Below is my column in the New York Post on the statement by Acting Justice Juan Merchan in the sentencing of President-elect Donald Trump. Merchan’s effort to justify the handing of the case sounded like the second defense argument made in the hearing. It likely changed few minds in the court of public opinion.
Here is the column:
This week, the sentencing of President-Elect Donald Trump saw one of the most impassioned defense arguments given at such a hearing in years . . . from the judge himself. Acting Justice Juan Merchan admitted that the case was “unique and remarkable” but insisted that “once the courtroom doors were closed, the trial itself was no more special, unique, and extraordinary than the other 32 cases in this courthouse.”
If so, that is a chilling indictment of the entire New York court system. Merchan allowed a dead misdemeanor to be resuscitated by allowing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to effectively prosecute declined federal offenses. He allowed a jury to convict Trump without any agreement, let alone unanimity, on what actually occurred in the case. Merchan ruled that the jury did not have to agree on why Trump committed an alleged offense in describing settlement costs as legal costs. Neither the defendant nor the public will ever know what the jury ultimately found in its verdict.
I once described this case as a legal Frankenstein: “It is the ultimate gravedigger charge, where Bragg unearthed a case from 2016 and, through a series of novel steps, is seeking to bring it back to life…Bragg is combining parts from both state and federal codes.”
Even liberal legal experts have denounced the case and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) recently called it total “b—s–t.”
Now, Merchan seemed to assure this Frankenstein case that he was just like any other creature of the court. It did not matter that he was stitched together from dead cases and zapped into life through lawfare.
Merchan knows that there is a fair chance this monstrosity will finally die on appeal, and he was making the case for his own conduct. The verdict, however, is likely to last far longer than the Trump verdict. It is a judgment against not just Merchan but the New York legal system, which allowed itself to be weaponized against political opponents.
In the Mary Shelley novel, Frankenstein says “I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.”
Trump can now appeal the case as a whole. Prior appeals in the New York court system were unsuccessful, and hopes are low that the system will redeem itself. However, Trump can eventually escape the vortex of the New York court system in search of jurists willing to see beyond the rage and bring reason to this case.
Notably, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass cited Chief Justice John Roberts in his argument before Merchan, noting that Roberts recently chastised those who attack the courts. (Roberts just the night before joined liberal justices and Justice Amy Coney Barrett in refusing to stay the sentencing). Steinglass portrayed Trump as an existential threat to the rule of law.
Roberts, however, is everything that Merchan is not. You can disagree with him, but he has repeatedly ruled against his own preferred outcomes in cases, including rulings against President Trump and his campaign and Administration. For his part, Trump declined to criticize the court and declared that “This is a long way from finished and I respect the court’s opinion.”
Indeed it is. Merchan’s monster will now go on the road and work its way back to the Supreme Court. Outside of New York this freak attraction will likely be viewed as less thrilling than chilling.
The election had the feel of the townspeople coming to the castle in the movie. In this case, however, the townspeople were right about what they saw in the making of a creature that threatened their very existence. Lawfare is that monster. It threatens us all, even those who hate Trump and his supporters. Once released, it spreads panic among the public which can no longer rely on the guarantees of blind and fair justice. That includes businesses who view this case and the equally absurd civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James as creating a dangerous and even lawless environment. Many are saying “but for the grace of God go I” in a system that allows for selective prosecution.
In the sentencing proceeding, Merchan was downplaying his hand in creating this Frankenstein. However, the case is the fallen angel of the legal system. While heralded in court by Bragg’s office as the triumph of legal process, it is in fact the rawest and most grotesque form of lawfare. Many will be blamed as the creators of this monster but few will escape that blame, including Merchan himself.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
Turley— you need to stop with the distortions of Trump’s criminality. The jury unanimously agreed that Trump falsified business records. They were instructed that they had to all agree on this fact. They were also instructed that if he did so for an illegal reason that this would elevate the falsification to felonies. They were instructed that they did not have to unanimously agree on what the illegal reason was for the falsification and were given 3 alternative illegal reasons. There is nothing legally incorrect in these instructions.
Trump DID falsify business records by misrepresenting a payoff to Stormy Daniels as “legal expenses”, so Michael Cohen had to pay state, local and federal taxes on the money. Cohen was given additional funds for this purpose. MAGA media consistently misrepresents the payoff payments as purchasing an NDA, which is not illegal—that is a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts.
Hope Hicks testified that after the Access Hollywood tape was revealed, Trump was afraid that another sex scandal would doom his chances with women voters— so covering up the liaison with Stormy was the reason for falsifying the business records.
These are inconvenient facts that you, for some reason, don’t discuss, Turley, when you attack Judge Merchan and the New York legal system. It’s just like the wrongheaded attacks against Dr. Fauci and threats to arrest and jail him for recommending the consensus of medical opinion on curbing the spread of COVID. Because this was counter to the lies Trump was spreading, Fauci was vilified .
In MAGA world there always has to be a face of the enemy onto which to project the fury of Trump and the disciples. But it is beneath the dignity of a law professor to distort the truth like you have done and to baselessly attack Judge Merchan. He let Trump get away with multiple counts of contempt of court, violations of gag orders, and he got special treatment—- no jail time, no fines, not even community service. Judge Merchan would not, however, let the jury verdict be dismissed— and that is apparently his crime here. Some of the MAGAs on this blog have advocated for Judge Merchan to be disbarred and jailed. The tripe you publish, Turley, feeds this insanity. Judges enjoy immunity for their decisions—-something you do know, but you stir the pot anyway and that is wrong.
No one else could get away with 34 felony convictions and contempt of court and ignoring court orders and face no penalty. THAT should have been the focus of your comments instead of attacking Judge Merchan.
Speaking of Frankenstein…!
More like the Blob
You’re an abuser.
So what was the “”second another unlawful means”” the jury was instructed to vote “not unanimously” on three “unlawful means.”.. What was the jury’s verdict on those three, and where is the jury verdict form for those? The jury would have LITERALLY had to take that vote immediately on deliberation before ever continuing on to the out of date misdemeanor records violation…
I think you people are all INSANE. This harlot and her hookery came out despite anyone’s best efforts as your side works in the mud and in the criminal underbellies.
Her lawyer is in PRISON, and you goofballs ran him as a POTUS candidate because of your TDS.
The harlot owes Trump BIG MONEY in the court case judgement you goons never mention.
So some bookkeeper uses the drop down in some quickbooks equivalent, apparently 34 times in the insane amount of paperwork you libturds demand, and even though everything NDA is already public and you’re screaming bloody murder, you’re also criminal enough to pretend “Trump” “committed a felony” BECAUSE SOME RECORDSKEEPER DIDN’T PHONE 1 800 DEMONCRATS I GOT US A scandal here ?
YOU’RE INSANE LADY. A KOOKBALL.
Beyond all that crap they had to cook all precedent and throw it out the window and bark up some new laws or interpretations SO IT IS ALL 100 PERCENT EX POST FACTO CRIMINAL MISCONDUCT by your side, lady, you completely bonkers nutbagger.
As far as the lying was never touched not a chance in heck “I think rape is sexy” lying quack, that for sure you do not know, has a BIG 20 PAGE PIECE ON HER DOZENS OF FAIRY TALES OF BEING RAPED SHE PRESENTS AS 100 PERCENT THE TRUTH – new york mag THE CUT – go look it up and read it YOU DERANGED CLUELESS FOOL. ( jean carrol the kook too )
I won’t ask you to come back and tell me you don’t believe her because NO ONE CAN after reading that.
Get on your knees and pray for some guidance.
Your tds is showing!
Of all the dumbsh1t comments you’ve ever made, your first paragraph is the dumbsh1ttiest. Well played (for you)!
Get help for your TDS. Seriously.
Oh, and what is synthetic oil made of?
Gigi, I hate to burst your bubble, but this case will absolutely be overturned. It’s not a question of if, it’s how quickly it will happen. NY knows it has to overturn this conviction because it does not want this case to be review by any court outside of NY. Charging Trump with 34 felonies was never meant to be anything more than political. There was no reason for Daniels to do two days of testimony, except to embarrass Trump during an election. The fact that an NDA existed was never in dispute. You seem to think that repeating the charges over and over again, gives them some validity, it doesn’t. When this case got to Merchan’s hand selected Court, there was going to be a conviction, no matter what. How you label an expense in your internal accounts, doesn’t make it a felony. If I choose to label lawn care expenses in my private business, “holiday expenses”, just because you don’t agree with it, doesn’t make it a crime. Falsifying a business record can be a crime, but there actually has to be a crime somewhere in there, otherwise, it doesn’t make any sense no matter how many ways you keep repeating it. If I label a file folder in a manner in which the state of NY disagrees, do you believe that a crime occurred?
Turley— you need to stop with the distortions of Trump’s criminality.
Gigi, why do you come here every day to specifically insult your host? Any logical reason other than doing so is the only form of masturbation that actually works for you?
I agree with you Mr. Anonymous…I hope Gigi will read my post asking him to cleanse his head.
“The jury unanimously agreed that Trump falsified business records.”
Correct, and the rest of us want to know what that Jury was smoking.
“They were instructed that they had to all agree on this fact.”
