What happened in the Trump trial in New York came as no surprise to our readers. We called it almost exactly eight months ago. Strategic Intelligence readers saw this coming long before the crowd.
What Comes Next
We won’t spend a lot of time on the technicalities of the New York case. You get enough of that from the talking heads. Let’s look ahead.
The New York case will almost certainly be reversed on appeal. Here’s why:
The trial judge violated the First Amendment with his gag order on Trump. He violated the Fifth Amendment because the crime was not specified in the indictment and Trump was denied due process of law. He violated the Sixth Amendment because Trump was denied the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation” and was denied the right to have “process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.”
The judge also violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which applies the First, Fifth and Sixth Amendments to state actions under the due process clause. Four Constitutional violations should be more than enough to get the case reversed, but there were scores of other reversible errors committed by the judge.
Skeptics may believe that the New York appeals courts (The First Appellate Division where I was sworn in as a lawyer decades ago, and the Court of Appeals) will be as biased as the trial court. That’s not true. Appellate law is quite different than trial law. There are no witnesses and the facts are not disputed. The matters considered are all points of law. The lawyers submit briefs and deliver oral arguments. Stormy Daniels will not be in the First Division courtroom.
The First Division Appellate Court will be concerned about two things: getting the law right and not being overruled by the Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York. Both considerations lean in favor of reversing Trump’s convictions and that is likely to be what happens.
The difficulty is that the appeals process is unlikely to be concluded before the election. It simply takes time to file the motion, prepare the briefs, schedule the oral arguments and render a judgment. An emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is possible, but that is a legal longshot.
The Winners and Losers
Politically the verdict is unlikely to be that damaging. Trump’s fundraising exploded the night of the verdict. So many people logged on to make donations or volunteer that the Trump website briefly crashed. Trump is already ahead in national and battleground state polls and this shameful verdict will increase his margins.
One wildcard is the sentence to be imposed by Judge Merchan. Some legal analysts assume Merchan will not put Trump in jail or will not limit his ability to campaign. I disagree.
Judge Merchan has besmirched himself and the New York judicial system by his biased rulings against Trump and his unconstitutional jury instructions that practically dictated a guilty verdict. Merchan doesn’t care about being reversed on appeal, he just wants to hurt Trump here and now. Why let up? He might put Trump in jail or, if not, at least put him under a supervised house arrest which will prevent Trump from campaigning, holding rallies, attending the debates or joining the convention.
It won’t matter. Trump will win this election in a landslide. The only losers are Judge Merchan, the State of New York and the American people. The world is laughing at the U.S. today. Let’s hope a Trump victory in November restores some of our national pride and standing in the world.
Jim Richards
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