Free Republic

Judge Juan Merchan is keeping former President Donald Trump off the campaign trail by forcing him to wait at the courthouse while the jury deliberates, Trump lawyer Jesse Binnall said during an interview on Breitbart News Daily. “Why are they keeping him in the courtroom?” host Mike Slater asked Binnall during the Wednesday appearance. “I think we all know that the entire reason that Judge Merchan had scheduled this case for when he scheduled it for and why he has been very, very deliberate in keeping Donald Trump in the courtroom and now making so he can’t even, you know,...

JUST IN: NBC reports that Trump's defense team is "newly animated" and have "cracked" a smile while the District Attorney's team looks "tense and apprehensive" in New York. The moment came as the jury submitted a second note to Judge Merchan, asking him to give the instructions again."The District Attorney’s team looks tense and apprehensive. Todd Blanche, on Trump’s defense team, just cracked a tight smile. Trump, Blanche and Emil Bove, another one of Trump's attorneys, are whispering amongst themselves and look newly animated," NBC reported.Jurors were then dismissed for the day after a few hours of deliberations."You must not...

President Trump is on trial in New York for allegedly falsifying business records because the bookkeepers in his organization recorded certain legal expenses — specifically, a legal settlement — as “legal expenses.” According to Democrat prosecutors, the bookkeepers should have recorded these payments as campaign contributions and expenditures because, they say, the payments were “intended” to “influence” the 2016 election “unlawfully” by concealing a purported sexual encounter with a pornographer.Convoluted and bizarre enough for you yet? It should be. Because there is absolutely nothing “unlawful” about concealing a purported sexual encounter with a pornographer.There is, nevertheless, a good deal of...

Levin to Trump’s attorneys: Next stop? The Supreme Court!The weight of precedent and the outrageous behavior of the prosecutors and the judge favor the 45th president.In Bush v. Gore, the United States Supreme Court interceded in the Florida Supreme Court’s deliberations because that court was changing the Florida voting system on the fly, thereby violating the Equal Protection rights of Florida voters. The state court was establishing new standards for resolving a presidential election. The Manhattan trial court has done worse in the farcical “hush-money” case. It has taken up a case in which there is exclusive federal jurisdiction (involving...

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is calling for a federal investigation into Justice Juan Merchan, arguing he deprived former President Donald Trump of First Amendment rights in the Manhattan business records trial. Vance, who is reportedly in contention to be Trump’s running mate, penned a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday, calling for a probe into Merchan due to potential violations of sections 241 and 242 of Title 18. Judge Juan Merchan's unconstitutional gag order violates President Trump's First Amendment rights and is clearly illegal. This morning, I sent a letter to the Attorney General requesting that he investigate...

A series of young women have revealed they were sucker-punched at random on the street in Manhattan in a worrying series of attacks — with at least one perpetrator still at large. Mikayla Toninato, 27, told The Post she was frozen in shock when she was punched in the face by a man over six feet tall on the corner of 14th Street and Fifth Avenue on Monday at 2 p.m. moments after she left her class at Parsons School of Design. “I didn’t see him coming at all. I screamed out of shock. He knocked my head back so...

Former President Donald Trump did not appear pleased with New York County Judge Juan Merchan’s jury instructions Thursday morning.“Mother Teresa could not beat these charges, but we’ll see. We’ll see how we do. It’s a very disgraceful situation,” Trump told reporters after the jury began deliberations in his criminal trial.“These charges are rigged. The whole thing is rigged,” he added. “We’re going to take back our country from these fascists and these thugs that are destroying us with inflation and with everything they do,” Trump continued, “allowing 15, 16, 17 million people into our country, totally unvetted, totally unchecked.”“We’re going...

FIRST ON FOX – Boston Mayor Michelle Wu advocated a soft-on-crime agenda by pushing to abolish the gang registry and arguing that criminal behavior – such as theft – should not be prosecuted. Prior to being elected mayor, Wu filled out the "2021 Boston Mayoral Candidate Questionnaire" from Progressive Massachusetts, a 501c4 nonprofit organization that tracks and ranks how progressive elected officials are. According to its website, the group "intends to transform Massachusetts into a bold laboratory for progressive state initiatives." In the document, Wu outlined her most progressive commitments, including her support for noncitizens voting in Boston's local elections.

As the jury begins its deliberations, claims are spreading across social media that Judge Merchan told the panel they don’t need a unanimous verdict to convict Trump. That’s false. To convict Trump, Merchan told the jury they will have to find unanimously — that is, all 12 jurors must agree — that the former president created a fraudulent entry in his company’s records or caused someone else to do so, and that he did so with the intent of committing or concealing another crime. What’s being distorted by some online is the judge’s instruction about how to reach a verdict...