They were NOT correctly instructed that they must unanimously agree on every element of the crime,
the must unanimously agree on the predicate crime that elevates the misdemeanor to a felony.
And they must unanimously agree on every element of the predicate crime.
And that is ignoring the fact that they really are not free to address the supposed predicate crime AT ALL, because it was not charged.
“They were also instructed that if he did so for an illegal reason that this would elevate the falsification to felonies.”
That is what they were instructed and that is a FALSE instruction.
There is no such thing as an illegal reason – MOTIVES are not crimes. Elevating the false documents charge REQUIRES that it be done for the purpose of hiding another crime.
That REQUIRES charging the other crime. and proving each of the elements of the other crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
“They were instructed that they did not have to unanimously agree on what the illegal reason was for the falsification and were given 3 alternative illegal reasons. There is nothing legally incorrect in these instructions.”
That is not what they were instructed – and both what they were instructed and your even worse expression of what they were instructed is FALSE and unconstitutional as a matter of established law.
“Trump DID falsify business records by misrepresenting a payoff to Stormy Daniels as “legal expenses””
Payments to lawyers for NDA are legal expenses, payments for NDA’s are legal expenses. Settlements of legal disputes are legal expenses.
” so Michael Cohen had to pay state, local and federal taxes on the money.”
The tax situation is complicated, and also irrelevant. Regardless, there is no possible arrangement by which Trump would have to pay taxes on a legitimate expense.
You can idiotically try to claim that payments for NDA’s are not legal expenses.
But they are without any doubt at all tax deductible expenses.
With respect to Cohen – if as the prosecution claims, these payments were just a pass through cohen to Daniels – that Cohen owes no taxes, or only taxes on the portion that is HIS fees.
But Again – his FEES are legal expenses, AND the payment for the NDA is a legal expense. An NDA is a contract.
However, if as the actual FACTS show – the NDA was between Cohen and Daniels, and Trump was NOT a party. Then Trumps payments to Cohen are ENTIRELY for a legal service.
I would note not only is the NDA between Cohen and Daniels NOT Trump, but Coden not Trump sued Daniels for violating it. Daniels sued Trump – which the courts dismissed because Trump was not a party to the NDA, and found that Daniels owes Trump legal fees – which she still has not paid.
“Cohen was given additional funds for this purpose.”
Absolutely NONE of this matters – though YOU, the Jury, the court and the prosecutors have deliberately misconstrued not just obvious – but clearly recorded FACTS,
And you are trying to pretend that a financial arrangment that is different from what you beleive it should be is somehow evidence of a crime.
But the FACTS are:
Micheal Cohen likely WAS broadly tasked by Trump to kill a bunch of stories.
In fact that had been his job for years.
This is NOT the first story that was killed.
And while YOU may beleive this particular one is true – many of the stories Cohen killed were undeniably false.
BTW this is a service that Cohen provided to MANY clients.
Cohen was an entertainment industry lawyer primarily and his forte was killing stories – both true ones and false ones.
There is debate over whether Cohen and Trump agreed BEFORE hand on the details of how he would kill stories.
or even whether Trump knew which stories he was trying to kill.
But again it does not matter if Trump told Cohen – I will pay you to kill any allegations that arrises, true or false.
Or if he was involved with cohen in detail determining exactly the arrangment for each story.
It is perfectly legal either way.
What is absolutely true beyond any doubt at all – because it is litterally documentedmany times over – including by the NDA itself.
Is that the NDA is OWNED by Cohen, and it is between Cohen and Daniels.
Cohen has testified that he borrowed against a home line of credit to pay the money for the NDA.
That would be HIS money.
And THAT is the reason that COHEN was obligated to pay taxes on the NDA.
Because he OWNED the NDA – he was the one who would get approx. 2M if Daniels violated it NOT TRUMP,
That means that Trump’s payment to Cohen was NOT for the NDA itself – because Trump did NOT own the NDA, and was not a party to it.
Trump’s payment was for the LEGAL SERVICE of killing the story.
You do not like the way this was done. SO WHAT ? It was still done legally.
You do not even like the fact that the NDA existed – SO WHAT ? It was still done legally.
You wanted Daniels to tell her story publicly – which she was perfectly free to do whether it is true or not.
But the Choice to go public or sell the story was Daniels choice – not yours, not Cohen’s not Trump’s.
Daniels freely accepted an offer.
The story was hers to tell or to sell. She made a choice you do not like.
There is absoltuely zero doubt in the world that Trump paid to bury the story.
There is also absolutely no doubt that it is legal to do so.
In the end your ranting and stomping up and down and shouting “guilty. guilty guilty”
is solely because you beleive – possibly correctly that had the story come out Trump would not have won in 2016.
SO WHAT. The entire purpose of all money spent in a political campaign is to win the election.
It is not fraud to spend money to win.
The purpose of all NDA’s ever is to legally assure that someone does not make something public.
Whether it is the secret formula to CocaCola, or a false story about a love child with a maid.
All of this is LEGAL
While you REPEATEDLY screw up the FACTS of the actual transaction – and Try to pretend that because the NDA was not between Trump and Daniels
that somehow the process differing from what you prefer makes it illegal – but it does not.
Cohen owed the taxes BECAUSE Cohen did not merely Get the NDA, he OWNED the NDA.
That was aparently his choice, but it really does not matter whether the prosecutions claims were true and
Trump directed Cohen to get the NDA himself with his own money.
I would note that because Cohen OWNED the NDA – Trump could not possibly be paying COHEN for the NDA.
Let me try to explain this in terms that are less loaded.
Suppose Trump sought to preclude someone from building a competing resort next to MAL.
He could but the adjacent property. But lets say the owner would not sell to Trump, or would want more money if the sellor knew Trump was the buyer.
So Trump hired a lawyer to buy the property, but agreed to reimbures the lawyer – so long as he agreed not to build a competing resort.
All that is perfectly legal.
I would note that I have done consulting work for Amazon before – in fact even in AOC’s district in NY.
When I did so I agreed before hand that I would not tell anyone that Amazon was the client.
I got paid extra for that.
It is perfectly legal.
There is NOT one single way to complete any free market transaction.
You can go to McD’s and buy a burger.
You can have a friend buy the burger and pay them back.
You can have a friend buy the burger and you pay for the next meal.
You can have a friend buy the burger as a gift.
There is no right or wrong way to engage in the transaction.
It is NOT your business how others conduct their affairs.
As was well documented in the trial – Trump properly paid his taxes.
I beleive Cohen did – though Cohen did illegally evade taxes having nothing to do with Trump.
There is zero doubt that Cohen is a sleazy character.
But Trump was not his only client, and his other clients are not being prosecuted for hiring a sleazy attorney to perform legal tasks.
” MAGA media consistently misrepresents the payoff payments as purchasing an NDA, which is not illegal”
You are correct that Trump did not Purchase the NDA – Cohen did. Trump purchased legal services.
“that is a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts.”
Irrelevant. What IS relevant is that NDA’s ARE legal. It does not matter whether Trump purchased the NDA or Cohen did. it is still legal.
it does not matter that you think Trump overpaid. It does not matter that the price to Trump was inflated to cover taxes.
While it is a FACT that Cohen owned the NDA and therefore it was NOT the NDA that Trump was purchasing. It was Cohen;s legal services
even that fact does not matter
What is most damning about this case is not only do YOU get all the FACTS wrong.
But that in truth all these details DO NOT MATTER.
Just like it does not matter how I and a friend choose between us to pay for a trip to McDonalds,
it does not matter wether Trump paid for the NDA or Paid Cohen to kill the story.
Or whatever other bizarre claim you try to make is.
It is all perfectly legal NO MATTER WHAT.
“Hope Hicks testified that after the Access Hollywood tape was revealed, Trump was afraid that another sex scandal would doom his chances with women voters— so covering up the liaison with Stormy was the reason for falsifying the business records.”
Gigi you are SOOOO Dumb.
The business records were created in 2017 – AFTER the election.
Once again the left wing nut thesis of this case requires a time machine.
Regardless, she also testified that the scandal would HELP Trump with men who would view bedding a porn star and a conquest, a bucket list item and that it might wash politically.
She also testified that his real concern was the effect on Melania.
But all of that does not matter – lets assume you are completely correct, and the Daniels story would have flipped the election, and the business records were created in Oct 2016 not accross 9 months in 2017
SO WHAT ? It is STILL LEGAL. It is perfectly legal for Trump to try to win an election. It is perfectly legal for him to do things that are legal to win an election.
It is perfectly legal for him to pay lawyers to kill stories to win an election.
“These are inconvenient facts that you,”
They are not inconvenient, they are just not relevant and in most cases inconvenient.
While you are WRONG at the very core, even if you were right you have no crime.
Lets assume something else – which is consistent with Hick’s actual testimony.
Lets make the absurd assumption that calling the payments to a lawyer legal expenses was somehow a lie.
Lets say Trump called them legal expenses NOT to win an election – the election was already over by almost 3 months before the first of 10 checks were written.
Lets say hat Trump’s “Motive” in lying on his business records is to hide the payments from Melania.
I that a crime under NY law ? Could Bragg have gone before the jury and said it does not matter whether Trump falsified business record to win an election or to hide allegations of infidelity from Melania – it is still a crime.
Would that be legally correct ?
