Posted on 05/31/2024 7:26:28 AM PDT by Red Badger
The guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump reached by a Manhattan jury on Thursday could ultimately be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, legal experts said.
Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an unprecedented verdict against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee just months before the 2024 election. The verdict is likely to be appealed by Trump’s legal team, however, and experts say the final decision in Trump’s hush-money trial could come down to a ruling from the highest court in the land.
Attorney Roger Severino, who is the vice president of Domestic Policy and the Joseph C. and Elizabeth A. Anderlik fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told “Morning Wire” on Friday that Trump’s legal team could make “constitutional arguments that his right to a fair trial was violated.”
“And the Constitution means something,” Severino added. “It means, if anything, you cannot jail political opponents because you don’t like what the American people are going to vote for.”
Severino said that he believes the Supreme Court will intervene in the case if Trump doesn’t win on appeal.
“Ultimately, I think the Supreme Court, if he doesn’t win on appeal, will take this up and reverse,” the attorney said. “This is a political prosecution. We are better than this as a country and this cannot stand.”
The Heritage Foundation fellow added that whether Trump ends up behind bars is still unknown, saying “it would be shameful if this judge were to order this man to go to jail when they weren’t able to point to any victims.”
“This is so shocking and unprecedented that we’re even discussing the possibility of putting political opponents in jail in the middle of an election,” he said.
Judge Juan Merchan scheduled Trump’s sentencing for July 11, just four days before the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee where Trump is set to be nominated for president. The former president could face up to four years in prison.
Lawyer and political commentator Mark Levin also wrote about the possibility of the Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s guilty verdict, saying he was surprised that “TV lawyers and others” talking about Trump’s conviction “ignore a federal path to the Supreme Court.”
“The issue is how to get out of the New York system and bring the case to the Supreme Court, which may or may not take it up,” Levin wrote on Thursday night. “That is why I look to Bush v Gore, where the S Ct decided to step in BECAUSE it was a presidential election.”
“There was another court involved, the Florida Supreme Court. And it was that court that the Supreme Court believed was violating the Equal Protection Clause. That was the doctrine it settled on, given the unequal treatment of voters,” he added.
Levin then laid out how the case that was prosecuted by Manhattan Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg and decided by 12 Manhattan jurors could go before the Supreme Court.
“In New York, you would file the notice of appeal, ask for a stay of the trial court, and seek expedited review,” he wrote. “You need to protect your ability to timely appeal and not abandon it. You might then file applications for common law writs with the US Supreme Court, where the S Ct can take action if it chooses, and legitimately claim the harm is immediate and ongoing not just to a presidential candidate, but to the federal electoral system, federal campaign jurisdiction (reverse federalism), and the precedent that might otherwise be set and spread throughout the country. The denial of due process infected every aspect of the case.”
Not true. There is a bludgeon hanging over his head stacking the deck even further. This is now a Constitutional crisis.
I agree. Too much dependin’ on the black robes, not enough rolling up sleeves and taking care of business.
almost looks like God has set up the Dems...
People who play by the rules will say — let’s wait for the sentencing, then we’ll appeal, and we’ll work our way up through the corrupt NY court system, until we exhaust all appeals, then we’ll try to get it to the Supreme Court, and in about 5 or 6 years, hopefully, we can get this fixed.
People who don’t play by the rules — ignore laws about legal jurisdiction, pass laws that allow the statute of limitations to be ignored, block witnesses for the defense, fail to actually specify a “predicate crime”, ignore due process, don’t expect the jury to reach a unanimous decision, and basically game the whole system so that a guilty verdict is pre-determined.
In case anyone isn’t paying attention, the people who ignore the rules are winning.
Can they? Yes.
Should they? Yes.
Will they?
I have severe doubts.
A common way of speaking.
What, specifically, puts the Constitution into crisis (other than the crisis that began with the recognition of West Virginia as a State without the consent of the Virginia General Assembly in 1866).
The State Legislatures will appoint 535 Electors in November 2024, and Congress will appoint the 3 Electors the States unwisely granted them in 1960.
Those 538 voters will meet at 51 locations in December 2024 and will elect the next President.
The blatant denial of Donald Trump's rights under Amendments IV, V, and VI by New York, as well as his rights under Amendment VIII in a prior case, is not a "constitutional crisis" but rather action by a State in rebellion which will be adjudicated in the normal way and Trump will have his conviction erased and his fines annulled.
It is more like "The people who won this round made up some rules of their own, but they will not stand up to proper scrutiny."
The way Hitler pulled Mengele’s license to practice medicine? /s
It all depends on Roberts......................
This is so wrong as to defy belief. Did you actually read the constitution. Aritcle 3 Secion 2 "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution..." Violation of constitutional rights is a constitutional issue. In Bush v Gore the Constitutional issue was equal protection, e.g. equal treatment of each lawful vote.
It is not a constitutional crisis. There is a court with jurisdiction empowered to privide a remedy. A constitutional crisis is a situation where there is no remedy under the constitution.
This case is rare, all right,
**************
Its not just rare; it was extraordinary. The political implications are obviously profound here and there are numerous grounds for appeal. Not to mention the highly questionable legal procedures.
If our legal system cannot find a timely way to redress such an obvious case of politically driven injustice, and indeed outright conflict of interest by the presiding judge, then there’s little hope preserving any semblance of integrity in our elections. If this case is not quickly overturned, it will in effect set a precedent for future lawfare of this kind.
“In New York, you would file the notice of appeal, ask for a stay of the trial court, and seek expedited review,” he wrote.
—
notice of appeal: Denied.
Hmmmmmm? “Presumptive nominee”? Since there are a gaggle of gopEs in bed with the democommies,.........
SCOTUS will watch the country burm from afar and then they’ll say that was unconstitutional.
We are in basic agreement.
The grounds for appeal are endless, for sure.
the precedent has been set. Former Presidents are now prosecutable. there will be a reign of indignation upon those who should have been prosecuted long ago.
my vote hasn’t changed.
i want my pound of flesh.
They are going to sentence him before the convention. He’ll have to do a virtual speech to accept the nomination. I hope he shows the bars in the speech. For the history books. What a pathetic country.
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