This morning, many of us are emerging from the late coverage last night after the conviction of former President Donald Trump on 34 felonies. I was in the courtroom for the verdict, which hit like a thunderclap (particularly after a strange snafu with the judge). The question that everyone is asking: what happens next?
The scene in the court was a madhouse. Judge Juan Merchan told the court that the jury had not reached a verdict and would be dismissed for the day. Many reporters in the overflow courtroom were leaving when Merchan suddenly said that there was a verdict. People came running back into the courtroom. That was followed by 34 guilty verdicts.
I am obviously saddened by the verdict, but not surprised. Until the very end, I was hopeful that there would be a hung jury, a result that could restore some integrity to the New York criminal justice system. However, I previously noted that the jury instructions made conviction much more likely. I referred to the deliberations as a legal “canned hunt” due to instructions that made conviction a near certainty.
You could feel the weight of history in the courtroom, though we still have to see what history was made. For some, it was the conviction of the first president of a felony. For others, it was the key moment where the weaponization of the criminal system became clear and inescapable. It was both, obviously. Yet, the trial fulfilled narratives on both sides.
I ran outside to join the coverage. (One humorous moment was an officer screaming at reporters piling out of the courtroom to “walk not run.” It did not work.) It looked like the final judgment with everyone panicking to find an exit.
The scene outside the courtroom was surreal. The Trump supporters were outraged. The anti-Trump protesters were ecstatic, dancing and celebrating in the street.
While I have written a book about what I have called “the age of rage,” I am always shocked by such scenes. There is a dehumanizing element of these moments as people celebrate not just the first conviction of a president but a person. Rage is addictive and contagious. That was vividly evident outside the courtroom.
So what happens next?
Obviously, appeals will be taken. As I said last night, we must keep the faith. Indeed, moments like this require us to take a leap of faith in a nation that remains committed to the rule of law. Manhattan is neither the entirety of the country nor the legal system. I believe that these convictions will be overturned, but it will take time. Judge Merchan committed, in my view, layers of reversible error. Eventually, this case may reach the United States Supreme Court.
It has been suggested that an appeal could be taken directly to the Supreme Court. I find that doubtful after the Supreme Court rejected an expedited process for Special Counsel Jack Smith in his federal prosecutions. It will work first through the New York appellate system.
As for the criminal process, Trump will have to meet with a probation officer for an interview. That officer will make recommendations to the court.
There is a possibility of a jail sentence for felonies that come with up to four years for each offense. Any jail sentences would almost certainly run concurrently. However, any jail sentence would be ridiculous in Manhattan for an elderly first-offender in a non-violent offense.
Consistent with his past commentary, MSNBC legal analyst and former Mueller aide Andrew Weissmann predicted that Merchan will give Trump jail time. He is not alone as legal analysts seemed to get caught up in a thrill-kill conviction.
It is much more likely that Merchan will impose a sentence without a jail sentence, though with fines. The most appropriate, in my view, would be a conditional discharge that requires Trump not to commit a new crime or face potential imprisonment.
Merchan could also tailor a sentence to require home confinement or even weekend jailing. Those options would raise serious conflicts with his campaigning and obviously, if elected, serving as president. Even the probation process will be awkward since a convicted defendant ordinarily has to get approval for any travel outside of the state from his probation officer.
Sentences can also include community service, counseling and other requirements.
After his ruling in this trial, it is impossible to rule anything out. However, any jail sentence would add even more outrage to an abuse of the criminal law system.
Even ignoring the devastating Blue city ‘mostly peaceful’ Leftist riots over the last four years, the supreme insurrection to occur in America;s history, was not Jan 6 but rather the travesty that occurred yesterday, May 30, 2024.
Jonathan Turley is wrong about the appeal not being expedited to the SCOTUS, with his false equivalency of Smith’s bogus request for expedition of his bogus case. Juan “The Con” Merchan not only obviously committed countless reversible errors, but he violated clear Supreme Court precedent on what unanimity in jury trials actually means. The jury must agree on ALL elements of each alleged crime, not individually pick and choose what purported crime each juror selects as their favorite crime. And Merchan’s garbage instructions are worthless in any event because the jury was given no opportunity to understand what each purported crime actually was.
I don’t think an appeal can be made to the Supreme Court until state court appeals are exhausted.
No. The SCOTUS can step in earlier than normal in a Constitutional crisis situation, as is the case here where Democrat hacks are directly influencing a Federal election to attempt to imprison a political opponent who is in the lead to win the election.
