NY Judge May Get Trump Elected

Recently, when former President Trump openly accused the New York judge presiding over his “hush money” trial of plotting to put him in jail and declared himself willing to emulate Nelson Mandela, it had the desired effect on the commentariat...

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Recently, when former President Trump openly accused the New York judge presiding over his “hush money” trial of plotting to put him in jail and declared himself willing to emulate Nelson Mandela, it had the desired effect on the commentariat and the savants of social media. They provided Trump with plenty of earned coverage and precious little substance concerning how the voters will react if he is jailed for committing a misdemeanor. It’s obvious that the Biden reelection campaign is relying on lawfare to drive down Trump’s support. Yet, according to a recent AP-NORC poll, “Only about one-third of U.S. adults say Trump did something illegal in the hush money case.”

And this corrupt prosecution probably offers the only chance to convict Trump of anything before the election. Recent developments in the other cases cobbled together by Democrat prosecutors suggest that they won’t go forward anytime soon. Last week, Federal Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed the start of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified-documents trial, which had been scheduled to begin May 20. The next day, as Judge Cannon was being savaged by the corporate media, Georgia’s state Court of Appeals agreed to review a ruling by Judge Scott McAfee that allowed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue prosecuting Trump despite her clear conflict of interest. (READ MORE from David Catron: Are Trump’s Polls Understating His Lead?)

Meanwhile, Smith’s indictments involving Trump’s alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election are languishing in the Supreme Court where the justices are considering whether a former president enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken before leaving office. The Court will also decide if Smith has improperly charged Trump under a statute meant to punish corporations for evidence tampering in order to obstruct congressional inquiries. SCOTUS isn’t expected to rule on these cases until June. Thus, the Judge presiding over the “hush money” trial is already under immense pressure to put Trump in jail. However, as W. James Antle III suggests in a recent CNN column, this could very well backfire:

Jailing Trump could give him yet more ammunition for rallying his base against what he calls a witch hunt and describes as a form of election interference. It could also be a fundraising boon, which Trump sorely needs to pay legal expenses and keep up with Democrats … [G]iven the way Trump’s past legal problems have largely played out, it is easy to see how he could turn a brief incarceration to his advantage. Voters may well decide that jailing the former president is not the way they want to see presidential candidates treated in this country.

But it is by no means obvious that this particular judge, Juan Merchan, is capable of controlling his animus toward Trump long enough to think clearly. This was made manifest when he allowed prosecutors to put “adult film star” Stormy Daniels on the witness stand for no other reason than to embarrass Trump with salacious details about a 2016 tryst that he says never happened. His defense team immediately sought a mistrial. However, as the New York Times gleefully reported, “The defense lawyers had argued that Stormy Daniels’s testimony in Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial was prejudicial. In denying their motion, the judge said they had opened the door to her vivid descriptions of a sexual encounter.”

A number of legal experts have suggested that Merchan’s decision to let Daniels testify was just the latest in a series of rulings that all but guarantee the reversal on appeal of any conviction that results from this tawdry trial. Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, for example, put it as follows during a Fox News interview: “I can’t imagine how the Court of Appeals in New York that reversed the Harvey Weinstein conviction, which was a harder case to reverse, wouldn’t reverse this conviction if it got up there … This is such a corrupt case from beginning to end.” Writing in The Hill, George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley took the judge to task for letting Daniels testify:

For two days, she offered lurid and completely irrelevant details whose only possible purpose was to humiliate Trump. Admitting that she was coached by the prosecution in her testimony, it was clear that she was there not to win a case but to win an election. Judge Juan Merchan allowed this legal burlesque to unfold in his courtroom, later blaming defense counsel who had vociferously objected to her appearance and the scope of the examination … He has failed to protect the rights of the defendant from a baseless, politically motivated prosecution.

None of this is lost on the voters. A recent CNN-SSRS poll found that 56 percent of Americans are skeptical that Trump will receive a fair verdict from the jury chosen for this trial. Like the AP-NORC poll quoted above, the CNN survey found that only a third of respondents believe Trump did anything illegal with regard to the case. Regarding his fitness to be president, only 28 percent say the hush money kerfuffle is “disqualifying.” Moreover, the harder people like Alvin Bragg hit Trump with politically motivated lawfare, the more his supporters circle the wagons around him. After four weeks that would have destroyed most politicians, Trump’s Saturday rally drew at least 80,000 attendees — in New Jersey. (READ MORE: Bragg’s Trump Trial Refutes Case Against Immunity)

The pundits titter when they see Trump defy an unconstitutional gag order and declare, “I will gladly become a Modern Day Nelson Mandela — It will be my Great Honor.” But these people have no idea what they are witnessing. Most voters now realize that “working class Joe” was the front man for a bait-and-switch in 2020. The DNC gave us “Weekend at Bernie’s” rather than Bernie himself. But the people who run the Biden regime are imposing the Sanders agenda and it is failing badly. The voters want the gag removed from Trump, so they can return to the peace and prosperity over which he presided before 2020.

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