long-dead misdemeanor tolled years before by the Statute of Limitations was, by some strange alchemy, metamorphosed into 34 felony charges for the crime of “altering business records with the intent to cover-up “another unidentified crime” – a totally invented crime that was not revealed until the prosecution’s closing statement. To further reflect on the absurdity of these charges, the bookkeeping entry of the reimbursements to Michael Cohen as “legal expenses” were made within the internal records of the Trump Organization and were never intended to be revealed to the voting public. Further, entry of the first payment to Cohen as a legal expense was not made until February 2017, three months after the election of Donald J. Trump as president on November 8, 2016. How then, could these “falsification of business records” have served to defraud the voting public when the first bookkeeping entry was made months after Mr. Trump had already won the election???
The criminal conviction of the first ex-president in American history has left an indelible stain on American political history and American jurisprudence which most likely will never be able to be expunged! The Rubicon has been crossed…..
Along with the outrageous New York civil verdict against Mr. Trump where he was found liable for the amount of $355,000.00 without proof of harm to any victims, this week’s criminal conviction of Donald Trump in this first-ever rigged political show trial in American history, may have dealt a deathblow to New York’s legal system; its status as center of world commerce; its economy and its reputation, in the all-consuming rage to “Get Trump.” As Lavrenti Beria, Joseph Stalin’s head of the secret police famously said, “show me the man and I will show you the crime.”
Heretofore, in the history of American jurisprudence and Constitutional Law, there has never been enacted a “Donald J. Trump Exception” to the rights afforded to a criminal defendant by the Due Process clause of the United States Constitution. From reviewing the machinations and tactics of Alvin Bragg and the decisions of his conflicted and heavily biased sidekick Judge Juan Merchan, during the first “lawfare” trial against Mr. Trump in this election season (at the sub rosa direction of President Biden), it is clear that a “Trump Exception” to the Due Process Clause applied during his trial, denying him of his basic constitutional rights. This show trial would have been nostalgic to Commissar Beria and the tactics employed by the prosecution would have won his approval!
The following are the multitude grounds of “reversable error”, that will lead to the inevitable reversal of this totally unconstitutional conviction of Donald J. Trump. The only question is whether the reversal of this travesty of a conviction can somehow be made before the election on November 5, 2024:
(1) Taking a long dead misdemeanor in which the Statute of Limitations had long tolled, and resurrecting it into 34 felony charges based upon the intentional cover-up of a further unidentified underlying crime. Furthermore, in actuality there was but one transaction and through overcharging, was repeated 34 times for each payment of each check to Michael Cohen, for dramatic effect;
(2) Failure to provide the Grand Jury with exculpatory (Brady v. Maryland) evidence, including, but not limited to, that Michael Cohen had repeatedly stated that he “had nothing on Trump.”
(3) Denial of the Motion to Change Venue out of New York City in general and Manhattan in particular when voting records showed that the electorate voted against Donald Trump in the 2020 election by 85%;
(4) Accordingly, violation of the right to an impartial jury as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution;
(5) Denial of the Motion to Recuse Judge Juan Merchan, who against judicial ethics, contributed to Joseph Biden for president; contributed to the “Progressive Turnout Project for Resisting the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s Radical Right-Wing Legacy” and whose daughter ran a public relations firm for the Democratic Party and made millions of dollars therein. Loren Merchan further advocated during the trial for the conviction of Donald Trump and made further millions of dollars, as her father was presiding over the trial. It had been revealed after the verdict, that Judge Merchan had been previously administratively rebuked, for violating judicial ethics that prohibited judges from making political contributions;
(6) Imposition of the Gag Order that was placed on Donald Trump by Judge Merchan, which was in total violation of the First Amendment and heretofore had only been utilized to protect a defendant in a criminal trial, not the state that was prosecuting such defendant;
(7) The admittance into evidence of the irrelevant and highly inflammatory evidence, including but not limited to, the Stormy Daniels testimony, the Access Hollywood tape, the alleged Karen McDougall affair and the E. Jean Carroll verdict, all of which had no probative value on the bookkeeping charges leveled against Donald Trump. Furthermore, this admission into evidence of such “prior bad acts” that had no bearing on the charge at hand, was the basis for the reversal of the rape conviction of Harvey Weinstein as “reversible error” by the New York appellate court, that came down right during the trial of Donald Trump. Yet, Judge Merchan gave no instruction to the jury to strike from their deliberations any reference to those testimonies;
(8) The repeated overruling by Judge Merchan of objections by the defense that Non-Disclosure Agreements, such as the ones entered with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougall, were legal and were common;
(9) The denial by Judge Merchan to allow the defense to call Mr. Brad Smith, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, to testify on what constituted a campaign contribution in the context of Federal election law. The jury was consigned on their own, to attempt to determine whether the payment to Stormy Daniels constituted a campaign contribution or was paid for other reasons, such as to protect Trump’s marriage, and were further tasked to determine whether Federal election laws even applied to the facts of the case.
