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With the closing arguments set for Tuesday in the trial of former president Donald Trump, defense counsel are in a rather curious position. There is still debate among legal experts as to the specific crime that District Attorney Alvin Bragg is alleging. Trump’s lawyers are defending a former president who is charged under a state misdemeanor which died years ago under the statute of limitations. It was then zapped back into life in the form of roughly three dozen felonies by claiming that bookkeeping violations — allegedly hiding payments to Stormy Daniels to ensure her silence about a supposed affair...

Alina Habba, an attorney for former President Trump, suggested the jury in the hush-money trial should have been sequestered over Memorial Day weekend to prevent outside influence ahead of this week’s closing arguments. “They should have been sequestered, because, in my opinion, these jurors are handling something that is completely unprecedented and unwarranted in America,” Habba said Sunday on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “And for them to be able to be out and about on a holiday weekend with friends and families who have opinions, who are watching the news, TVs in the background at the pool party, I...

As President Trump’s trial enters it’s 6th week in New York City, I have discovered that New York Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul (another Trump hater) is a client of New York Judge Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, who is the President of the Democrat Consulting Firm Authentic Campaigns Yesterday, when President Trump held a rally in the Bronx, NY, Governor Hochul went on CNN with Fake Tapper and called Trump supporters who showed up to the #Bronx rally “clowns”. According to records in the New York State Board of Elections database, Hochul has sent $689,974.35 to Loren Merchan’s personal home address...

Corrupt and biased Judge Juan Merchan has so far refused to release the jury instructions to the public after Bragg’s prosecutors and Trump’s attorneys sparred over the order during a conference earlier this week. Jury instructions can make or break a case for either side. No doubt Judge Merchan’s jury instructions “will be horrendously poisonous” Mark Levin said earlier this week. Judge Merchan however sided with Bragg’s prosecutors and ruled the jury does NOT need to unanimously agree on the “predicate” crime Trump committed. “In other words: If some jurors believe that Trump falsified business documents solely to cover up...

You can read the Appellate Division's "Order" here.

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik filed an ethics complaint against Judge Juan Merchan for an alleged conflict of interest pertaining to his daughter’s role at a firm known for representing Democratic politicians. Merchan, an acting Supreme Court justice in New York, is presiding over the unprecedented criminal trial against former President Trump stemming from charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Stefanik, R-N.Y., filed the complaint with the New York State Commission on Judiciary Conduct, warning that Trump, who pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts of falsifying business records, faces "a maximum of 136 years’ imprisonment" if...

*** [I]n my 60 years as a lawyer and law professor, I have never seen a spectacle such as the one I observed sitting in the front row of the courthouse yesterday. The judge in Donald Trump’s trial was an absolute tyrant, though he appeared to the jury to be a benevolent despot. He seemed automatically to be ruling against the defendant at every turn. Many experienced lawyers raised their eyebrows when the judge excluded obviously relevant evidence when offered by the defense, while including irrelevant evidence offered by the prosecution. But when the defense’s only substantive witness, the experienced...

Muy Macho Joe Scarborough has once again proven himself the toughest hombre this side of Nantucket. Among several past displays of his sizzling manliness, Scarborough once boasted he'd force a tourist to eat his camera if he found him snapping pics inside the Capitol somewhere Scarborough didn't approve. [snip] Scarborough then trained his macho sights on Trump. Joe said that Judge Merchan has shown "restraint" in the face of Trump "going out and, and attacking him personally, suggesting that he's corrupt, suggesting that the court system is rigged, making it extraordinarily personal toward him and members of his family." Scarborough...

State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan cleared the courtroom Monday over a dramatic spat with the defense’s first main witness, Robert Costello, causing a period of mayhem at former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial. Mr. Costello, a lawyer who once spoke to Trump lawyer-turned-accuser Michael Cohen, seemed to take exception to one of Judge Merchan’s objection rulings, uttering “Jeez,” and then sighing, “Strike it.” “You don’t say ‘jeez.’ And you don’t say “strike it,’ because I’m the only one who strikes it,” Judge Merchan told Mr. Costello, an experienced attorney and prosecutor. He also told him not to give...

