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Justice Merchan gets even sleazier

By Monica Showalter

This is a classic kangaroo court that is a disgrace to the entire United States. That guy doesn't belong on any judicial bench, anywhere, ever.

New York State Justice Juan Merchan, who is presiding over New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg's trial of President Trump over a bookkeeping issue is getting sleazier now that Bragg's case is starting to fall apart, giving the Red Queen of the Alice In Wonderland story a run for her money.

At issue now are his instructions to the 12-person jury as it goes into deliberations, telling them that they don't need to agree about what the supposed 'underlying' crime of Donald Trump was that would make his hush money payment to porn "star" Stormy Daniels a felony, which is the legal basis for turning the bookkeeping issue into a 34-count felony. They just need to think that Trump was thinking about commiting a crime when he signed off on the check and what that crime was can be anyone's guess.

But no matter: Sentence first, verdict later.

And he started this out with a doozy of bad behavior, going all Eddie Haskell on the jury to begin, as if in a bid to butter them up to do things in his biased way. Normally, juries are praised after they render their verdicts by judges.

But Merchan is special.



BREAKING: Merchan buttering up the jurors now. Compliments Juror #3 specifically for his/her note-taking abilities. Saying they were all so very attentive throughout the entirety of this trial, and always showed up to court on time ready to listen. Gives credit to Juror #4 and…

— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) May 29, 2024



Merchan instructed them to come up with any underlying crime they liked, and to be helpful, offered them a three-course smorgasbord of possibilities, though I am sure he wouldn't be bothered if one of them got creative and came up with a different one of his own.



BREAKING: Merchan says if there was a conspiracy to affect the outcome of an election, jury can consider whether the defendant violated the following laws:

1. Federal Employees' Compensation Act (FECA) (federal election campaign law)
2. Falsification of Business Records
3. Tax…
— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) May 29, 2024



According to legal analyst Andy McCarthy, this is problematic:



"Outrageous. In a normal criminal case every statutory crime has what we call elements of the offense. Like in a bank robbery case you have to rob – it has to be a financial institution, you have to show intent," said former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. "Those are the things the jury has to agree on unanimously that they were proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Here what we’re doing is taking the element that actually makes this a felony, because remember falsification of records is normally a misdemeanor in New York. What makes it a felony is that you are concealing or committing another crime." "And here the judge is telling them they don’t have to agree about what the other crime is under circumstances where that not only is what makes this a felony, makes it a four-year potential prison penalty rather than a year or less, but it is also what gets us into the courtroom." "If this had been a misdemeanor, the time to bring this case would have lapsed in 2019. The only reason they are still able to bring this case is because it’s a felony allegedly and yet now the judge is saying you know, you don’t have to agree on what the felony is."

Trump, of course, was never told which of the underlying crimes he supposedly committed in the courtroom, so he was not able to defend himself from them, which according to some legal observers violates the equal protection clause.

His instructions actually were illegal, based on a recent Supreme Court case in an opinion written by left-leaning Justice Stephen Breyer that right-leaning Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas concurred with, regarding the critical need for unanimity regarding an underlying crime:

Judge Merchan’s jury instructions are a direct violation of Richardson v. US, a decision that LIBERAL Justice Breyer wrote and CONSERVATIVE justices like Scalia and Thomas agreed with.

Totally RIGGED trial! pic.twitter.com/Wx5gBOyNZp
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) May 29, 2024

Yet he seemed to know that he gave illegal instructions because he insisted that no written instructions be given to the jury. That way, his hands would be clean when the jury attempted to explain its logic and the judicial regulators started looking askance at his jughead grasp of the law. Who, me, give bad instructions? They must have heard me wrong.

Not surprisingly, the jury found this confusing. They sent a note asking him to repeat those instructions:



JUST IN: The jury has requested to rehear instructions, after Judge Merchan denied them a copy of the instructions. They’ve now been deliberating for over 4 hours.

Trumps attorney Blanche, was once a prosecutor, looked at Trump and gave him a smile as the second note was… pic.twitter.com/WDAiUmSuhJ
— 🇺🇸Travis🇺🇸 (@Travis_4_Trump) May 29, 2024



Even CNN's analyst found it skeevy:



An attorney on CNN can't believe how Judge Merchan handled jury instructions

"The jury must be overwhelmed. To have all of these instructions read to them without them getting a copy... the lawyers were not able to discuss instructions in their closings... which I find bizarre" pic.twitter.com/dsiH6YNosK
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) May 29, 2024



They've been at it for four hours now. I hope they ask him to repeat those instructions every hour on the hour and hoist him on his own petard.

There are other irregularities that inexorably make this case look like they are trying to rig it, such as, why'd this guy get picked at all to be the judge here:



Alina Habba: "Judge Merchan...has somehow randomly selected had Steve Bannon's case, had Allen Weisselberg's case...somehow, he randomly also gets Donald Trump. That's not the way the system works. You assign a case randomly...but in the new America, under the Biden Regime, we… pic.twitter.com/xINfbn88NT
— Julia 🇺🇸 (@Jules31415) May 22, 2024



Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York is on the job on this, too:



🚨🚨🚨 I just filed an official misconduct complaint with the New York State Unified Court System related to the “random” assignment of Acting Manhattan Justice Juan Merchan, a Biden donor whose daughter is fundraising millions off his unprecedented work, to criminal cases… pic.twitter.com/OsBjFc3qeI
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) May 28, 2024



All of this comes on top of Merchan's other bad acts, such as gag orders, which are normally issued to protect defendants, not prosecutors; a refusal to allow President Trump to use an 'advice of council' defense after he was badly advised by former fixer Michael Cohen; and suppression of President Trump's most important witnesses, such as former FEC chief Brian Smith from testifying that they never prosecuted for these kinds of claimed "crimes."



Judge Juan Merchan's unconstitutional gag order violates President Trump's First Amendment rights and is clearly illegal.

This morning, I sent a letter to the Attorney General requesting that he investigate Merchan's actions and consider prosecution for any criminal wrongdoing. pic.twitter.com/4SMbRc3Dgz
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) May 29, 2024



And this:



Someone counted the objections today with corrupt Merchan’s responses…
Prosecution 7 objections, 7 sustained
Defense 7 objections, 7 overruled

If theses jurors don’t see the bias in corrupt Merchan you know something is wrong.
— VM (@vemcmillen) May 29, 2024



Now he's sending the jury home, apparently after concluding that they aren't going to convict him the way he would like. That way, he can buy some time to figure out a new way of working them over:



🚨OUTRAGED MERCHAN JUST SENT THE JURY HOME AFTER GIVING THE IMPRESSION THEY WON'T CONVICT TRUMP.

Even though a unanimous decision is NOT NEEDED, Judge Merchan appeared outraged at jury notes given to him.

Team Trump was seen laughing and smiling.

Share to make this go viral! pic.twitter.com/9mnsLDUtPb
— Bo Loudon (@BoLoudon) May 29, 2024



It's disgusting. This is a classic kangaroo court that is a disgrace to the entire United States. That guy doesn't belong on any judicial bench, anywhere, ever.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/justice_merchan_gets_even_sleazier.html