It’s true that Trump has been charged with a non-crime and that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump has been severely undermined by his own witnesses. In fact, several Democrat experts have said Trump could be acquitted because of how bad some of the prosecution’s witnesses have been for the case. But between the partisan jury and Biden donor Judge Juan Merchan’s jury instructions, it seems likely that Trump will be found guilty. So the question is: what happens if the jury returns a guilty verdict? According to conservative radio host Mark Levin, in the event of a...

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley has been following the trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan closely. Yesterday Turley pretty much considered the prosecution's closing arguments to be a dumpster fire and also has been far from impressed by Judge Juan Merchan's handling of the trial: ...The fraud instruction alone is so generalized that it would seem to encompass any claim that the defendant sought to influence the election through his actions. Merchan has done little to tailor standard instructions for this novel and frankly troubling case...— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 28, 2024This morning Judge Merchan is delivering instructions...

The key moment won’t be when New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan finishes offering instructions to the jury in Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan. It won’t be when the jury files out of the courtroom, slated to return only when it has reached a verdict. The key moment, the moment in which the jury’s power flips from potential to kinetic, comes when the officer escorts the jury to the jury room and the door shuts with a click........ What we did (if I remember correctly 15 years later) was begin with a survey of the different charges and...

Closing arguments in the trial of former President Donald Trump in New York City, where he is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, have concluded and Judge Juan Merchan has given the jury their instructions. The instructions were given verbally and jurors won't receive printed copies, although they can ask questions. According to legal experts, Merchan's standards for a conviction are abnormal and do not require jurors to reach a unanimous decision on the charges. Further, jurors don't have to determine what crime was committed. "Judge Merchan has ruled that the jury does not have to agree...

An alleged first look at Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’s upcoming new character, Mrs. Freeze, is being accused of promoting transgenderism. The alleged first look was shared to the subreddit GamingLeaksAndRumors. X user Mangalawyer reacted to this first look writing on X, “Rocksteady, the developers of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, transformed Mr. Freeze into a non-binary Karen they/them! This is wild.” In a subsequent post the user added, “I predicted this before the game’s release, and the backlash was intense. They perceive femininity and female anatomy as threats to society. Now, they’ve made a character transgender. Take...

Merchan just delivered the coup de grace instruction. He said that there is no need to agree on what occurred. They can disagree on what the crime was among the three choices. Thus, this means that they could split 4-4-4 and he will still treat them as unanimous So a dead misdemeanor for falsifying business records was zapped back into life by alleging that under NY election law 17-152 it was done to influence the election by the unlawful means of falsification of business records. It is so circular as to produce vertigo. So the jury finds some documents were...

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg attempted to justify the progress on electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, prompting a laugh from CBS’s “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brenna. After $7.5 billion of taxpayers’ money being plowed into the initiative, just a “handful” of charging stations have been built. The interview took a comedic turn when Brennan pointed out the discrepancy between the investment made back in 2021 and the reality of the results. Just seven or eight charging stations have been built despite billions being spent, according to the Federal Highway Administration, “Why isn’t that happening more quickly?” asked Brennan. Buttigieg responded...

Anti-Israel criminals caused at least $3 million in damage and the need for costly extra security at taxpayer-funded City College’s campus in Upper Manhattan during their violent protests there, officials say. A protester who threw a flare that torched the roof of the City University of New York school’s administration building caused $350,000 worth of damage alone, said CUNY Chief Operating Officer Hector Batista during recent testimony before the City Council. Batista said the flare damage was particularly unfortunate because the City Council and state previously provided capital funds to install a new roof. “It’s costing over $3 million —...

Money-laundering is the art of taking money illicitly gained and cleaning it so that it cannot be traced back to its source and is therefore free and clear. In the television show Breaking Bad, Walter White and his co-conspirators purchase cash-based businesses such as the A1A Car Wash to launder their profits from cooking perfectly blue crystal meth.Crystal meth is illegal and the profits obviously in need of laundering. Sometimes, though, even legally gained money might need to be laundered. What if the government gave you a contract to do one thing, and you wanted to buy something else with...

After months of blown deadlines and broken promises to renovate and reopen six low-cost grocery stores in underserved communities, the operator of Save A Lot stores in Chicago promised a top city official in January that his company will do better. “We took your comments about a ‘hard reset’ to heart,” Yellow Banana Chief Executive Joe Canfield wrote to Ciere Boatright, Chicago’s top planning and development official, in a January 31 email. Five months later, Yellow Banana continues to fall short of its own goals. The company was given 24 months under a contract with the city that approved $13.5...

E.B. Jordan spent two years in the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility on felony drug conviction charges. When she was released, long before her maximum 20-year sentence, Jordan went to work getting felons like her registered to vote. “I went door-to-door to stress the fact that we’re felons, that we can vote. And a lot of people didn’t even know that,” the activist for the left-wing Voting Access for All Coalition says in a video aimed at getting ex-cons to the polls. “I went through my neighborhood … to inform my neighborhood that I knew there was a lot of...