Cross-examination will be lit!

Former President Donald Trump's unusual request to be given "liberty or death" after the latest gag order fine imposed on him by Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the trial in New York City, is being taken under consideration. "Strictly speaking, it would not appear that a judge could normally decide whether to grant a plea of 'give me liberty or give me death,'" Merchan observed. "However, this is not a normal prosecution. Unprecedented actions have been taken to overrule the statute of limitations that normally would've prevented this trial from taking place. Charges that were previously dismissed by...

NEW YORK — New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan blamed Donald Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles in court Thursday for not sufficiently objecting in real time to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels’s detailed testimony this week — and again said Daniels’s testimony does not warrant a mistrial. In the lead-up to his ruling against a mistrial, Merchan observed that there were “many times when Ms. Necheles could have objected but didn’t.” The judge acknowledged that he wished New York prosecutors hadn’t asked Daniels certain questions. But in a biting review of Necheles’s performance as Trump’s defense lawyer, Merchan cited one incident...

GAG ON THIS, JUDGE MERCHAN🚨 Judge Merchan's daughter, Loren, didn't just donate 20 bucks...or receive 10k from a candidate...or just work for Kamala Harris. Her firm (of which she is partner) received 2.15 MILLION DOLLARS DIRECTLY FROM BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2020. Receipts

Trump’s attorneys filed a motion for mistrial on Thursday after Stormy Daniels took the witness stand. Stormy Daniels took the witness stand again Thursday in Alvin Bragg’s lawfare ‘hush money’ trial against Trump in New York City. ..... Snip..... Trump’s attorneys on Tuesday moved for a mistrial over Stormy Daniels’ testimony, but the crooked judge rejected it. “What’s the jury to do with that? It’s still extraordinarily prejudicial to insert safety — safety concerns into a trial about business records. There’s no way to unring the bell in our view,” Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche argued. “As a threshold matter, Mr....

Porn star Stormy Daniels is on the stand at former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial in New York today — a pivotal moment in the case. Daniels is describing their alleged sexual encounter, at times in so much detail that Judge Juan Merchan scolded the prosecution, saying the nitty gritty was “unnecessary.” *** “In fairness to the people, I think the witness was a little bit difficult to control the witness," Justice Merchan said*** Trump attorney Todd Blanche moved Tuesday for a mistrial, citing what he called Stormy Daniels' "prejudicial" and salacious testimony about an alleged sexual encounter with...

Inquiring minds would love to know.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) announced that the city’s Department of Corrections was prepared to imprison former President Donald Trump at Rikers Island. Adams’ comments came a day after New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over Trump’s business records trial, threatened to jail the former president after finding him in contempt for violating a gag order for the tenth time.

Donald Trump is now daring the judge in his Manhattan trial to throw him in jail for violating his gag order.Leaving court on Monday in week four of his trial, Trump told the gaggle of reporters staged near the courtroom how deeply unfair, outrageous, and unconstitutional the gag order is. I have to watch every word I tell you people. You ask me a question and I can't talk about it because this judge has given me a gag order and said you'll go to jail if I violate it. And frankly, you know what? Our constitution is much more...

Judge Juan Merchan admitted in court Monday that former President Donald Trump could become “the next president” — a tacit acknowledgement not only of recent favorable polls, but that his business records trial is occurring in the middle of a presidential election with direct bearing on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “The last thing I want to consider is jail,” Merchan warned Trump about violating a gag order placed on him. “You are [the] former president and possibly the next president.” Merchan said Monday he would consider jail time for Trump if he continued to violate a gag order he...

BREAKING: Judge Merchan to Donald Trump: “Defendant is hereby put on notice that if appropriate and warranted, future violations of its lawful orders will be punishable by incarceration.”