Trump sentencing: a foolish conclusion for a foolish case

This Friday, However, Trump will have to put aside his work to attend, either in person or virtually, his sentencing in the Manhattan criminal trial in which he was convicted of falsifying business records. The case, brought by the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin BraggIt was widely seen as the weakest of the four criminal cases brought against Trump by elected Democratic prosecutors and the Biden administration. On the one hand, the charges, questionable as they were, were misdemeanors, beyond the statute of limitations, which Bragg inflated into felonies by alleging that Trump falsified records in a plot to steal the 2016 presidential election, thereby which Bragg had no authority. police.

Even anti-Trump commentators were baffled. for the case. “When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg first brought charges against Donald Trump in March 2023, the legal theory behind the indictment remained remarkably confusing,” said Quinta Jurecic, editor of the magazine. legal warfrom the liberal Brookings Institution, wrote last April. “Now, a year later, with the trial finally underway… the charges against Trump still have a strangely incipient quality.” Compounding Trump’s problems, the case was presided over by Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan, who, in 2020, violated New York’s judicial conduct rules to make a small donation to Biden’s campaign.

However, as the other cases against Trump fell by the wayside — the two federal prosecutions brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith were bogged down in litigation, and the Georgia case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was sunk by prosecutorial misconduct; The Bragg case continued on the right track. Anti-Trumpers supported the case because they saw it as the only chance to get Trump before the 2024 election.

At the end of May, Bragg, with the help of a key veteran of Biden’s Justice Department, convinced a jury in deepest Manhattan to convict Trump. There it was: how could voters support a convicted felon? Finally, the Democrats got what they wanted. Surely, conviction (for 34 felonies, no less) would sink Trump’s chances of being president.

Maybe not. Like everything else in Democrats’ multi-front legal campaign against Trump, the Manhattan verdict failed. The conviction on 34 counts had no effect on support for Trump because Trump voters, Republicans and also some independents, viewed the charges as legally dubious and politically motivated. On November 5, Trump was elected president for the second time.

The other cases disappeared, but Bragg’s 34-count conviction stood. No, Democrats couldn’t use it to prevent Trump’s election; that has already been done. But perhaps they could still hurt Trump with some kind of attention-grabbing ruling before he took office.

Bragg suggested that Merchan delay sentencing during Trump’s presidency and then sentencing him afterward. That way, every day for the next four years, the president of the United States would have a criminal sentence hanging over his head, along with the desire not to anger the prosecutor and judge who could put him in jail at the end of his sentence. life. term.

Trump, of course, moved for Merchan to dismiss the case entirely. Trump’s argument was very simple: the defendant has been elected president and it’s over. Merchan, the Biden donor, refused and instead set a sentencing date of January 10.

So what happens on Friday? in your decision In rejecting Trump’s argument, Merchan laid out some of his thoughts. He said it was not his “inclination” to sentence Trump to prison, although he has the authority to do so. The problem with the prison sentence, Merchan said, is that prosecutors “no longer see it as a viable recommendation.”

Instead, Merchán pronounced a sentence of “unconditional release.” seems to be the “most viable solution” to “guarantee the finality” of the case. That would mean the case would be over, Trump would be an officially convicted felon (good for those Democratic statements), and Trump could also begin appealing the verdict, as he has been eager to do.

The question now It’s whether Merchan will do what he says. “We only have Merchan’s word that he will impose (unconditional release) on Friday; he could always change his mind,” John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told me in an email exchange.

Yoo pointed out that Merchan could sentence Trump to community service, or to jail, or many things, but everything would be a political gesture. “The reason why this is completely political in nature is because Merchan knows that there would be no chance of an actual sentence being carried out,” Yoo said. “Once Trump is in office, a state cannot interfere with his ability to execute the duties and responsibilities of the office; this seems guaranteed by the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. And that would surely include freedom from state criminal punishments, which – in whatever form they take – would have to physically remove Trump from doing the job of president.”

Yoo continued: “I think Trump could order the Secret Service to block any efforts by New York authorities: who would they send, the NYPD? That he would have no authority outside of New York City to detain and force Trump to obey a sentence. Trump could also go to federal court to have Merchan’s decision overturned. And that’s why the non-prison sentence imposed on Merchan is a cynical ploy: He wants to label Trump a criminal, but not in any way that isn’t symbolic. “If it were real, Trump could use the powers of the federal government to overturn it.”

So, given the circumstances, It seems that Merchan has decided to sentence Trump to make a point. But what’s the point? Merchan made it clear in his recent decision. “Here, 12 jurors unanimously found the defendant guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records with intent to defraud,” Merchan wrote, “which included intent to commit or conceal a conspiracy to promote a presidential election by illegal means. “It was the premeditated and continuous deception on the part of the leader of the free world that constitutes the burden of this offense.”

That’s Merchan, Along with prosecutor Bragg, they described a local business records case as a case about the 2016 presidential election, which Merchan, as a county judge in upstate New York, had no authority to rule on. “His comments show that the purpose of the case was not to correct accounting fraud, but to punish Trump for his 2016 campaign,” Yoo said, “which is prohibited by federal law. “That’s the job of the federal government.”

In the end, It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Manhattan case, from beginning to end, from indictment to sentencing, has been a nonsense. Whatever Merchan does on Friday will be more of the same.