Nope,
There is not and can not constitutionally be a crime of merely lying.
If I am called to testify in a murder trial, and I lie under oath about which resturant I ate lunch at a hour earlier because I did not want my wife to find out that I had a boston cream pie.
Is that perjury ?
NO. For a lie to be a crime it MUST be fraud. Reliance on the lie MUST deprive another person of tangible property that but for the lie they would have had.
This is over 200 years of black letter law, it is litterally how criminal lying is defined by blacks law dictionary.
The supreme court – none other than Ruth bader Ginsberg has thrown out criminal convictions where the federal governemnt or the state has tried to make merely lying into a crime.
Even if you actually proved that Trump lied by calling payments to a lawyer legal expenses – which is absurd, you still have the constitutionally problem that this statute – either as applied or on its face is unconstitutional.
“for some reason, don’t discuss,”
What you dicate on is not discussed because it is wrong and irrelevant.
“when you attack Judge Merchan and the New York legal system. It’s just like the wrongheaded attacks against Dr. Fauci and threats to arrest and jail him for recommending the consensus of medical opinion on curbing the spread of COVID. Because this was counter to the lies Trump was spreading, Fauci was vilified .”
While your remarks are loaded with false claims. Even that does not matter.
We are free to choose to say what we want about Merchan and the NYS legal system – whether you think what is said is true or not.
We are free to choose to say what we want about Fauxi – whether you think what is said is true or not.
And enough with the consensus nonsense. The great Barrington declaration has nearly 1M signatures – I beleive nearly 100,000 are public health officials, doctors, researchers.
Left wing nuts like you love to play word games with concensus – usually meaning the views shared by you and your pals. Not anything that is an actual consensus.
Regardless, science is NOT determined by consensus.
The SCIENCE on the lack of efficiacy of Masks was KNOWN before covid.
Much about Covid is simple MATH – it is not matters of opinion. We KNOW the transmission rate – R0 of Covid, We KNOW the actual laboratory tested effectiveness of various measures. We KNOW they will be less effective in the real world WE can calculate to a very high degree of accuracy not only their individual effectiveness, but there combined effectiveness, and their effectiveness over time. We can calculate those things to a fairly small margin of error.
It was mathematically possible for ANYONE with the available data to KNOW that this was not going to work.
The phrase that Fauxi and others used – “flattening the curve” is an admission they understood the math. The effect of measures that alone or in combination do not reduce the transmission rate – R0 significantly below 1.0 is that there are less new infections per day but the disease remains arround longer, and that in the end the same – or possibly even a greater number of people are infected. Flattening the curve is to buy time, or to avoid more people dying because the healthcare system is overwhelmed such that people who would have lived with treatment are dying.
You buy time to get a vaccine that works. The mRNA vaccines were an incredible effort. But they are not sufficiently effective to work.
Futher the healthcare system was never overloaded, and even if it had been there was never an effective treatment so it did not matter.
“In MAGA world there always has to be a face of the enemy onto which to project the fury of Trump and the disciples”
Bzzt Wrong. Most of the country wants peace and quiet. To the extent that Biden might have won in 2020, it would be because he promissed peace and quiet.
He and or Harris were doomed to lose in 2024 – because people KNEW that promise was a lie. Electing Trump might not get peace and quiet, but it will get competence.
With Biden or Harris we get neither.
The country wants those of you on the left to QUIT F#$King things up.
We want fire hydrants that work – not tranny story hour for toddlers.
We want a president who says “DONT” to Russia – and they DONT invade their neighbors.
Read Agenda 47 – Trump’s platform.. It is abotu Restoring order. restoring peace. Returning to what worked.
One of Harris’s campaign slogans was “We won;t go back”.
But that is what people voted for – to go back to things that worked – or atleast worked better.
The US is not a xenophobic country. We are a nation of immigrants. We want immigration.
What we do NOT want is the chaotic disasters that the left foist on us.
I just watched “Green Border” which was about the messy immigration from the mideast into the EU, and the efforts of those on the left to help immigrants and others to thwart them.
Towards the end the film noted that in 2022 Poland – which fought bitterly the immigration of mideastern immigrants, allowed over 2M ukrainians escaping the Russian invasion into the country.
Purportedly this was proof of Polish racism.
Missing is context, the UK, Germany, France, Sweden – the EU as a whole, are having a masive propblem with mideastern immigration – much worse than the US problem.
This immigration is massively disruptive. On one hand the entire EU has a massive demographic problem – it needs millions of workers that do not exist because its demographic pyramid is inverted. Because birth rates are below 1.5 per women. On the other millions of immigrants from the mideast are doubling crime rates and massively increasing the rats of rape and other violent crime.
The hopefully temporary migration of millions of Ukrainians did NOT disrupt poland or the EU. It did not cause crime to rise, it did not threaten the culture religion and laws of poland or the EU.
The US has had mass immigration in the past. That was accompanied by some crime and disruption.
Regardless the past expectation was that you come to america to BE AMERICAN, not to CHANGE AMERICA.
And that is what MAGA is fighting. The efforts of the left to as Pres. Obama said “Fundimentally transform america”.
That is what is being fought.
If you want to transform the country – do so by persuading all of us to freely change, not by imposing your will on us all by force.
Again read Agenda 47. Every portion of it that calls you out as the enemy, does so because YOU are seeking to FORCIBLY transform the country,
and MAGA is going to FORCIBLY put things back and punish those who imposed their will on the country by FORCE.
“He let Trump get away with multiple counts of contempt of court, violations of gag orders, and he got special treatment—- no jail time, no fines, not even community service. Judge Merchan would not, however, let the jury verdict be dismissed— and that is apparently his crime here.”
Contempt of court is not holding the court in contempt. Trump did not commit actual contempt of court.
The gag order was and remains unconstitutional, and is a big part of why not only trump but the liberty loving people of this country hold Merchan and the NYS legal system in contempt. Trump got special treatment – no one else would be prosecuted for this farce.
“Some of the MAGAs on this blog have advocated for Judge Merchan to be disbarred and jailed. ”
Correct, violating the civil rights of another under color of law is a crime.
It is as an example what the police officers who beat Rodney King were charged with.
There are no doubt atleast some people who beleived that the police were free to beat King.
The fact that the officers were part of government does not make them immune from acting criminally.
I would further note that Merchan remaining on the case and pushing it to a verdict against Trump while his daughter was fund raising against Trump and an owner and president of a company that made over 7M dollars doing so is public corruption – also a crime.
“The tripe you publish, Turley, feeds this insanity. Judges enjoy immunity for their decisions—-something you do know, but you stir the pot anyway and that is wrong.”
That immunity is not absolute
“In 2008, judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella were convicted of accepting money in return for imposing harsh adjudications on juveniles to increase occupancy at a private prison operated by PA Child Care.”
“No one else could get away with 34 felony convictions and contempt of court and ignoring court orders and face no penalty.”
No one else would ever be charged for this farce. And please do not claim otherwise. If that WERE actually true that would only make NYS and bragg and merchan that much worse.
Most ordinary people understand what an actual crime is – and this was not.
My guess is that this will not age well.
Gigi, your post proves how “lawfare” your head is and is a further evidence that you truly personally dislike or hate Trump and the entire Trump family…maybe because they are the true American family who worked hard and got the right education with their parents’ proper guidance and became successful not like one infamous American family that made their livelihood by all kinds of “wheeling and dealing” and corrupt activities…Maybe you should cleanse your head.
And where did you graduate from Law School…? Just because you despise someone vehemently does not make your statements true.
The American Justice system died when George W. Bush subverted the U.S. Constitution with torture, Cointelpro tactics, blacklisting, false imprisonment and longterm suspension of corpus! All illegal acts under the U.S. Constitution.
Bush even violated Ronald Reagan’s torture treaty – used against American citizens on U.S. soil.
Why is anyone surprised?
Dick Cheney snarled on Meet the Press some years later he would do it all again (‘enhanced interrogation techniques’).
Obama’s first act as president in 2008 was to ‘close Guantanamo Bay’ where many who were tortured languished uncharged, by any criminal justice system, of any crime.
The Empire is over. We had a good run in the 20th century. But this is the 21st century, and not even the Trump Apostle can MAGA us out of this FUBAR unscathed. We’ve squandered our resistance for a pocketful of Biden mumbles and a self-absorbed carnival barker.
* “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” ~ Karl Rove (aka the ‘Turd Blossom’)
Yes, GW Bush gave us the patriot act, the TSA, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and worse than all …Liz Cheney. Even though, could you imagine Al Gore as President?
George W. Bush? Seriously? You didn’t notice? The American justice system died when “Crazy Abe” Lincoln, a fellow traveler of Karl Marx, unconstitutionally imposed martial law, suspended habeas corpus, and denied not-prohibited and fully constitutional secession to particular states. Lincoln was a one-man slaughterhouse with reference to the Constitution and American constitutional freedom; he was destructive to the degree that the socialists-cum-communists were able to easily takeover upon his unfortunate assassination, when he left town not enforcing existing immigration law and ensconcing an intuitively adverse and inimical 4-million-man foreign army on U.S. soil. America and its justice system have been all downhill to communism ever since. Take a look around you at the ubiquitous, pervasive, and multitudinous principles of the Manifesto.
