Free Republic

If former President Trump wins in November, top supporters will push him to investigate, prosecute — and even try to imprison — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), who won Trump's conviction in the hush-money case. "Of course [Bragg] should be — and will be — jailed," Steve Bannon, one of the top voices of the MAGA movement, told us — saying for the record what many Trump supporters are privately plotting. Why it matters: This column has reported extensively about all the norms Trump plans to shatter if returned to the White House. Nowhere would that be truer than...

America Has Its First Show TrialYou don't have to be a Trump supporter to recognize the trial was a sham.To understand the damage done by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Judge Juan Merchan, and the Manhattan jury in the Donald Trump corporate records trial, one must first understand the most important rule of modern life: Everything the left touches, it destroys.The Justice Department and the American legal system are only the most immediate examples.Here are 25 other examples:1. Universities. 2. High schools. 3. Elementary schools. 4. Children’s innocence. 5. Marriage and family. 6. Children who say they are the other...

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Tuesday asked a New York judge to lift the gag order imposed on him in the criminal hush money case, citing his opponent, President Joe Biden‘s 2024 election campaign gloating over his guilty verdict. Trump has been under a gag order since April that bars him from making comments about the jury that presided over the weekslong trial as well as specific witnesses in the case, family members of prosecutors, and the daughter of presiding Judge Juan Merchan. His defense lawyers pointed to specific moments last week in which the Biden campaign used...

Last Thursday, in a courtroom in Manhattan that voted against him 88-12% in 2020, a jury, heavily persuaded by a judge, who contributed to Joe Biden in 2020, convicted President Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsification of business records.The case concerns payments that were made to former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in 2017. Cohen claimed the payments were reimbursement for a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to ensure her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with President Trump.Trump contended that he never had a sexual liaison with Daniels and that there was nothing illegal about his...

When the main casualty is the rule of law itself.On May 30th, a Manhattan jury found former President Donald Trump guilty of thirty-four jerry-rigged felony charges brought against Mr. Trump by the progressive Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The fix was in, and the main casualty was the rule of law itself.District Attorney Bragg abused his prosecutorial powers by targeting Mr. Trump personally, as he had promised to do when he ran for office, and then coming up with concocted felony offenses to charge him with. The Trump-hating district attorney magically alchemized a statute of limitations-barred misdemeanor of falsifying business...

House Speaker Mike Johnson joined Fox Sunday to discuss House Republicans’ plans to investigate Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Special Counsel Jack Smith for targeting political opponents. It sounds like just more words from Speaker Johnson. We want to see action! Shannon Bream: Now, I want to ask you about the verdict. Clearly, you think it’s a travesty, as many people do. And I think having watched the trial, there are many grounds, fertile territory for the Trump team to use on appeal, but that’s going to take time. In the meantime, there are a number of Republicans out there...

Last Thursday, in a courtroom in Manhattan that voted against him 88-12% in 2020, a jury, heavily persuaded by a judge, who contributed to Joe Biden in 2020, convicted President Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsification of business records. The case concerns payments that were made to former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in 2017. Cohen claimed the payments were reimbursement for a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to ensure her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with President Trump.

Yo-Yo Note: Longish read but very good from someone who is NOT a MAGA person.Ever since Donald Trump emerged as a presidential contender nine years ago, America’s most esteemed scholars and journalists have argued that he was violating democratic norms. Trump, they said, was ignoring the stabilizing, unwritten rules and values of American politics. This was evident in his vulgar language, vilification of immigrants, criticisms of the press, lack of cooperation with the intelligence community, and refusal to accept the 2020 election results.But the Democrats’ relentless effort to imprison Trump has undermined the rule of law, faith in the criminal...

As the dust starts to settle on Trump’s conviction newly-minted status as an Outlaw President, legal scholars are starting to weigh in on the severe problems with Alvin Bragg’s case. First up, Ed Whelan passes on this this piece by Mr. Elie Honig, explaining some of the problems with the conviction: Trump's superpower is the ability to bring out the worst in both his supporters and his opponents. Bragg's prosecution sure strikes me as blatant example of latter, for reasons CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig spells out in this powerful piece. https://t.co/y6CGA6Ald9 — Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) May 31, 2024...

Former Commissioner of the Federal Elections Commission, Brad Smith, a preeminent expert on campaign finance law has taken to social media to lash out against the Manhattan trial that led to the conviction of former President Donald Trump. Judge Juan Merchan had prevented Trump’s defense team from seating Smith as a witness or even submitting his testimony to the jury. Smith had planned on testifying that Donald Trump’s filing of a “hush money” payment as a “legal expense” was not a crime against federal elections law. Indeed, federal prosecutors had passed up on the case prior to Alvin Bragg, the...

