Judge Could Jail Trump; Tells Jury Any Predicate Crime Will Do

Conflicted Judge Juan Merchan has not released the jury instructions to the public. District Attorney Bagg’s prosecutors and Trump’s attorneys disagreed over the order during a conference earlier this week. Jury instructions are critical to the decision. According to the discussion with Megyn Kelly below, Judge Merchan could imprison Donald Trump. Geragos said that a guilty plea and continual violations of the gag order almost always demand imprisonment.

Mark Levin is convinced the jury instructions will be “horrendously poisonous.”

Judge Merchan Has already agreed with Bragg that the jury does not need to agree on the predicate crimes that Trump allegedly unanimously.

This is a crime where the crime is unclear, and Merchan’s basically telling the jury that he can each believe whatever crime they want to serve as a predicate. They could believe it’s fraud for falsifying documents by putting the figure paid to Stormy under ‘legal expense.’ They could decide the predicate is a tax crime.

In other words, if some jurors believe that Trump falsified business documents solely to cover up a tax crime, while others believe that he falsified business documents solely to cover up an election crime, the jury can still convict Trump on the felony-level falsifying documents charges, despite disagreeing on the predicate crimes.

Professor Jonathan Turley has concerns about some of Merchan’s decisions. He thinks he has a thumb on the scale.

“They are arguing some pretty sweeping positions that they don’t have to prove unlawful intent,” Turley says. “They are suggesting that things like unlawful means, which is really an important term for influencing the election, can be satisfied by less than the criminal standard.

“And the defense, I think, legitimately saying, whoa, you know you’re going to convict someone on a lower than criminal standard on an important element. And this is really the result of this sort of Frankenstein case, you know. Bragg took this dead misdemeanor, zapped it back into life as a felony by sort of stitching together different crimes, and now the government’s trying to use that to say, yeah, we did that, but it also means we don’t have to prove the full criminal standard on all elements.”

This will certainly make it easier to convict the former president.

According to Jonathan Turley, the judge allowed the jury to think there was a campaign finance crime here, and there isn’t. He hopes the jury realizes they are getting played and there is no clear crime here.

Watch:

Former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York finds it lawless.

Definitely Prison?

Judge Merchan could remand Donald Trump to prison pending sentencing. Attorney Geragos thinks his best hope is a hung jury. When a guilty verdict is read, they will take his watch and belongings and cuff him in public. They will then take him in the back. Geragos thinks Trump will go to prison. They all know it’s election interference. Geragos does believe it’s very susceptible to appeal.

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