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“The clause in the Constitution which authorizes the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus is in the ninth section of the first article. This article is devoted to the Legislative Department of the United States, and has not the slightest reference to the Executive Department.”
“I can see no ground whatever for supposing that the President in any emergency or in any state of things can authorize the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, or arrest a citizen except in aid of the judicial power.”
“I have exercised all the power which the Constitution and laws confer on me, but that power has been resisted by a force too strong for me to overcome.”
– Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, May 28, 1861
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“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.”
– Abraham Lincoln, from his first speech as an Illinois state legislator, 1837
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“Everyone now is more or less a Socialist.”
– Charles Dana, managing editor of the New York Tribune, and Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war, 1848
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“The goal of Socialism is Communism.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
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“The workingmen of Europe…consider…that it fell to…Abraham Lincoln…to lead his country through…the reconstruction of a social world.”
– Karl Marx Letter to Abraham Lincoln, 1865
I think the justice system suffered several heart attacks and strokes, then went into a coma, where it has been on life support for a while, showing an occasional spurt of brain activity, and then back to a flat line. One stroke was when SCOTUS took the death penalty off the table for many offenses. Another major stroke when Roe V. Wade was decided, and Americans no longer had to grow up. What may happen in the future, is that the Justice System coughs a few times, and comes to life, only to find the hospital empty of people, and no one to pull the tube out of its mouth and help it out of bed.
Kafka must have been clairvoyant when he wrote “The Trial”, invisible Law and an untouchable Court.
May God help us All!
* God? You dare mention God in this lawless place where even the “good” is lawless? You’re SOL
(posted under wrong article)
Collateral: yesterday, regarding Merchan’s case, I commented on attorney-client privilege and how Cohen may have gone beyond the scope of any at-issue exceptions thereto.
Trump’s attorneys had apparently considered a Kaplan approach (https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-bankman-fried-42) ,(wherein a defendant might avoid waiving A-C privilege and an asserted advice-of-counsel defense– by instead showing an awareness of counsel’s involvement in the charged conduct through other third-party witnesses); leading, in this case, to show Trump’s “good faith and lack of intent.”
Apparently, his counsel later dropped that alternative and simply waived privilege. That resolves all for me. End of discussion!
Bad business. Trump should have had an ironclad NDA with this ‘fixer’ from the get-go… and, if anything, Trump’s attorneys should have concentrated on Cohen’s fundamental fiduciary responsibilities to his client, apart from, in addition to, A-C privilege.
*as I understand it, Trump was charged, and ‘convicted’, of falsifying ‘business records’ (lol) that the ‘fixer’ provided?
The fixer had to pay his HELOC. why? Unkn
“As Judge Kaplan recently stated, ‘evidence concerning the presence, involvement and even advice of lawyers in relevant events is viewed bestas evidence probative of the defendant’s intent to defraud or lack thereof.’ United States v.
Bankman-Fried, 2023 WL 6392718, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 1, 2023); see also United States v. Scully,
877 F.3d 464, 476 (2d Cir. 2017) (‘[T]he claimed advice of counsel is evidence that, if believed,
can raise a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors about whether the government has proved
the required element of the offense that the defendant had an ‘unlawful intent.’). President Trump
intends to elicit these facts from witnesses, including former AMI executives and Michael Cohen,
whom we expect will testify about President Trump’s awareness of counsel’s involvement in the
charged conduct.
“This is not a formal advice-of-counsel defense….Accordingly, there is no
privilege waiver requiring production of communications protected by the attorney-client
privilege, ”
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24478394/trump-notice-re-advice-of-counsel-defense.pdf
That was my impression also, that Merchan’s statement nothing more than an attempt to make the case for his own conduct, his final “God speed,” nothing more than an attempt to obfuscate and conceal that self-defense. He himself admits this case was extraordinary, as in, never-before-seen in the annals of American jurisprudence. I also agree that the verdict on his own conduct will be long lasting, as much as a century? And no New Yorker will ever again be trustful of the our legal system.
“There are no extraordinary men…just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.”
– Admiral William Bull Frederick Halsey Jr.
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“Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.”
– Hippocrates
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The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court today refused to correct the abject extirpation of law by “lawfare.”
The Supreme Court refused its opportunity to amend a massive chasm in the American system of justice and governance—the corruption and anarchy of antithetical, covetous, and power-hungry communists, juxtaposed with the desire for autonomy, sovereignty, and liberty of once-free constitutional Americans.
It was known and expected that the executive and legislative branches would “overreach,” and it was designed that the judicial branch would remedy those aberrations and place America squarely back on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The entire communist American welfare state is antithetical and unconstitutional and must have been struck down from the outset.
The maximal freedom concept of the American Founders will soon be gone with the wind, never to return.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
* he makes a point ladies and gentlemen…
Roberts, however, is everything that Merchan is not. You can disagree with him, but he has repeatedly ruled against his own preferred outcomes in cases, including rulings against President Trump and his campaign and Administration.
“Disagree with him”????? This is another example of Professor Turley hoping to put lipstick on a pig he admires and the audience finds ugly, to justify it and make it beautiful. Like his column claiming his other friend, columnist George Will of the Never Trumpers, is a sober thoughtful writer, never given to virulent writing of vicious columns about Trump – above Turley’s Age Of Rage! Like his praise and excuses for his fellow Democrat lawyer and brother member of the Washington DC Bar, Attorney General Merrick Garland. Turley keeps putting lipstick on all those ugly pigs… but I digress
I would have found a column devoted to Roberts and what he allowed SCOTUS to do by enabling this to continue to be far more interesting.
As a reminder, it was Roberts who gave Obama and Democrats what they could not get through legislation, with the convoluted decision that Obamacare as passed was Constitutional.
And then Roberts following up on that by again finding that it was perfectly constitutional for Obama to amend Obamacare legislation with his phone and pen from his office. Rather than Roberts requiring that the legislative branch is where amendments to Obamacare had to be made.
Has Professor Turley as a constitutional scholar forgotten all those previous infamous Roberts moments concerning critical constitutional issues?
And now Roberts, with the assistance of Comey-Barrett, by denying this pause in sentencing has pronounced this lawfare by a local prosecutor to be constitutional – no problem with “letting the process run out”.
Meaning that there’s nothing constitutionally wrong concerning the Supremacy Clause with the local indictments and trial based on the allegation of a federal crime that was NOT prosecuted nor even fined by the FEC and not prosecuted by the federal Southern District Of New York prosecutors. Both of which said Trump did NOT commit a federal FEC violation as far as they were concerned when their fellow Democrats went running to them asking for prosecution of Trump for an FEC crime.
Roberts saw none of that with this ruling. For Roberts, the Supremacy Clause does not apply when local New York Soros’ prosecutor Bragg delivers on his campaign promise to “get Trump” in a state prosecution, by weaving a prosecution dependent on he and Merchan prosecuting Trump for an alleged federal FEC crime that neither the FEC nor local federal prosecutors would agree was indeed committed.
A few years ago, when Democrats began throwing the southern border open to the Illegal Aliens they invited, border state governors decided to enforce federal immigration law when the Democrat president refused to enforce that federal law. The Democrat president leaving the border open and immigration law unenforced rushed to the courts pleading the Supremacy Clause.
Courts swiftly said that a state governor’s local prosecutors COULD NOT enforce immigration laws when the federal government chose not to do that.
James/Merchan/Bragg are clearly different than that in the eyes of Roberts and Comey-Barrett.
Also for Roberts, the fact that Merchan was about to sentence after a trial that included testimony that was clearly prohibited after the presidential immunities SCOTUS decision was no problem at all. Let the process of sentencing proceed and hope it dies long before we’re forced to do the unpopular overturning of the trial.
No requirement to force a re-trial WITHOUT those prohibited witnesses and testimony. Not even a delay in sentencing to allow appeals to proceed outside of the protective New York Democrat Borg.
Merchan happily pissed in the face of Roberts and Comey-Barrett and the specific presidential immunities they identified in their SCOTUS decision months earlier. And Roberts and Comey-Barrett were just happy with Merchan doing that.
I wonder if Professor Turley sees anything like that aspect of this decision by Roberts and Comey-Barrett to ignore Bragg and Merchan ignoring both the SCOTUS ruling as well as the Supremacy Clause?
Old Airborne Dog
Further to the question of the effects of this decision made possible by Roberts and Comey-Barrett:
The fair question is, why did they choose to allow Merchan to ignore their earlier SCOTUS ruling as well as court precedent concerning local prosecutors enforcing uncharged federal crimes in violation of the Supremacy Clause?
Fear of more raging Democrat mobs in front of their houses every night again, as happened with the Dobbs decision? Knowing that AG Garland would allow hours of those felonies to go uninterrupted by police, without even so much as an arrest?
Or just preferring not to be the focus of weeks of mainstream media vitriol by the mainstream media, when all that Hollywood John Roberts wants to do is peacefully enjoy himself on the Washington DC cocktails and canapes social circuit?
The second order effect of this craven decision is that with Roberts and Comey-Barrett legalizing this local Manhatten process that violates previous precedent, they have signaled that SCOTUS has thrown the door open for local prosecutors across the USA to bring similar prosecutions of politicians of the opposing party, based on a claim they are enforcing a federal law that was violated.