“CAN” is confusing in the context.
The proper word is power.
Yes SCOTUS does have the power to respond to a common law ‘writ’ don’t think writ is the correct term. But SCOTUS has the power. But as always, it is at their discretion
Good luck with the appeal. Maybe the written court record will inadequately portray reality as it went down in the courtroom. The defendant and defense team behaved like a petulant 5-year-old who got caught dipping into the cookie jar.
“I never ate that cookie…it never happened”.
“Sis didn’t see me do it….ask her”. Then she testifies she did see it.
“You can’t believe a word Sis says, she’s been caught lying before”.
“Sis told me privately that she didn’t see anything, so she’s making the whole thing up.” Then, an email
appears written by the 5-year-olds buddies, saying “Don’t worry, we can manage Sis into silence”.
There is only so much defendant consciousness-of-guilt behavior directly observed by a Jury before it starts to outweigh shaky aspects of the prosecution. This is exactly what happened.
Trump tried his best to manipulate his lawyers to con the Jury. It failed. And Trump will never admit to it being his call to con the Jury….he never takes responsibility for his childish, untrustworthy ways.
I still want Repub policies for my country. But, it cannot be Trump. He’s seriously an immature narcissist who cannot take responsibility when things go sideways. You’ve noticed that about him, right? Setbacks are always someone else’s fault?
Steaming turd from pea brain in california.
He is a long winded version of fishysmell
Anonymous can’t refute anything I said, but can lob insults. Talk about pea brain.
🤡
Nothing you said is worth refuting. You literally just did a cartoon act for the audience. You probably acted it out in your moms basement with hand puppets.
I didnt pick your screen name, you did, pea brain in california.
The entire case was brought around a crime that is a federal crime. The DOJ had already reviewed and said no case here, twice. Bragg never revealed what the underlying crime was until closing arguments where the defense was unable to respond. The underlying crime anchor that was used by Bragg to negate the Statute of Limitations and blow this farce into a felony was not even in his jurisdiction to be able to prosecute. It’s a sham, America knows it and it is going to backfire on all involved big time.
There is zero substance to your comment.
Did you intend that?
Or it was completely and transparently rigged. Good luck being a parent if you dare…
It is so easy for the Trump cult to ignore facts and evidence, when they live in their own reality.
Fishysmell with another enlightened comment.
Dont we all feel so much smarter??
I have the over under on his IQ at 85. Any takers?
The Dems are intoxicated with joy today but that will wear off.
Then they will wonder what comes next, not next for Trump, but next for them.
You are mistaken. It is the smile of evil. When Planned Barrenhood holds board meetings to discuss their quarterly earnings, when Justice Kavanaugh’s would be assasin was caught outside the Justice’s home, when Nazi officers released cyanide gas in the concentration camps, when Democrats lynched blacks and posed for photographs….same smile, same evil
Daily Mail says Joy Behar peed her pants in Costco when she learned of the verdict.
I guess ‘comes next’ for many Democrats is clean underpants.
That will be easier than cleaning their souls.
We can guess what Whoopi Goldberg did.
Farted, smoked a joint and joined the circus clown act?
We were told that this was a news conference with the expectation of Trump taking questions. I mean, that would be the definition of a news conference. We had also anticipated that he would speak for about an hour before those questions even happened. He talked for 35 minutes, he didn’t take questions. Obviously, it was very disjointed. He appeared very tired
YAWN
We all are, after reading that
Now do Usurper and his never taking questions.
There is a simple, foolproof way to predict when Trump will describe something or someone as rigged or corrupt: when he doesn’t get what he wants.”
YAWN
It’s dangerous to question the integrity of our entire legal system. Our enemies in Moscow and Beijing believe that anything that undercuts America’s general faith in the Constitution weakens America. A lost faith in our Judicial Branch is a win for our enemies.
‘They wronged our Donald!’ Russian state TV holds pity party for Trump
TV host Dmitry Kulikov, meanwhile, angrily declared that, “They wronged our Donald Trump!” before interviewing political scientist Malek Dudakov, who had been openly rooting for at least a hung jury to get the former president off the hook.
Nobody’s questioning the entire system just Bragg and Merchan
The Jury decided the verdict.
The truth is that Trump disrespected the jury by trying to con them at many different points. It all came crashing down on Bob Costello’s cross-eaxmination, which showed him to be lying to con the jury. It also revealed that Guiliani and Costello conspired via email exchange to tamper with a witness (“We’ll be able to manage Cohen”).
