Wednesday May 29, 2024 –

We’re now six weeks into the travesty and mockery of justice which is the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump.  The indictment charges 34 counts of making fraudulent business record entries.  Not that the evidence means anything to prosecutor Alvin Bragg, Judge of the Kangaroo Court Merchan, and a jury of Manhattan Trump haters, but the evidence that was presented at trial proved no crime whatsoever.

In any honest court, the judge would have entered judgments of acquittal on all counts at the end of the State’s case.  But Judge Merchan isn’t running an honest court.  He and the prosecutors are hard at work railroading the former president to prevent his reelection.  The judge, the prosecutors and the lap dog media have been work’in on this railroad all the live long day.  The 34 counts all relate to payments to former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, now a disbarred, convicted perjurer.  The payments were made in 2017, more than 5 years before the indictment was returned, so the case should have been barred by the statute of limitations.

There were monthly payments.  They charged one count for each invoice from Cohen, each payment voucher generated by the Trump company, and each check sent to Cohen.  However, Cohen created the invoices himself, Trump had no involvement in generating payment vouchers, and when the payments were made, Trump was president, and witnesses testified that he simply signed whatever checks were put before him.  In order to be guilty, Bragg must prove that Trump specifically intended to create false entries to commit another crime.

There are two tracks on the Bragg-Merchan Railroad.  First, the business record entries must be proven to be false or fraudulent.  The entries at issue are listed as “legal expenses.”  To be false, the money would have to have been paid for some other purpose.  Explain this to me.  If you use your lawyer to draft legal documents (non-disclosure agreements), and to finance the payments therefor, and then compensate him for his legal services and for the financing, in what perverted world are the payments not for legal expenses?  In order to be fraudulent, the payments must have damaged, or prejudiced someone else.  There was no evidence of any fraud.  But so much for the first track.

If the jury buys the false entry bullshit, then it switches to the second track.  The State must prove that the false entries were made in order to commit or cover up some other crime.  Chief Engineer Bragg neglected to disclose that second offense in the indictment or in the opening statement.  Sometime last week, he seems to have decided that the second crime is a federal campaign finance violation (over which neither the Manhattan D.A. nor the New York courts have jurisdiction), or a nebulous tax offense of some kind, or if not a campaign law violation, a fictional fraud on 2016 voters.  Exactly how someone could defraud 2016 voters by paying money to a lawyer in 2017 is unclear to me.

To properly instruct the jury, Railroad Conductor Merchan should have instructed that the State must prove each and every element of both tracks of the alleged crimes beyond a reasonable doubt, which would require all jurors to be unanimous as to which of the State theories as to the second offense they found to be proven.  In other words, a specific verdict of guilt both as to: 1) the entries were false; and 2) they were done for the purpose of committing the crime of either a) campaign finance violation; or b) tax offense; or c) defrauding voters.  However, Merchan instructed them that, although a unanimous verdict is required by the Constitution, they need not agree on which of the bogus theories they have found.  According to the law, when the crime may be proven by one of several theories, the jury is required to unanimously agree as to which one they found.   Merchan’s instructions permit what is known as a fragmented verdict.  Trump may be convicted if 4 jurors decide the second crime was a campaign violation, 4 say tax, and 4 say defrauding voters.  That is totally unconstitutional, and is just one more reason to reverse any conviction.

No matter how much the prosecutors tried to deny it, the State’s case depends on the credibility of Michael Cohen.  Hope Hicks testified that the motivation for the NDA’s was to prevent harm to Trump’s family, not for purposes of the election.  It really doesn’t matter anyway, because the Federal Election Commission says, if a payment for a non-disclosure agreement would have been made regardless of a pending election, you can’t use campaign funds to pay for it.  Of course, the jury never heard this, because Choo Choo Charlie Merchan prevented Trump’s witness from testifying as to how the campaign laws work, and the court’s instructions failed to explain what a federal campaign violation is and is not.

Then there’s the little problem of Cohen’s chronic and habitual lying to anyone he’s ever spoken to.  He admitted that he’s biased against Trump, he lied to prosecutors, courts, Congress and even to the jury in this trial; and that he stole $60,000 from Trump.  He now claims Trump orchestrated the entries and payments.  Cohen’s word is the only evidence that supports such a claim, and other witnesses, including Cohen’s own former lawyer testified that he swore he alone was responsible for the entries and payments, at a time when turning on Trump might have kept him out of prison.

The consensus among legal commentators was that the best Trump could hope for was that at least one of the jurors would see the State’s case as the steaming turd that it is and hang up the jury, causing a mistrial.  We’ll see.  Hope springs eternal.

The prosecutors know they have a weak case, because Tuesday they trotted out their secret weapon.  Under educated, over-paid, foul mouthed cafone, Robert DeNiro, to stand in front of the courthouse and defame Trump – again.  DeNiro, surrounded by a bunch of muscle-bound Goombah bodyguards, was greeted with jeers, to which he responded in true low-life fashion, “Fuck you.”  That’s telling them Bobby.

Thursday May 30, 2024 –

As this is written, the woefully misled and misinstructed jury has convicted Trump on all counts.  The fact that this bogus conviction ultimately will be reversed is no comfort.  That won’t happen till 2025 or 2026, long after the presidential election.  I guess I had more faith in the attorneys on the jury than they had in themselves.  After 44 years, I’m embarrassed for my profession, and I’m afraid for the future of my country.

For weeks, I’ve been getting 20 texts and emails a day from Trump and his associates soliciting political contributions.  Until now I had dismissed every one of them.  After the verdict came in I sat down and wrote  a check to Trump.  I’m not alone.  Once the verdict was announced, the Trump contribution website got so much traffic that it crashed.  It’s a sad day.  If they get away with this then the Democrats will prove themselves right.  America isn’t exceptional.  It’s run by the same nest of vipers that control every other Third World shithole on the face of the Earth.

The sentencing is scheduled for July 11.  You don’t have to wait for that.  Having seen this partisan, crooked prick, poor excuse for a judge, or a human being, in action, I can predict the sentence now.  Four months of house arrest, taking Trump off the election campaign till after the election on November 5.

Toot!  Toot!  The Merchan Express is coming into the station.  Justice has been derailed.  We’ve departed America, and have come to the end of the line – and the end of our Republic.  God help us.