Above the Law

I love legal dramas. I think that the many years I have spent watching theatrical courtrooms from the television shows and films, such as Inherit the Wind, The Law and Mr. Jones, Perry Mason, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lincoln Lawyer and most recently, the Brian Cranston series on Netflix, Your Honor, have provided me with the equivalent of two years of law school.

Given the legal travails of former president, Donald Trump the mainstream media has been reading from a universal script, constantly proclaiming ad nauseum that no one is above the law. They have applied this sacred dictum to our former president, considering him Public Enemy #1 now that he is a convicted felon. This term has had millions in near ecstasy since it is the realization of several years of concentrated effort on their part. One would think the Democratic team had won the Super Bowl, so great has been their celebration.

This is in stark contrast to the suspicious business activities of the Biden family and the Justice Department’s handling of rogue son Hunter, who is the subject of several alleged crimes. This is not to mention the infamous laptop that he had carelessly left at a repair shop. The DOJ had absolutely little or no interest in it for well over a year. When the New York Post broke the story, they labeled it Russian fake news. It was only until Joe Biden had safely won the crown as our 46th president that they showed a scintilla of interest in it. Just recently, the FBI stated that it was a verifiable issue, after four years of denials, lies and indifference.

The New York City prosecutor, Allan Bragg ran for office, aided significantly by the Soros foundation, on his promise to get Trump. Over the course of the trial Donald Trump received the scurrilous treatment, not just from Bragg but his judge, Juan Merchan, who stretched the law much more than any member of the infamous Warren Court from 1953-69, ever dared.

Throughout the course of the trial, Judge Merchan, a native Columbian received favorable comments from the New York Justice Department and the mainstream media. His partisan actions during the trial were anything but praiseworthy or professional. His bias seemed as strong as the entire Manhattan bar. Allegedly known for his compassion, he showed Trump and his legal team no such thing. 

During the course of the trial, the judge refused the defense’s request for a change of venue despite the fact that 98% of Manhattan’s registered voters had chosen Biden in 2020. He also refused to recuse himself from the trial. In addition, Judge Merchan refused to allow for some important defense witnesses to take the stand, denied every objection his lawyers made and put a gag order on the former president that is surprisingly still in effect.

The news came out that not only had he donated to the Biden campaign but his daughter, Loren Merchan was a Democratic Party operative, who worked on the campaign for Vice-President Kamala Harris. From the start, it looked as if the deck had been stacked against Donald Trump.

George Washington University Law Professor, Jonathan Turley attended many of the court sessions. He opined that the law was written (by the judge) as the trial unfolded. He reasoned that had anyone other than Trump been in the docket, there never would have been a conviction or even a trial. He believes that this trial was the crystallization of the weaponizing of the justice department, introduced during the Obama administration.

Given The Obama-Biden administrations’ propensity to engage every federal agency they can think of in undermining their political enemies, the drafting of top DOJ investigator for a job on the Bragg team to get the former president raises a serious flag. Bragg brought Matthew Colangelo in December 2022 to jump-start the Trump investigation, which had been in the works since 2016. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, Jr. had started the Trump investigation. The former federal prosecutor picked up where Vance had left off.

An important member of the Obama administration, Colangelo had a history of taking on Trump and his family businesses. Colangelo had a top position in the DOJ, so his leaving it before Trump was even indicted smacks of a conspiracy to bring down the former president before he could run again in 2024. A conservative non-profit organization has filed a suit to release records under the Freedom of Information Act relating to the former Acting Associate Attorney General. To date the courts have ignored or thwarted all their efforts.

In February of this year, there were at least three meetings at the White House with Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis and Special council Jack Smith allegedly to discuss their respective Trump trials. It is not a stretch of the imagination to think that those in the Biden administration offered their advice. 

Also of interest is the fact that the DOJ looked into the federal charges before the Bragg trial and could find no evidence to indict Trump, so they dropped the issue. But not Bragg! He had the judge he wanted, who mysteriously skipped the random selection of judges for cases before the New York court, according to Fox News commentator, former Judge Jeanine Pirro.

The critics of the trial made many comments about the Jury Instructions. Fifty-five pages in length, the document seem to confuse and even baffle many of the jurors. The judge had to explain and read it aloud. Though the mainstream media denies their report that the instructions included an abuse of the idea of a unanimous verdict, the facts tell another story. Another salient point is that the alleged felonies in Trump’s convictions consisted of falsified business records. All of these were misdemeanors, not felonies.

In some sort of legal legerdemain, similar to Dr. Antonio Fauci’s notorious gain of function with regard to the Covid-19 virus or in this case gain of guilt, the jury had in their minds, only to think that Trump had been guilty of one of the three choices, offered to them from the bench, namely income tax evasion, election interference and falsification of records. Two of these are felonies and federal crimes, over which Judge Merchan has no authority. The mainstream media says that it was interference in state law. This makes no sense since Trump had no chance of winning New York in any election.

Directing a jury to come to a desired decision is a skill that I think happens more than we would like. The only analogy I can think of is when a catcher frames a pitch that is a ball but tricks the umpire into thinking it was a strike. In this case it is the umpire or the judge who does the framing. To describe how this may and can happen, fiction might be the best avenue. 