Trump destroyed his own defense. This is common with narcissist and pyschopath defendants — they get into court and behave atrociously, insulting the Jury’s intelligence, and dragging down their own lawyers.
If you were an attorney you would know otherwise but since
you’re a fraud, here is your legal lesson for today
judgment non obstante veredicto
YAWN
Pea brain… the attorney who thought 17-152 was a felony
Seems Jim Jordan has a few questions for Bragg and his coconspirator!
Are you talking about the fast talking, but slow witted Gym Jordan who failed the Bar exam and ignored a lawful subpoena.
His subpoena of Bragg will be quashed in a New York minute.
YAWN
72% of democrats think the SCOTUS is illegitimate.
GFY
There is a quote the novelist Robert Parker used to cite: Judge your enemy not by his intentions but by his capabilities. In other words, people need to stop guessing at what they think the leftist tyrants are going to do and simply look at what they CAN do. Turley says Merchan would “look ridiculous” and “make a mockery of his court” by jailing Trump, as if Merchan had been a model of judicial decorum up to now. What does the left need to do to stop Trump and hand Joe Biden the WH and give America the coup de grace? Jail Trump. A fine won’t do it and neither will house arrest. And that’s what we’re going to see. They don’t care how it looks. They care what they accomplish. They know what the stakes are. It’s winner take all and loser die in jail. They may be evil and they may be satanic but they’re not stupid.
“Trump is Convicted: What Comes Next?”
– Professor Turley
_____________________
The American Founders—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Ben Franklin, George Mason, Roger Sherman, Samuel Adams, Robert Livingston, Richard Henry Lee, John Hancock, Robert Morris, Peyton Randolph et al.—would like to say a few words.
Gentlemen, mankind is beholden to you for the ages; go ahead.
Ahem…
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
“Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”
– Declaration of Independence, 1776
In the 2 New York cases against Trump, the judges in the cases involving Leticia James and E Jean Carroll imposed massive financial fines against Trump in an effort to bankrupt him – and I predict that Merchan will do the same, consistent with his outburst at the defense team’s suggestion that a guilty verdict would lead to Trump’s incarceration. The progressives are obsessed with destroying Trump’s reputation and ability to defend himself (i.e., his wealth), so I suspect that Merchant will impose a massive fine against Trump to cripple his finances (for which campaign funds cannot be used to pay the bond) – in addition to home confinement so Trump is humiliated into seeking permission to travel for campaign purposes. The only reason to incarcerate Trump would be to have him “commit suicide” a la Epstein, which would be an orgasmic culmination for Trump’s enemies.
For those of you who might be motivated by this bizarre travesty of justice, as am I, to donate to the 2024 political campaigns for Trump and/or other Republicans (caveat: I have never before in my >70 years donated to ANY political campaign or candidate), the domain to begin the process to make an online credit card donation is winred.com. If you would prefer to donate to Trump’s campaign by check (my choice), the pdf form may be downloaded from
https://cdn.donaldjtrump.com/djtweb24/general/TNC
@Number 6
Thank you. We most certainly will, and are. All these idiot, privileged to the skies, and juvenile child protestors shouting ‘Apartheid’ don’t realize their forebears just created a new Nelson Mandela for us to support.
Was Franz Kafka clairvoyant when he wrote “The Trial”, being charged on what grounds? Or maybe it was Benjamin Franklin when he said, “If you can keep it”? Norman Mailer said it right for this particular drama, “Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the Gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision.” And, trying to find a good description of the cast of character who’ve orchestrated this “Theater of the Absurd”: I turn to Oscar Levant “Memoirs of Amnesiac” “Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.”
The Democrats are like children singing ‘Skip to my Lou’ where they lost their Partner, can’t get a red bird, blue bird’ll, find Flies in the buttermilk and Sugarbowl, then they fly away to a neighborin’ state to dance and sing in a Courthouse of deceit.
John Locke in ‘A Letter Concerning Toleration’:
“…There are two sorts of contests amongst men, the one managed by law, the other by force; and these are of that nature that where the one ends, the other always begins…”, “You will say, then, the magistrate being the stronger will have his will, and carry his point. Without doubt; but the question is not here concerning the doubtfulness of the event, but the rule of right.”
It appears to me that Anonymous’ off-the-wall comment wishes to create a firestorm of angry Dem women voters, the better to buttress that Dem stronghold, since former strongholds are beginning to break apart. But for the record, Dem women are as attractive as women can be, and I vote Republican.
