If the five-woman, seven-man jury doesn't find Donald Trump guilty of the alleged bookkeeping mistakes, it will be a miracle. This is because the 55-page final jury instructions that attorneys saw only moments before the judge read them in court on Wednesday is a "directed verdict" to Trump's guilt. That's it. That's why an uncharacteristically somber Trump announced that even "Mother Teresa couldn't beat these charges." See his comments below.
The "fix is in," as one notable former U.S. attorney decreed. "This is most corrupt judicial proceeding in the history of the United States," former District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova told WMAL.
Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz agrees that the fix is in. "The judge essentially instructed the jury to convict Trump," he titled his video.
As I've said, jury instructions are key to understanding what the chances are of an acquittal or hung jury.
The most bizarre and worrisome thing about these instructions to the jury is that the judge gave jurors an a la carte menu of three choices — three crimes on which jurors may decide for themselves, individually, not unanimously what they think were Trump's motivations for making 34 bookkeeping notations. All Trump's complicity involves, and I'm not making this up, is if he may have been motivated to win the 2016 election, which means they can conclude he's guilty of a federal or state campaign law, or that he violated a tax law, for which there was no evidence offered.
Related: Trump Lawyer to Jury: You Can't Convict or Imprison a Man Based on the Words of a Convicted Liar
The only thing they must agree unanimously on are the 34 charged indictments. Prosecutors have hidden the ball on these predicate crime options since they were announced. But one of Alvin Bragg's theories was alluded to in his accompanying letter to the charges. And it's why, the Trump team tried to put on expert witness Brad Smith, who was the former head of the Federal Elections Commission. Smith was to explain why Trump's legal payments to Michael Cohen weren't campaign expenses and why he, as the chairman of the FEC, turned down the request to jack up Trump on charges for them.
In a gasp-inducing decision, Merchan said he would not allow Smith to do anything other than verify definitions of words without offering expert opinion on campaign law. The Trump team decided not to bother. It should have because it may have gotten some leading questions in there, and who knows what would have happened.
Merchan said he didn't want to "confuse" the jurors because he's the arbiter of the law. Merchan is not an expert on campaign law. The decision not to put on Smith and take their chances might be the defense's biggest blunder.
And then in closing arguments, the prosecution was allowed multiple times to argue as fact that Donald Trump broke election law, a breathtaking assertion that had not been proven in court. They were also allowed under overruled objections to argue that Michael Cohen's plea deal which included copping to election violations could be tied back to Trump. The judge assured defense attorneys in advance that this plea deal could not be tied to Trump in court. And then he let prosecutors argue this in court.
Related: Famed Lawyer Alan Dershowitz Coins New Motto for Trump's New York Defense
Recall that the feds had Cohen trade less time in prison for his bank and tax fraud if he'd only plead guilty to election violations.
These legal theories were just announced to the defense on the day the instructions were read to the jurors. Yes, there'd been discussion about jury instructions in the days leading up to their announcement, but the judge made the final decision, and lawyers heard his final decision right before court on Tuesday when it was too late. That's not a choice; that's a death sentence.
But back to Judge Merchan's pre-ordained guilty verdict.
CNN was taking notes, and the instructions included:
- They cannot convict Trump on Michael Cohen’s testimony alone because he’s an accomplice, but they can use his evidence if corroborated with other evidence;
- The jury must be unanimous if they find Trump guilty on each count – on whether he committed the crime personally, acted in concert with others or both;
- They must determine if Trump conspired to promote someone or prevent them from public office by unlawful means;
So confusing is the unique New York process of jury instructions that within the first afternoon of getting the case, the jury wisely asked, Hey, judge, can you tell us about those instructions again? That's because the jury is forbidden from having a copy of the jury instructions. They're expected to remember them or get a re-reading of the instructions, which is what happened Thursday morning.
Related: Defense Rests in Trump Trial—Maybe Now DA Will Reveal What the Crime Is
The jury conferred for four and a half hours after getting the case on Wednesday. Their days are over at 4:30 p.m., the judge told them — unless, of course, prosecutors want to spend five-and-a-half hours re-trying their case and literally testifying to facts not in evidence in their closing arguments until late Tuesday night.
There was no rebuttal offered to the defense, another queer New York courts custom. New York's odd rules around closing arguments were another thing Trump grumbled about on his TruthSocial account. But them's the rules when there are kangaroos to round up.
While jurors do have access to the evidence in the trial by using a computer on which two jurors reportedly have been trained, they do not have access to transcripts of testimony. Most reporters don't have access either until about two days later. Indeed, access to transcripts wasn't available at the beginning of the trial.
Only a couple of transcripts from the trial are searchable and able to be highlighted, copied, and pasted. For 99.9% of the transcripts, reporters must transcribe the transcripts or take screenshots.
"He is going to give them a directed verdict of guilty," diGenova said on Monday, but he knew enough about the jury instructions to be alarmed at that point. "He's going to tell them that they must find Donald Trump guilty. And the reason he's going to do that is he has taken away from the defense all the arguments that they could have available about what the Federal Election Commission law is, and about a whole host of other issues that he has denied them the right to present evidence on and cross-examine government witnesses on.”
Even mild-mannered Greta Van Susteren got her back up over the jury instructions being considered. She noted U.S. Supreme Court law that says every criminal decision must be unanimous. She was left sputtering.
This is wrong-jury must be unanimous on every element (it can’t be 4 believe one predicate and 8 believe another); judge is wrong pic.twitter.com/E74nbBEmKR
— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) May 25, 2024
LawTube lawyer Robert Gouveia said before that the proposed jury instructions "don't look good" for Trump.
"This case is fixed. It is over," diGenova flatly states. "This nonsense about a hung jury or an acquittal is idiotic. People are not being rational. This is a corrupt judge. This is Dickensian. You are watching something from the 18th century, 19th century. This is incredible what you are watching."
Instead of being sequestered, which would have been smart in a case concerning a President of the United States of America, jurors were asked to surrender their phones only after getting the case on Tuesday morning. And, yes, the week off between hearing the evidence and summations was shocking.
Judges don't like to sequester juries; it's inconvenient and expensive. Reasonably priced hotel rooms are tough to find these days since the governor and mayor have begun commandeering entire hotels to house Joe Biden's illegal alien invading forces forcing up the prices of hotel space. All of a sudden, quartering soldiers is no longer unconstitutional. Only half kidding. The hotel owners are being paid handsomely to have their hotels ruined.
One more note. The judge says he'll take up defense motions for a mistrial or direct a verdict, but he’s waiting until the Manhattan jury weighs in. Don't hold your breath.
Remember how the media called this a "hush money" trial? Well, it never was really about that, was it? It was about tying up Trump with a byzantine case that nobody understands. But we've been here with you all the way explaining the intricacies and outrages of this goat rodeo. We don't lie. We don't soft-soap the facts. That's why you read PJ Media.
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