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.”
Couldn’t the appeals court drag the case past election while Merchan sentences Trump to jail on Jul 14th? This is my concern he will go to jail and wait for the appeal to be heard
The Supreme Court has consistently held that “vindictive” prosecution violates the constitutional guarantee of due process of law. This means that prosecutors cannot use their discretion to target political opponents for prosecution solely because of their political beliefs or affiliations.
I do not for one second dispute that there are MULTIPLE violations of fundamental Constitutional and pre-Constitutional rights of Citizen Trump involved in this matter.
I just dispute that this creates a crisis. The crisis will be if these violations are upheld and not punished.
I found this article from CNN from November 22, 2000: Florida Legislature would pick electors if votes not certified by deadline.
The gist of the article is that the legislature was bound to the laws that were in place, so they couldn't act until after the certification date had passed. Once that happened, they would have plenary power (as you correctly say) to appoint the Electors in any manner that they choose.
What they could NOT do was suspend the law that was in place and unilaterally choose Electors. They had to wait for the legislatively chosen certification date to pass without a certified election result, and then they could act.
SCOTUS intervened before this date to stop the rogue actions of the Florida State Supreme Court and let the laws passed by the legislature proceed.
So it's a hard one to puzzle out.
Should SCOTUS have let the partisan Florida Supreme Court run roughshod and then leave the state in turmoil with the presidential election result in the balance?
Does the legislature have plenary power to set aside legally passed laws and act unilaterally on an impromptu basis, or must they abide the laws they passed with plenary powers until other triggers in the laws allow them to take further actions?
And who has the initiative here? If the legislature was bound by the laws they passed, then did SCOTUS have the initiative to act to stop the rogue court from taking unconstitutional acts against the state law?
When you think about it, all that SCOTUS really did was stop the Florida Supreme Court from overriding the legislature so that the laws in place could be followed.
What do you say?
-PJ
If they file it with the NY appellate court, they won’t have to drag it out because the appellate court won’t be able to hear it for 6 to 12 months anyway. There is no way even this conflicted judge will sentence him to jail because it is the lowest grade felony, class E, in the books, just above a misdemeanor and Trump has no priors. His big problem is Secret Service would have to go to jail with him as he is an ex President. The logistics of that are impossible
Wrong. They step]Ed in to stop the FLA Supreme Court from violating law. The FLA Court was out of control.
If he Court was going to rule favorably for Trump on this issue they would have done so already else why let them drain Trump's bank account.
I wouldn't count on this Court to save us.
How could a sane person not see it?
“What do you say?”
Well, I’m an old guy with a Constitution fetish (although I’m considering switching to the Declaration).
The Founders were very concerned about the Presidency becoming a way for the (small, limited) national government to take over the States.
Everything they did, they did for a reason. They debated National Popular Vote. They debated election by the Senate, the House, or both.
They wound up with appointment by the State Legislatures, doubly indirect. Legislators chosen by the People voting (in their States) would then choose Electors voting in their State capitals would appoint the President, who would PRESIDE over the national government to make sure the rights of both States and People were preserved.
So, I defend the bottom line - it’s an appointive, not an elected, office and all three branches of the national government are excluded from participating, unless the Electoral College is divided, in which case the States still appoint the President by the House voting - BUT EACH STATE GETS ONE VOTE. California = Wyoming when the House appoints the President.
This highlights the point that it is that States that are the main actors. It’s not the population-apportioned House that chooses - it’s the STATES, as equals, who do the work.
What’s wrong?
The Founders presumed that problems like this would arise and they provided a structure to resolve them.
You better learn that we need to fight using the tools that exist, just like the opposition uses them.
Unless of course, you want to see communism take over this nation.
This is what has gotten us this far down the road to communism. Wake up Jim. This is war. Law & Order has been turned on its head. Our seeking relief through the highest court in the land in protection of the Constitution is legitimate. This is not some conviction that should be treated as a normal conviction to follow the slow process of remedy, for it has national ramifications, and therefore it should be addressed immediately. It should have taken up the case of election fraud, because there was more than enough compelling evidence for the Supreme Court to do so.
Would that be before or after they have bankrupted Trump?
“They stepped in to prevent SCOFLA from violating the law”
SCOFLA had no legitimate role to play here, whatever they did or didn’t do, W was going to be the President. As I said, there was a real, but less that 50% chance that Lieberman would have been VP, which, if the cookie crumbled that way might not have been a bad thing.
If they intervene it could cause a voter bump by democrats in their rage.
Always raging, it’s demonic.
“ Unless of course, you want to see communism take over this nation”
Oh please!
We don’t discuss warming up the helicopters here, now do we?
Yep we will get them next time for sure. Of course Freedom may disappear before we get our chance at bat but keep hoping they will get around to scrutinizing the issue before it won't matter anymore.
I don’t think Sotomayor will grant a hearing
For you are arguing to maintain the rule of law, when they no longer do, and in fact have infiltrated our legal system to stack law & order as they see it, not as the constitution sees it.
You refuse to accept we must fight back with the highest court of the land to immediately intercede in support of actual rule of law.
They have now tasted blood, and this will only get worse, the time to attack it is now. Not later.
I wrote this here in one form or another:
Joy Behar wants a king, and she thinks the President is supposed to be one.We don't vote directly for the President because the President is not the ruler of the People. The President is the executive officer of the federation of states. It's the states that elect the President to oversee the limited powers that the states delegated to the federal government.
It was the role of the governors of the several states to lead the people of their states. It was the role of the federal Executive to manage the relationships between the states, to be the voice of the nation in foreign relations with other countries, and to be the commander-in-chief of the military during armed conflicts.
The President's constituents were the governors, not the people. The states were the sovereign governments closest to the people. That's why the Senate was designed to be appointed by their respective state legislatures: 1) to confirm the President's nominations for executive branch offices and judicial picks, and 2) to ratify treaties that the President negotiated with foreign governments.
It was the several states, through the Senate, that were supposed to "lead" the President, not the other way around. This is why Article IV Section 4 says "and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened)..." The states were expected to communicate to their Senators to convey to the President what the states were going to do. They were not asking the President for permission, they were informing the President of their intended actions.
I didn't expect you to take such a passive tone in response to my last post. I was suggesting that there are limits to plenary power, and that once exercised the plenary body is obligated to follow their own rules until they use that power again to make new rules. In a legislature, that power requires all chambers of the legislature to agree on a law, and then the executive to sign it. A plenary that disregards its own law becomes a king.
One thing that you wrote, though, requires clarification:
They wound up with appointment by the State Legislatures, doubly indirect. Legislators chosen by the People voting (in their States) would then choose Electors...
That's not what the Constitution says. Article II Section 1 says:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors...
I know that you know this. Legislatures certainly could have set it up in their own state to be direct appointment just as you described, but they did not. They set up to be election by the people in their states. That's not to say that it can't be changed for future elections -- that's something I've argued in the threads about SCOTUS ruling on "faithless Electors" where states can change the method of appointing Electors where they no longer have the ability to be faithless.
Anyway, back to the topic of this thread...
I think SCOTUS wasn't power-grabbing in Florida, they were stopping a rogue state court from power-grabbing the election before irreparable damage was done. I think we're seeing the stars aligning in a similar way in New York with the Democrat courts trying to interfere with the Republican nominating convention, and SCOTUS should step in to keep that from happening via appropriate constitutional means. It's clear that Trump's constitutional rights were trampled on in New York just to get this very result.
-PJ
She’s just 1 of 9. Screw her.
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