Double Dip:
I am acquainted with an actual, honest to goodness DA in NY, and their response: ‘I dunno, falsifying records seems kind of fishy to me.’. And this is not a newbie.
When that is the level of consciousness and salience even among those in positions of authority or who make legal decisions in that ‘great’ state; I honestly don’t know what you do.
Freedom loving people: LEAVE NY. And take your tax and business dollars with you, there is no way this behavior does not impact you too, at some point. Those that are not consciously working against you are so asleep you could steal whatever you want right out from under them, and they would likely never notice. and in 2024, if they ever did, it is automatically Trump or the GOP’s fault, even though they have no meaningful presence to speak of in the Burroughs. And that is BEFORE we get into the insane number of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, actual friggin’ royalty, or yes, American, almost exclusively blue, political families, that now basically own that territory whole hog. The levels of denial and self-unawareness are something that should be *studied* someday.
“It is much more likely that Merchan will impose a sentence without a jail sentence, though with fines.”
With all due respect to the Professor, that would be if standard norms were in play.
First, I’ll make a couple of statements, of which I am highly confident. The 2016 election was legitimate. The 2020 election was legitimate. And I’m reasonably sure the professor agrees with that. But you can’t find a Member of Congress or either Presidential candidate who will say it. (Well, okay Mitch McConnell. But he’s not a good spokesperson because most people regard lifers like him as part of the problem.)
Alvin Bragg is an election denier. And Merchan probably a variation thereof. I don’t know if they actually believe it or it’s cynical politics. In this case Donald Trump, through illegal means, committed 34 felonies that “defrauded the American people”, “harmed our electoral process”, and “made a Presidential election illegitimate”.
The amount of harm is one of the elements of a crime and is considered in sentencing. How can there not be jail time?
By the way, I’m not interested in “The 2016 elections was legitimate but…..” because what always comes after the but is some long-winded double speak about how it wasn’t legitimate.
I’ve been following elections a long time. 1960 had some serious issues. I’m skeptical it changed the outcome. And there wasn’t anything like that, not even remotely, since.
“He’s not invincible. That armor got pierced. That’s a big deal. We’re eight years into a losing streak for Republicans. He lost. Once again, Donald Trump lost. So, he’s a loser; he’s anything but invincible.”
Trump has in the past 2yrs LOST in 3 civil cases and now his 1st criminal case. Plus he has lost the popular vote in 2 of 2 Presidential elections. He led his Party to lose the US Senate by backing such losers aw that idiot Walker in Ga. How many losses can the Republican Party withstand under Trump’s “leadership”?
Lost a skirmish but will win the war…
It ain’t over till the fat lady sings!
I have observed Marxists since my childhood days. I remember the theatrics of Fidel Castro, his over the top circus speeches, gesticulating, screaming, pounding, spitting and sweating with handkerchief in hand, all just to manipulate Cubans. He would then disappear into one of his scores of secret luxury villas in Cuba, a remote Caribbean island or Spain. I recall the sham tribunales y juicios trials and judgements of the Marxists, the imprisoning of contra revolucionarios, the firing squads, the paid mobs descending on those in the public streets and squares, who uttered a cry as we watched in horror the sinking economically, culturally, religiously, of La Perla de las Antillas, as Christopher Columbus referred to the island of Cuba. As Senator Marco Rubio notes,
Marco Rubio
@marcorubio
Marxists and the far left have always used sham show trials to target their political opponents
Now they are doing it in America to target Trump
https://x.com/marcorubio/status/1796562291405586497
He is wrong in one aspect. The Marxists are targeting all of us. Parents of children, Catholic SCOTUS Justices, pro-life believers praying the rosary outside an abortion mill, heterosexuals / gays & lesbians against the sexual fetishization of children, women defending themselves against men pretending to be women, and more
Fidel Castro was a role model for Democrats: both are Marxists, both are dictators, both destroyed the economy, culture and religion of the people, and both have the prensa amarilla yellow press covering for them
The sense of deja vu for many immigrants who fled Marxism is overwhelming and visceral.
I am LOVING watching Professor Turley on the show “Outnumbered”…….He’s just sittin’ there “dishin’ with the girls” and having a blast! So cute!
The rule of law and the standards of fairness, justice and presumption of innocence have been tossed into the history bin. Now, we can look forward to fairy tale law, court jesters and harsh sentences. I think the attorney class will be out of work because the head jester will not allow it anymore, that is what is left of the rule of law in the USA.