I doubt there’s a single Democrat politician who is the slightest bit worried that a local Republican prosecutor will do a Merchan/Bragg in a state like Wyoming or Florida to weave together a similar tale of a federal crime committed where Biden, Garland, or a Bragg or Fani Willis would suddenly find themselves standing trial in a court in those states while Roberts and SCOTUS sat there silently, other than a brief ruling “No, let that local process play out”.
I wonder if Professor Turley sees anything like that aspect of this decision by Roberts and Comey-Barrett to ignore Bragg and Merchan ignoring both the SCOTUS ruling as well as the Supremacy Clause?
A SCOTUS decision that Roberts and Comey-Barrett helped the three activist Marxist justices both legitimize and encourage more political police state fascism by local prosecutors.
It’s highly unlikely that any local Republican prosecutor and judge will do a Bragg/Merchan, if only because they don’t believe they can elected by campaigning to do that, much less be allowed by the courts to violate the Supremacy Clause as was done here. But there’s no shortage of Democrat lawyers who are elected local prosecutors who will continue doing this. Willis and Bragg are not outliers.
Any comments on that, Professor Turley?
Old Airborne Dog
Merchan didn’t ignore their ruling. He did exactly what they said courts should do. The Supreme Court left it up to lower courts to determine what is and isn’t official conduct.
“Merchan didn’t ignore their ruling.”
That’s another lie. But then, that’s George.
What would happen if actual American-Americans suddenly awoke and discovered that Colombian cartel thugs, their treasonous domestic allies, et al. have conquered and subjugated America, and that they run America?
Oh, my!
They would also discover that it’s too late, right?
David Benscum and Dennis SmackinTire are depraved, deranged, Dunceocrat dupes and dopes. However, they could be the same creature.
Jonathan Turley is foaming @ the mouth again as Trump’s trial in Manhattan was conducted according to law and precedent in all regards.
Jonathan Turley is foaming @ the mouth again as Trump’s trial in Manhattan was conducted according to law and precedent in all regards.
David B. Benson is in another Midol Moment, blindly and desperately posting the hope that the central pillar supporting Soviet Democrat police state fascism is still holding.
Please Believe Us, Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes™
Despite all the time and money they wasted attempting to gerrymander a disabling picture of President Trump it failed miserably due to the fact that no one is listening to it, let alone believing in it.
The news media if one wants to call it that, along with the Marxist-Socialist leftists pretending to be a loyal opposition party of Democrats, have completely destroyed their own credibility to the point where nothing they say or do captures the attention, sways the opinion, or convinces anyone of anything. At best they have become the peanut gallery to be politely shown the door when their wailing becomes too annoying.
The proof! 312 to 226.
Diogenes and Whimsical Mama, I say that NYC and Philly be given to New Jersey. Then NY and PA turn red. As the saying goes, two out of three ain’t bad.
We don’t want them here. Here in southern NJ, we are conservatives fighting for our rights in our own state. We are making progress. Send them to Mexico. Payback…and all that.
High praise and recognition for Prof. Turley’s continued courage!
That’s not courage. That’s just him being a sycophant.
Yeah, Yeah we know you left wing nuts think Turley is jockeying for AG
Oops Bondi already has the job
While Turley is slowly getting red pilled it is not by Trump or Fox, it is by the failures of the left and the incredibly bad values of the left.
Turley is being disingenuous, as he often is. Instead of addressing the details of Trump’s arguments and claims, he chooses the easier route: accusing the judge of bias without providing any evidence or reasoning, relying solely on insinuation and assumption.
Bondi will act as Trump’s loyal supporter at the DOJ. Anything less would earn her Trump’s disapproval for not being loyal or for failing to align with his perspective on what is fair and legal.
Turley is becoming a more polished version of Mike Lindell or a cleaner version of Rudy Giuliani.
George believes he has some shred of credibility to claim he knows that Pam Bondi will become the equivalent of Eric Holder proudly bragging he is Obama’s Attorney General wing man.
Bondi will act as Trump’s loyal supporter at the DOJ.
George also claims he cannot tell us who has actually been the president while Biden sat in the White Office as one of the Oval Office house plants, losing repeated battles with teleprompters.
George is as pathetic and inept as Biden when it comes to lying his police state fascist Democrat ass off.
Lie harder George…
Old Airborne Dog
* you now see it wasn’t racism at all. It was lawlessness and destruction.
Lesson learned.
Can you expound on the left’s values? Your argument regarding the the values cannot include any references to God.
That’s a lie. And that’s George being George.
Sol Wachtler, a former New York state chief judge, is known for saying that a prosecutor could convince a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich”. This case is of that kind.
Yes. We need to return the Grand Jury process to the way it worked in the early days of the republic — when individual Jurors could challenge the prosecutor’s theory of the case and poke holes in the evidence. The elites (D.A.s, U.S. Atty.s, Judges) have done everything possible to strip Grand Jurors of common-sense, independence, critical thinking, and power. It has become a rubber stamp. That needs to change.
That doesn’t make it wrong. If you have a good defense attorney who can effectively argue against that theoretically silly statement.
A good defense lawyer can get a murderer off scot free too. Right?
The quality of the defense attorney is completely irrelevant if the court does not follow the law.
Trump has excellent attorneys – despite idiotic claims to the contrary of the left.
They will with certainty prevail on appeal.
But what is most important is there must be consequences.
This is not about Trump.
This type of lawless nonsense must come to an end.
For those claiming that this lawfare is not specially targeting Trump.
That would be WORSE.
Our courts must not work this way.
Prosecutors must be thrwarted in making up crimes and Judges are supposed to be the impediment to that not the advocates for it.
JohnB: Hello, today I found your comment to me and addressed it, re: scope of attorney-client privilege and exceptions thereto. Please read it and thanks for your comment.
@John Say
I lost count on the number of reversible opinions that Merchan made.
Trump’s lawyers were very good. They out performed Bragg where Merchan had to put his fist on the scale multiple times.
It didn’t go unnoticed.
If it were one thing… the MSM could turn a blind eye. But with so much wrong… everyone saw this trial for what it was.
Now Bragg and Merchan are trying to do damage control.
That too won’t work.
Biden will have to give them pardons because as Greg Jarrett points out… they broke the law.
-G
A Biden pardon will not prevent every one of these *actual* criminals and power abusers from a Grand Jury investigation.
What were those reversible opinions? Just saying they were without elaborating precisely why they are is the same game of making claims without backing it up. Show us how and why the opinons are reversible using NY law?
What were those reversible opinions?
George is pleading ignorance by denying he’s ignorant. Professor Turley wrote multiple columns about many of those reversible errors throughout the trial. And each time George swiftly pronounced that Professor Turley was wrong and he, George, was right.
Now George plays ignorance of those columns on reversible errors, hoping nobody remembers that he invested much of his limited intelligence in declaring that they weren’t.
When George puts that thing called his brain in a matchbox beside his cot at night, it rattles around in there like a BB in railway box car.
Old Airborne Dog
Sadly, they won’t need pardons because they’re no more at risk of prosecution under Trump this time than “Lock Her Up” Clinton was of being jailed in Trump’s first term.
There SHOULD be criminal accountability for at least deprivation of civil rights under color of law. Not just Trump, but many others who were similarly subjected to police state fascism who had no relationship to Trump – they were just obstacles to the Democrat Cultural Revolution.
But there won’t be, for numerous reasons.
Old Airborne Dog
“ Trump has excellent attorneys – despite idiotic claims to the contrary of the left.”
Again, blame it on the courts whenever things don’t go your way. Trump has awful attorneys. Even you can’t defend their idiotic arguments without using conjencture, assumption or insinuation. How about real facts using the law? You say the law was not followed but you offer zero examples of how it was not.
NY law has it’s quirks, and definitions of what constitutes fraud, a crime, or falsification of business documents. Each state has it’s own interpretations of what THEIR laws say. You resort to conflating federal law with state law so you can square your flawed argument as correct. That’s not how it works.
What you call “lawfare” is simply the normal process of our judicial system. A system that is deliberately adverserial. That is why prosecutors have the unenviable job proving the crime in any way possible within the bounds of the law. Is it fair, no. That’s why we have defense attorneys and judges who are impartial. Blaming the judge or the court system because the case or ruling didn’t go your way is not proof that it is corrupt or wrong. If you disagree use the law to prove your argument. But you never do and neither does Turley. It’s easier to claim allegations as evidence than to produce real evidence.
Prosecutors can do everything they can to prove the accusations and crimes the charge are true. They have a lot of power and that has always been the case because our system of justice is adverserial. You want fairness, you better have a really, really good lawyer. Trump is a billionaire who cannot get the very best because real defense lawyers know they can’t win with the BS arguments he makes. Relying on incessant harrassment and bullying in lieu of acutal evidence is not an effecfive defense. NY judges see thru Trump’s BS and call him out accordingly. Turley won’t even touch Trump’s arguments and engage in a full throated defense. He will just engage in raising indignation and rage agaisnt the judges and courts because it gives him the freedom to avoid real analysis of Trump’s claims. He’s a sycophant who sells his legal opinion to make poor excuses.
George,
A good defense attorney can do nothing if the judge is part of the prosecution team.