In the aforementioned TV show Your Honor, actor Brian Cranston’s character, Judge Michael Desiato vividly describes how he is using it in a murder trial, involving the sole surviving son, Carlo of New Orlean mafia leader, Jimmy Baxter. The plot centers around the unfortunate coincidence that the judge’s son, Adam accidentally hits and kills Baxter’s younger boy. By the time of the trial Baxter knows all the details and the only reason he has not killed both Desiatos is because he needs the judge to get Carlo off.

The judge plans to do this by manipulating the jury. After thwarting a defense motion, Baxter shows his angry face in court. In a closed discussion, Desiato expertly describes how he plans to manipulate the jury. By standing up to the defense I show them I am not frightened by anybody. I get them to look up to me…take their cues from me. And when it matters, I tell them what to think. They won’t know it is happening. But it will…and 12 of their peers will do exactly what I want them to do. I will tell them what the law is and how it will apply. 

Though I have no proof, I believe that the judge’s Jury Instructions were too long, convoluted and so difficult to understand for the average person that the jurors were putty in the judge’s hands. It was extremely easy because I surmise most of them wanted to enter a guilty verdict. 

The most egregious violation of Donald Trump’s legal rights were the Court’s ignoring his constitutional right of due process. David Rivkin, former counsel at the Justice Dept. and law professor Elizabeth Foley collaborated on an incisive essay for the Wall Street Journal, entitled Trump’s ‘Trial Violated Due Process.’  In plain English they spelled out the violations that appeared in the Journal on June 5, 2024.

In violation of due process, Trump never received notification of any of these alleged offenses. The judge created another problem when he hand-picked three federal laws. This is not to be confused with state law which the judge previously applied to this case. The judge also cited falsification of ‘other’ business records and the violation of tax laws. All of these felony charges lack specificity. Moreso, the prosecutor only alluded to a federal tax violation during the trial. Trump’s attorneys tried to call former Federal Election Commission Chairman, Brad Smith to challenge this but Judge Merchan denied the defense for no real reason.

To make matters even worse, Judge Merchan’s instructions to the jury further confused the issue. His instructions said, Although you must conclude unanimously that the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election…you need not be unanimous as to what that unlawful means were. Due process demands that felony convictions be unanimous rendering the judge’s instructions unconstitutional. 

What the judge told them about picking anyone of the three higher crimes was blatantly wrong. Merchan instructed the jury to pick one of them. I don’t care if you decide 4-4-4, I will consider that a unanimous verdict. This is a violation of Donald Trump’s constitutional rights, supported by the 6th and 14th amendments that require each charge to be unanimous among all 12 jurors in criminal cases. I have seen no reports on how the individual jurors voted on each count. Even the media, such as MSNBC, has tried to confuse the issue by dismissing any comments from the conservative press.

To elevate this charge to a felony, the state must prove his intent to commit another crime. Trump’s formal charges did not specify the other crime he allegedly intended to commit. Also, the prosecutors never mentioned the connection during the course of the trial. Onlookers could only guess what the charges really were, including the defendant and his attorneys.

Another of Judge Merchan’s unlawful means or the falsification of other business records. According to the judge’s logic, misdemeanor becomes a felony when one falsifies a business record while falsifying a business record. This is circular or what I would call tautology. More importantly, the prosecution never alleged or introduced any evidence that Trump falsified other business records.

The political significance of this trial is that Judge Merchan declared July 11th as the date for sentencing. This is just four days before the Republican National Convention to nominate Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for the presidency for the third straight time. This is no odd coincidence. Democrats are guilty of projecting their political sins onto Republicans. Most people recognize that this trial was a partisan attempt to interfere in the 2024 election by taking him out of the race. Election interference is only a crime when a Republican attempts it and Democrats are in effect Above the Law.

People believed in and even watched as the Democrats dragged it out for three years, eviscerating most of Trump’s first term. Personally, I do not believe that Trump lost the last election though the proof is elusive. Given their past record, it would have followed their script since 2015. Fusion hired former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Trump. Since there was none, they made it up. The Steele Dossier, published in 2017 and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post labeled it pure garbage. Unlike the Russian conspiracy theory, this one was a real conspiracy and showed the ineptitude of candidate Clinton to the world. But the Party of the Left never stopped with this. 

In truth it was the Clinton campaign that conspired to take Trump out, but Hillary was such an amateur, the plot quickly unfolded, and her dirty fingerprints were all over the alleged evidence. They have been conspiring to do this for an exceptionally long time. They called Trump’s 2016 election the result of a Russian conspiracy to put a friend of Putin’s in the White House. It was Hillary’s Fusion group that bought and paid for the phony Steele Dossier.

What has evolved since then has been the persecution of a political figure, unlike any ever experienced in our nation’s history. And the final result of this with the so-called lawfare has to dishonor our entire legal system, which has been based on Positivism since Oliver Wendell Holmes served in the Supreme Court. The term Your Honor now seems like a misnomer or an oxymoron.