(10) The refusal of Judge Merchan to give the “missing witness” jury instruction that pertained to the prosecution’s decision to not call former Trump Organization CFO Allan Weisselberg to testify at the trial, who was the only person other than Michael Cohen, who had personal knowledge of the payments to Stormy Daniels. Weisselberg is incarcerated on Rikers Island for refusing to “flip” on Trump. The instruction would have stated that as the prosecution failed to call Weisselberg to testify at trial, it would be assumed that his testimony would have not been favorable to the prosecution;
(11) Basing a New York felony on violations of federal election laws without the New York court having any jurisdiction to prosecute such federal laws;
(12) The allowance by Judge Merchan of the prosecution in its closing statement to comment on facts that were never allowed into evidence, including, but not limited to, that federal election laws were violated in this case; that hinted that Michael Cohen’s conviction for violation of federal campaign laws and David Pecker’s immunity agreement for the violation of the same laws implied that Donald Trump was also guilty of violation of federal election laws, etc.
(13) Violation of the Sixth Amendment right to be informed on the charges against Donald Trump and the Fourteenth Amendment for Trump to be afforded due process, when the prosecution’s theory of the underlying crime that transformed the misdemeanor falsification of business records into felonies was not revealed by the State until after the defense had rested in its closing argument, with no chance for rebuttal by the defense of these newly revealed charges and legal theories;
(14) Allowing the prosecution in its closing argument, after the defense has rested, to allude to a conspiracy between Donald Trump, Michael Cohen and David Pecker to defraud the 2016 American electorate in 2016 and violate federal election campaign laws, by conspiring to falsify the reimbursement to Michael Cohen as “legal expenses”, without conspiracy being a charge returned by the New York grand jury in its indictment;
(15) The failure of Judge Merchan to enter a directed verdict at the end of the prosecution’s case, as the State failed to prove during its case, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Donald Trump’s willfully and intentionally falsified business records with the specific intent of covering-up a still unidentified underlying crime, let alone even specifying what that underlying crime was;
(16) Allowing a non-unanimous verdict by allowing the jury to pick and choose on a choice of three supposed underlying crimes that transformed the misdemeanor falsification of business records into felonies, without unanimity among the twelve jurors;
(17) Allowing a verdict form to be signed by all twelve jurors without specification of which underlying crime, by citation of the actual statute, that the jury determined that Donald Trump was guilty of, which was the basis for the conviction on the 34 felony counts;
(18) Consequently, a total lack of due process afforded to Donald J. Trump throughout these proceedings.
So went America’s first political show trial. Due to the above-unconstitutional tactics, the jury was bamboozled! Whether it will hurt or help Donald Trump’s reelection chances remain to be seen. The Left constantly bleats that with the conviction of Donald Trump, this proves that “nobody is above the law.” However, as the above-constitutional abuses show, the treatment of Donald J. Trump, the first ex-president to be criminally indicted and criminally convicted, was far below the law. One of the great ironies of these proceedings!
For another dose of irony, this may not be the last show trial that would be conducted in this country. There are literally thousands of local district attorneys and local judges in the United States of America, many located in “red states.” The Democrats may rue the day they let this lawfare tactic to be unleashed on the American body politic. Would an indictment from a grand jury in, let’s say Oklahoma City, be in the offing for Joseph R. Biden for his decades-long violation of the Espionage Act for his mishandling of, and profiting from, classified documents, despite the fact that he is “an elderly man with a poor memory?” The current president may secretly hope that the presidential immunity issue now before the Supreme Court will be decided in Donald Trump’s favor, and his own!
-The Chicago Patriot