Old Fish, a good defense attorney doesn’t offer motions filled with rants about election interference and claims that have no basis in fact or law.
Merchan was fair. He gave Trump all the delays he wanted to prove his argumentrs and Trump still failed to make a convincing argument. That’s the problem. It’s not the judge. It’s Trump’s failure to show evidence his claims have merit. That’s why Turley never mentions Trumps arguments in detail. They were as stupid as they sound and Turley didn’t want to legitimize that by discussing in detail Trumps stupid claims. Instead he chose to accuse the judge of being in “error” because it’s what Trump said and vaguely insinuate and opine the “errors” by citing federal law instead of NY law. Turley is no expert on NY law. But he sure is an expert at making assumptions seem like legal precedent, but not facts.
Don’cha just love it when George and Gigi, with anonymous protections and no credentials to speak of, spend their days attempting to discredit the good professor? What, now Georgie is an expert on NY law?
* it’s hoped that DJT excellent sic attorneys filed timely objections throughout these proceedings, eh?
Keeping with the free speech theme of this blog, we had a very important, historic SCOTUS hearing yesterday. At issue is national security law passed by Congress addressing TikTok and its Chinese owner ByteDance vs. TikTok’s lawyer implied that free-speech takes precedence over national security imperatives — a thinly veiled assertion of corporate self-interest over national interest.
The case also involves child protection from foreign-enemy infowarfare directed at them vs. parental rights to limit what their children are exposed to.
This case is highly consequential — it tests the outer limits of free speech in the borderless internet environment the United States built back in the 1990s. It tests parental rights to shield children from professionally-crafted infowarfare campaigns intending to weaken America in coming decades by weakening patriotism during a child’s formative years — a form of mind-control projected from outside the U.S by a clever, determined enemy.
Having listened to the hearing, it was alarming how naive the 9 black-robed ones are to the threat, and how indifferent are they to their responsibilities for national security strategy.
How about a piece from JT with his take on the issues in this case? So far, he has only acknowledged exceptions to free speech based on defamation and making personally-directed threats of harm. He hasn’t yet spoken to the issue of propagandizing children against parents’ objections, nor national security imperatives that limit foreign infowarfare reach into the US domestic infospace. Is JT going to evade these gathering free speech legal issues?
Perhaps the problem is that the justices have ignored the threat of information-gathering and sureptitious propaganda from unfettered international entities – not all of which are friendly. Perhaps only those constant observers of the underbelly of TikTok like platforms can sense the true danger. We aren’t just talking about Gutenberg’s printing press but an engine that operates at the speed of light with many options of sabotage. I agree that the SCOTUS got this wrong.
I think that we are currently living thru the nightmare of our enemies having gained control of our film and educational institutions. I think the Russian Commies started infiltrating back in the 1940s and maybe even earlier, and when the Cold War ended, the programs had become “self-aware”, and could not be turned off.
This is an interesting article on the Hollywood black listing –
https://jacobin.com/2023/05/hollywood-blacklist-free-expression-communism-huac-screewriters
The final paragraph of that article –
“Fortunately, the media industries have changed so much that a new blacklist is unlikely. Still, one lesson everyone should have learned is the precariousness of the First and Fifth Amendments when the government announces a national security crisis. Another is the necessity of defending those who come under attack.”
Personally, I think national security is paramount BUT that rationale is highly subject to abuse. See Hillary Clinton and the whole Russia Russia Russia nonsense. Trump was a Russian agent, and Tulsi Gabbard, etc etc, and “The Russians hacked the DNC server” lie.
My ever-present reply to the heavy infiltration of our education/media industries after WWII (and, incidentally the WPA during FDR’s reign had a great deal to do with the death of our traditional American fine arts scene and its supplanting with European modern art) is that we should have listened to Tail Gunner Joe and realized that the extreme lengths that the left employed to shut him down only substantiated his claims.
It may be the the Justices felt that parents, not the Court, should determine what their children watch. I read that the titans of Silicon Valley send their children to a private school that doesn’t use computers. They understand that computer use at a young age has an adverse impact on brain development. Unfortunately, the masses of parents will buy their children electronic babysitters because they don’t want to be bothered with saying “no” and actually parenting responsibly. And many may simply be ignorant of the benefits of having a child research and write a report using an old, hard bound edition of the encyclopedia, rather than letting IA do the work for them.
I have a particular gripe with such programs as “Grammarly” ; firstly, because they allow illiterates to pass themselves off as educated, and secondly, because all of the algorithmic pap that will be produced will all sound similarly bland and as identifiable as CGI art is to anyone who has studied or delved into the creation of real art. It will dilute products of our education system (the students) into mere portals for artificial intelligence to obliterate real thoughts by most and supplant them with artificial attempts at human thought. I think Frank Herbert was on to something in his novel Dune as he created a world where humans had endured then overcome the control of computers and banished them from existence.
If parents are responsible for preventing adverse effects on their children, why can’t they use their plenary power through Article I to exert this responsibility more effectively? Parents cannot supervise their children every minute of the day. That’s where turning to controlling the internet environment (platforms) makes sense.
* life is much slower with paper than it is with electrons. Think I’ll go into the countryside without any computers or do-dads and see if time slows when the days were long…
Have communists of some form taken over our institutions – absolutely.
Did the USSR and CCP encourage that – certainly.
But ultimately the far left that took over our institutions was not controlled by anyone.
They are not part of some external threat to national security.
Their threat is entirely internal, and it is not for government to combat in anyway beyond assuring that just as No one precluded these left wing nuts from free speech over the past 7 decades, they are prohibited from barring anyone else’s free speech today.
We are all prone to treat government as the solution to our problems.
We should remember the most terifying words in the english language
I am from the government and I am here to help you
The answer is to protect real freedom. Even the freedom of bad and dangerous people to say bad and dangerous things.
As we see today – once you accept limitations on your freedom for allegedly good purposes, bad actors eventually gain control of those limitations.
* The real control over media was the conversion to digital giving any hack complete access to alter all information.
Watched Run Silent Run Deep with Clark Gable. It was altered. Had a black guy slapping Betty gables butt in it. As if…he’d be out the torpedo tube. dei
Listening to the way these lawyers and Justices converse, they are far removed from common sense, speaking of “an algorithm is speaking” (automata do not have legal rights of the type owned by citizens). They seem stuck in a pre-internet legal nostalgia. Granted, Congress is similarly stuck in the distant past. The TikTok divestiture law being challenged is actually a sign that Congress last year belatedly took up some internet responsibility, with a law supported by the majority of Americans.
This case is a test of whether majority rule given under Article I has any real power anymore, or whether elitist minorities (activists, corporations, oligarchs, media, political parties) have gained the upper hand in perpetuity.
SCOTUS has to decide if “the People” under Article I still can decide anything.
I think LA Mayor Bass calls it the URL.
She’s sharp… outbox the country as the fures were set on those she hates.
While I would encourage tiktok and other SM to provide tools for parents to excercise control of their childrens online use of their sites. The responsibility for childrens online activity rests with parents – not big brother, not schools, not with tiktok.
Without agreeing on specifics there is compelling evidence that Social Media has negatively impacted the mental health or preteens and teens – especially girls. That does not change the fact that responsibility rests with the parents.
I am still libertarian – if you want to inject Heroine that is your business. It is not that of government or others to force you to make good choices.
I would note this is a fight that the left and right have both lost to libertarians. While we are not going to legalize heroine or other drugs, there is pretty much zero doubt that our drug laws have been worse than useless, they are an enormous waste of money for no benefit.
With all due respect, Libertarian ideas are at the center of much of the rot in society today. The whole, “you do your thing, I’ll do mine” really doesn’t work at a macro level. It doesn’t work for the same reason that the Constitution doesn’t work for an immoral people.
Take what you said – “use heroin if you want, I don’t care.” Ok, so 10 people in a city of 100,000 use heroin. Things still work. Society rolls on. Then, 100 people start to use drugs. Some lose their jobs, because they are too effed up to work. Their drug usage draws drug dealers to the city. Crime starts to go up, a little. The dealers begin enticing other people into their product. The 100 people become 1,000 people using drugs. That’s still only 1% of the city, but more and more cars are getting broken into, so people can steal stuff, to sell for drug money. Then, women start selling themselves to buy drugs. More kids start using drugs to look cool, and some of them eff up their academic careers.
Sooo, the police begin locking up the people committing crimes. The users get thrown in jail, where they become badder people, and when they get out, they wrack even more havoc. Soon, the druggies become 5,000 people, and you start having an epidemic of homeless people, camping out in your streets. Now, the poorer areas of town, start to become places that people avoid, because of the crime, etc. I think you can see where this is going.
Because, rather we like it or not, people can’t just do what they want to do, or pretty soon, things go to hell. OTOH, you have places like Singapore, where people don’t get to do what they want to do –
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx251p55le8o
* HEAR HEAR!
* Hear hear is out of place ^ oops
* Adding the “warfare” is to hammer and hammer on about the mistakes the USA has made and delete its accomplishments utterly! THAT is a tactic of great note.
A defense is to pour money into media extolling the USA’s accomplishments while absolutely decimating the enemy with unabashed media on its failings.