Just before the jury returned a guilty verdict in corrupt Judge Juan Merchan’s kangaroo court, without even specifying what crime President Trump committed, Fox News host Jesse Watters highlighted serious concerns about communist New York Judge Juan Merchan. Watters: There’s something very fishy about how Judge Mershon came to preside over this case. There are 24 sitting judges who were supposed to be randomly selected from to take this case. Judge Merchan wasn’t even on the list of judges. He’s an acting judge. And he’s not just a Biden donor. Judge Merchan donated to the Progressive Turnout Project and to...

1. Unconstitutional Gag Order that prevented President Trump from criticizing the trial, exposing the many conflicts that should have forced the judge to recuse himself, and the railroading of his fundamental due process rights. 2. Judge Merchan’s many, many conflicts of interests – all of which were disqualifying. His daughter, Loren Merchan, is President of Authentic Campaigns, a political consulting firm that hires the likes of the Biden-Harris Campaign, Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar, and many other far left Democratic lawmakers. Loren’s firm has made tens of millions off these clients – Juan Merchan, through his daughter, had a direct financial...

The judge who presided over Donald Trump’s fraud case closed off many avenues of appeal, leaving him few ways to escape his felony conviction

Last Friday FBI agents raided the homes of far left activists in Chicago and Minneapolis who are linked to the FARC and Islamic radicals as part of a terrorism investigation. The home of radical Hatem Abudayyeh in Chicago was raided in the terror sweep. The AP reported on the raid in Chicago. FBI agents in Chicago took a laptop and documents from the home of a Palestinian-American anti-war activist in an attempt to silence his advocacy, an attorney said Sunday. The FBI on Friday searched eight addresses in Minneapolis and Chicago, including the home of Hatem Abudayyeh, who is the...

It has been mentioned on the news that the sentencing for Trump has been timed to occur a mere 3 days prior to the GOP convention. Furthermore, it is quite possible that Merchan could immediately handcuff DJT and sentence him to a lengthy incarceration with little that could be done to prevent this.. I welcome your views and insights on this ..

It took me a while to understand the expression ‘Your name is mud’... It took me a while to understand the expression “Your name is mud.” It’d come up when I was playing sandlot baseball or learning about football. Someone would scream it, and I had no idea why such an expression would be used in a sunny day. So eventually my wonderful 6th-grade teacher (Miss Jones) explained the story of Dr. Mudd and John Wilkes Boothe. She said that it was something like “You are discredited or in disgrace. The very mention of your name produces scorn.” Thank you,...

Democratic pollster and former Clinton adviser Mark Penn said Friday during an appearance on Fox News Channel that he believes Judge Juan Merchan will sentence former President Donald Trump to serve some jail time because he's "trying to take him out of the presidential race." "So far, this judge has wanted to take, obviously, wants to take Donald Trump out of the presidency," Penn said during an appearance on "Your World with Neil Cavuto" on Friday. "So, for all this talk that, of course, he's a first time offender and not eligible ... he's convicted of things that could send...

Leftist District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s show trial delivered the Democrat Party’s dream: A felony conviction against their most hated political enemy. The prosecution and the trial also were also littered with legal landmines and “reversible error” that should make former President Donald Trump’s looming appeal a slam dunk, legal experts say. Historical and stunning but not surprising to many who have closely followed left-wing lawfare in recent years, the 12 angry Manhattan jurors after two days of deliberations found Trump guilty on all 34 trumped-up felony counts against him. Judge Juan Merchan has scheduled sentencing for July 11, just four...

The more time we have to look through Judge Juan Merchan's byzantine jury instructions in Donald Trump's "hush money" trial in Manhattan, the worse they look. The vague nature of the instructions has even led to disputes among legal analysts who have struggled to make sense of the case from the beginning. At Townhall, our colleague Matt Vespa has a good rundown of one of the most glaring problems with the instructions. The judge gave the jurors the unheard-of option of picking any one of three crimes that were "concealed" by the entry of "false business records" and said that...

California Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, a top client of Trump Trial Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter Loren Merchan, immediately began trying to raise money off of the guilty verdict against the former president. A Trump campaign official posted Schiff’s campaign email sent after the verdict came down Tuesday. Corrupt and Conflicted Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter is already out making money off today’s verdict. pic.twitter.com/9IYbRwxaxQ — Francis Brennan (@FrancisBrennan) May 30, 2024 As previously reported by the New York Post, Merchan’s daughter is president of Authentic Campaigns, a Chicago-based progressive political consulting firm whose clients include Schiff.