* Hear are the limits of free speech found. Mental, psychological, verbal abuse is the limit. The left has used the tactic of abuser like a bad parent verbally abusing children with their faults or a verbally abusing spouse who just won’t let you forget. Over and over and over without a good word. Until your all like Pelosi bending her knee and bowing her head like a bad child.
The USA has made mistakes but its successes outshine anything in history.
I can say I hate you but I cannot harass you endlessly as the left has done to Trump even gagging him . I have no faith in your future with or without Trump but professor Turley, there are limits to free speech and they’re chargeable.
Those are the tactics of tik tok. Learning cut by cut that you’re worthless.
* good point ,anonymous, sign at the bottom of your comment.
M
Turley is going all out on smearing Judge Merchan. As usual he onlly tells half the story and in doing so he is deliberately enabling Trump’s BS arguments. Turley ingores the facts snd evidence against Trump. NY law has it’s quirks but that does not make it wrong. Until they are changed they are still the law. Turley’s animosity towards the NY court system stems from the fact that he really doesn’t understand it and he’s obligated to make some assumptions that “make sense” to his gullible MAGA readers so they can latch on to their fvck the lefties sentiments. Turley’s insult calling Judge Merchan “acting” judge is a big clue.
Trump will not win on appeal and it will be a long time before the Supreme Court even decides on hearing the case.
Merchan was always consistent on treating Trump like any other accused. Turley never mentions the fact that Merchan gave Trump plenty of opportunities to prove his case, granted the multiple delays he wanted, and even entertained some of his arguments and ultimately ruling against them upon weighting the evidence Trump presented. It was Trump’s failure to make a convicing defense of his actions that led him and the juiry to a guilty verdict.
Turley is paid to peddle excuses for Trump and why he failed to make a valid argument. Saying he did nothing wrong is not enough and Turley knows it. Turley never dives into the details of the so-called “errors” made by Merchen except to invoke insinuations and assumptions. Not real evidence or legal analysis.
Trump wants revenge for being treated like anyone else. A private cirtizen being charged under NY law for lying on his business records. In NY that is illegal. It’s a crime and others have gone to jail for doing that in NY. Turley is free to disagree, but he’s not free to assert that the NY court system is flawed or broken because Trump was “treated unfairly” because he broke the law and was held accountable in NY according to NY state law. It’s pretty simple Trump lied about the payments to the state of NY. Having sex with a porn star is not.
If Trump is so innocent why didn’t he take the stand and prove it once and for all? Because he knows he cannot make a convicing argument and will never testify under oatth. He would be caught lyhing.
nwrt
As a long time resident of NY State let me say that the legal organization that runs from the NYC cesspool up to the sh*t stain sliding up to Albany we, from the red part of the state KNOW how corrupt is ANYTHING coming from the dems. We aren’t expecting anything good ever coming out of this putrid stew and are placing our hopes on entities not infected with the woke disease holding our state hostage.
Turley “really doesn’t understand” NY law, the principles of due process, a defendant’s Constitutional protections, the history of criminal law.
So Turley, a Constitutional scholar with decades of legal experience, does not “really understand” any of those issues.
But I, a keyboard warrior who’s wrong about everything, do understand them.
Presumption be thy name.
Turley may be a constitutional scholar, but that doesn’t make him an expert in NY law. There is a reason why each state has it’s own state bar. Because each state has it’s own peculiar definitions of what is illegal and what is not.
NY legal analysts have been explaining why Trump’s charges are not erronous or wrong. Some here conflate federal law with NY law and claim that what Trump was charged with is unconsitutional or does not meet the federal definition of “fraud”.
Turley is enabling the rage his MAGA readers want to express because they don’t underrstand how the law works in NY. Because they don’t understand it is automaticallly evil and criminal because their savior Donald Trump is being held accountable for violating NY law.
Trump was given plenty of opportunities to defend himself and he failed.
George, do you live in NY State? If not, perhaps you should not opine on it based on propaganda in your noggin.
You’re as bad a liar as Biden, George. You come here every day to repeatedly prove that point to ensure nobody here forgets that.
Your singular purpose here every day is to smear Professor Turley
You don’t say anything of subtance. You excel at whinning and complaining about things others say because you don’t understand it or you just want to bad mouth others because it’s the easiest thing to do. It doesn’t require you to work at it.
Turley is fair game. He opens himself to criticism when he chooses to make statements and opinions. Calling him stupid and disingenious is a hazard of exercising free speech. Poor Turley.
Turley may be a constitutional scholar, but that doesn’t make him an expert in NY law.
George may claim to be an internet Rebel Confederate constitutional expert, but that doesn’t change the fact that at his core George is nothing but one more Democrat police state fascist liar.
A pathological serial liar, whose only purpose here is to smear Professor Turley – and Trump.
Old Airborne Dog
George comes here every single day to smear his host, Professor Turley. Not once has he ever agreed with him
@George: Turley is going all out on smearing Judge Merchan… Turley is paid to peddle excuses for Trump and why he failed to make a valid argument.
George is Gigi’s birthing person twin, the one who can manage to use paragraphs slightly better.
Who pays you to attempt to pose, flex, and posture that you’re always right and Professor Turley is always wrong, George?
Why do you waste your time strutting here, rather than putting your massive… intellect… to better use writing your own blog?
When do The Three Democrat Marxist Stooges get into your clown car and take your performative political slapstick comedy show on the road?
Never have so few like The Three Democrat Marxist Stooges been so awfully wrong so often.
Old Airborne Dog
(I’m trying to picture in my head, George, Dennis, and Gigi as Larry, Moe and Curly…..)
“Acting” Justice Juan Merchan [true his position is “Acting”] > go look up Wikipedia. You are trying to smear Turley. Fact, about 3200+ prosecutor lawyers within 50 states disagreed how Acting Justice Merchan treated Trump. Even Alan D > 100% disagreed with Merchan, too. Alan himself was a Democrat. Go Check his book “Get Trump”
My question to you George, have you been inside the courtroom > Trump’s case? if not, then you have no idea what’s going on the inside the courtroom. But take their (expert lawyers) words for it because they (Turkey, even Alan D. and many other lawyers) went inside the courtroom to see themselves and to be heard!
This is a definitely LAWFARE. (if you do not know what is a lawfare means, go look up the dictionary) It could happen to you or anyone what Trump has been through.
“ Fact, about 3200+ prosecutor lawyers within 50 states disagreed how Acting Justice Merchan treated Trump.”
Within 50 states, but not NY. Like I said each state has it’s own peculiar laws and definitions of what consitutes a crime. Nobody cares what a lawyer or prosecutor from Florida or California opines is wrong about NY law because it’s not the law in THEIR state.
You don’t have to be in court to understand what was going on. Plenty of publicly available transcripts and court documents are there for anyone to use. There are also plenty of lawyers and prosecutors from NY pointing out why the charges against Trump held. There is precedent in NY. Others have been charged AND jailed for the same offense of lying on businesss records. GASP! shocking. Of course Turley wouldn’t dare mention that particular fact because it would undermine his “age of rage” rant about how corrupt or wrong the NY court system is. He’s only saying that to satifsy the need to rage against the judge because their illiterate minds on how different state court systems work does not allow them to accept it. Especially when Trump whines and moans about how unfair things are because he got outed for lying on business records which is indeed illegal in NY.
Being inside the courtroom does not make you an expert nor does it make Turley an expert on NY law. Turley is a professor of tort law and a paid legal analyst for fox news to offer excuses for Trump’s “unfair treatment.” That’s all he is there for.
Not once has he dived into the details of the so-called errors judge Merchan made because he is NOT an expert on NY law. He infers from what he knows of federal law or assumes from his ‘experience’ as a former lawyer. It would be like me claiming to be an expert on footbal and how to run a team because I’ve watched football games live and on tv.
Turley is enabling Trump’s excuses because he is obligated to keep the Fox News narrative in line with Trump’s absurd claims.
Trump failed to make defend his position effectively in court. He had no real defense. That’s why he spent more time and energy badmouthing the court and hurling insults than supporting his argument with evidence and facts. Turley never mentions or points out how or why Trump’s arguments have legal merit. He never details them. He offers only vague insinuations and assumptions and allegations as a defense. For example, Turley completely ignored Trump’s stupid argument that he is immune from prosecution because he is president-elect. Turley wouldn’t dare touch that argument because he knows Trump is wrong and he won’t openly acccuse Trump of being wrong because it diminishes Trump’s crediblity and puts focus on the stupidity of Trump’s arguments.
The Supreme Court gave lower courts the power to define what is and isn’t offical conduct as president. Merchan pointed out exactly why Trump’s actions were not offical conduct.
Turley has not real defense of Trump’s arguments except to criticize the judge. Because it’s easier and avoids the hard part, explaining the legal details of why Trump’s stupid arguments failed to persuade the judge Merchan, the jury, the appeals court and 5 members of the Supreme court. So he claims all of New York’s courts are corrupt or are in on “getting Trump” because they couldn’t possibly all agree that Trump’s defense was insuficient and unconvincing. Turley never discusses every single one of Trump’s claims and arguments because even he knows how utterly stupid and legally useless they are. It would be very embarrassing for Turley to even try to defend Trump’s claims so he does what is easier, focus on the judge, jury, and the entire NY court system because…they are all democrats just what his MAGA readers want to hear and believe. That makes Turley a bona fide political hack and an embarrassment to his profession.
You’re as bad a liar as Biden, George. You come here every day to repeatedly prove that point to ensure nobody here forgets that.
Your singular purpose here every day is to smear Professor Turley
Turley us fair game. Is he your daddy or something? Are you so butthurt over the fact that Turley is not immune from criticism?
How about making a real argument instead of whining?
Dear George, speaking of fair game… are you here to pay back Hunter Biden for sharing his underage hookers with you? Have you got some young stuff on the side that you tell to go read your utterances on Professor Turley’s blog to prove your credentials as a Woke Warrior?
Or is your Marxist mangina in a permanent Midol Moment because all the lying and lawfare failed, and Trump will be president?
Say it George: “We failed. Our lying and lawfare failed. Trump instead of our DEI Hire, The Border Czar, will be the next president”
How about making a real argument instead of whining and lying, George?
Old Airborne Dog
BS
You TDS pretty bad…how is ANY JURY instructed that they do not have to have unanimity on the underlying charge that makes this case, which was NEVER presented by the prosecution? This case was a joke from the beginning and if you would open your eyes and take off those stupid liberal-colored glasses, you would see it too…but I don’t hold out much hope for that EVER happening…
Judge Merchan explained in exruciating detail why the jury didn’t have to agree unanimoussly on certain aspects of the case. NY law allows for it. That’s what Turley avoids mentioning. He bases the error of the instructions on is understanding of federal law. Notices he never once cited NY law saying judges cannot do that.
That’s a lie. But that’s George.
I learned long ago facts mean nothing to trump or his supporters.
1) trump is always correct
2) trump never changes his mind..
Hillary Clinton, a New York resident who ran her 2016 campaign out of Brooklyn, similarly lied on her business records, mislabeling funds spent to gin up the Steele Dossier as “Legal Services.” But, unlike the Trump case, the FEC even fined her for her deception, which she finally agreed to pay in 2022.
So why wasn’t private citizen Hillary Clinton treated like everyone else? Why are only Democrats above the law?
More stupid garbage from george.
George is an example of bad parenting.
Turley is going all out on smearing Judge Merchan.
George is a liar. A liar who comes here every single day to lie in order to smear his host, Professor Turley
Character, credibility and honesty have been chasing George his entire live but he has successfully eluded them.
George has never once agreed with ANY column written by his host, no matter what the subject of the post is. What are the chances, eh?
And George can’t peddle lies, excuses, and Bull Schiff often enough, long enough, and hard enough to gain even the slightest shred of credibility.
“Neither the defendant nor the public will ever know what the jury ultimately found in its verdict.”
So Trump is guilty of a crime(s) he knows not what.
I don’t think that even the tyrants in Russia, China, Cuba could get away with such corruption.
No, that is exactly how kangaroo courts work in Russia, etc. Vague laws such as “acting on behalf of a foreign adversary” are passed by the tyrant regime, giving their prosecutors arbitrary power to indict anyone they perceive as dissident.
You don’t need to exaggerate to make your point.
To correct the problems with the legal process in this case, you have to back away from the specific personalities in this case, put aside the partisan polemics, and just look at where the checks on prosecutorial overreach took place.
The Grand Jury is where this case should have stopped in its tracks. Serious reforms to the GJ process are needed, such as introducing an element of adversarial challenge to the D.A. version of the law and the evidence.
“Vague laws”
You missed my point. Then made my point.
Tyrannical regimes always present to the public a *veneer* of “justice” — by citing vague laws. In other words, they actually name those (vague) laws.
This case is worse because there’s not even a veneer of justice. To this day, no law, no “crime” was even named or cited.
“that is exactly how kangaroo courts work in Russia,” Russia, really? What a pile of dung.
How in the blessed world do you know anything about Soviet justice/courts?
Hypothetical Question: As a result of his conviction, Trump for the first time is supposed to submit his DNA to be entered into the system. He was supposed to do so during the E. Jean Carroll episode but fought it tooth and nail and eventually the trial went on without him doing so. If there is a hit linking him to another crime, say a rape from before he was president. What should happen with the evidence, should officials ignore it or make the information public. In some states the statute of limitations is as much as 30 years. What if it is within the statute of limitations? What if it isn’t? How much are you willing to ignore?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-dna-will-not-used-civil-trial-writer-accused-rape-judge-rules-rcna70807
enigmainblackcom says: January 11, 2025 at 10:47 AM Hypothetical Question:
Another hypothetical question: Will the intersectional black power racist and Marxist, enigmainblackcom, continue being one of Biden’s faithful Uncle Toms once the unindicted felon currently on work release probation in the Oval Office is unemployed?
Will enigmainblackcom finally be able to raise his pudgy fists in the air, broken Democrat shackles dangling from his wrists, and howl “FREEDOM!”
Or will it take a new Attorney General who replaces Garland swiftly using the evidence gathered from 40+ years of felonies to indict Biden to break Uncle Tom’s bonds to Biden Democrat slavery?
No more “Yes, massa'”, and genuflecting on supplicant knees towards Biden despite the fact he told enigmainblackcom he didn’t want jungle bunnies allowed in schools with his son Hunter. Telling enigmainblackcom that if didn’t vote for The Big Guy, then he couldn’t be black.
The ball and chain of Marxist intersectionality works just as well on black racists prostrating themselves before Biden as it does on Homos For Hamas pimping for terrorists. Terrorists who would happily air mail them one way from the rooftops to the ground below if they could get their hands on them.
That race baiting black nationalist blog of yours seems to be on life support these days, son.
Writer’s block?
Old Airborne Dog
“That race baiting black nationalist blog of yours seems to be on life support these days, son.
Writer’s block?”
I haven’t written on WordPress for years. You can find me on Medium and Substack if you like.
“In a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg expanded on his pro-MAGA shift. He complained that Biden administration officials would ‘curse’ and ‘scream’ at him in conversations about content moderation, though Techdirt reporter Mike Masnick found that the only instance of this happening was in an email from Biden official Rob Flaherty. In that email, Flaherty was referring to a bug on Instagram that prevented people from following Biden’s official account, which Meta apologized for and corrected.”
Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story. JD taught us that with his lies about immigrants eating pets.
It looks like JT is on the dame page.
It always amazes me when a prog harps against a few inconsequential asides by Trump and company but nary a sound about the gross incompetence by numerous elected/appointed officials and their promotion of DEI and other woke nonsense at the expense of budget cuts to police and fire departments or insane green agendas that are ruining our economy. Why is it that the left always turns a blind eye to their own greivous blunders at “fundamentally transforming”/destroying this nation.
Numerous studies have shown that more diverse companies are more productive.
Go ahead, wish for you all white days when the only black people around were the janitors. It is a fact that a multi cultural environment fosters more creativity and is more productive.
Once again, don’t let facts get in the way of your racist views.
You’re right. He should be put in the CODIS system under current law.
The conduct of the jury was even more scandalous . Thry deliberated for barely a single day before — with the eyes of the world on them — they returned their guilty verdicts. Consider the following that had to affect their thinking:
*They were deliberating on the first-ever conviction of a former president.
*They were aware this was a prosecution brought by Democrats seeking to jail for life the President’s Republican rival for re-election, an assault on democracy that supposedly only happens in banana republics.
*They were aware the case was essentially about labels on checks.,a mere misdemeanor .
*They were aware that Stormy had early on denied in writing she had had sex with Trump, impugning her credibility as a witness since she changed her story.
*They were aware that anything said by Michael Cohen had to be weighed against his being a convicted perjurer.
*They had been made aware that NDAs and paying for them were not illegal.
*They had bern made aware that a primary motivation for silencing Stormy was avoiding embarrassment with Melania and the rest of Trump’s family.
*They knew that politicians campaigning for office have a right to keep private contested sexual allegations and that there is no legal right for the world to know about their sex lives just because they are in a campaign.
*They were aware that Trump’s office wrote the checks to Cohen long after the election was over when Trump was in the White House and neither he nor his staff had a motivation to break any laws;
*They were aware that “legal fees” on a check made out to a lawyer appears to be a routine business practice, hardly sinister, and all the more uncontroversial when written in the year after the election.
* They were aware that Bragg’s indictment cited as Trump’s only crimes the post-election checks to Cohen and cited nothing done by Trump pre-election.
*They were aware that no tax crimes were being asserted and Trump’s was a private company which had no filing obligations to government agencies that could be creating a need for deception in this matter.
*The jury was certainly aware that they would have no answer if asked by a trusted loved one: “What crime did you convict Trump of committing?”
* Finally, they were aware that Biden considered Trump a modern Hitler, had his DoJ was pursuing Trump for insurrection and other crimes and yet the DoJ was curiously not prosecuting Trump for stealing the 2016 election with his lawyer’s Stormy shenanigans , which is what Bragg was claiming.
So convince me thot the jury did not in the little more than one day they were out reach a predetermined verdict based only on TDS.
The jury’s repulsive conduct proved Trump was right about this being nothing more than an unlawful witch hunt and helped re-elect him. They should nonetheless be held to account for their enabling a hoax and a scam.
*They were deliberating on the first-ever conviction of a former president.”
What does that have to do with the facts of the case?
Excellent summation!