Fox News Anchor’s Trump Jury Instructions Claim Is False

It looks like someone is still focused on politics.

The article admits that for each charge, jurors could disagree on what the secondary crime--the one that actually allows charges where the statute of limitations expired 6 years ago--might be. Interestingly, the secondary crime--the most likely being campaign finance violations at the federal level--also has an expired statute of limitations.

So the author basically admits that the Fox News commentator was correct, IMO.

The list of legal violations of this trial started with the prosecutor going to the grand jury without describing the alleged crimes, then the judge approving those allegations for indictment, then the judge's silencing of the defendant, then the judge's silencing of a former FEC board member's testimony (which bore directly on the campaign finance violations), and finally allowing the jurors to disagree on which law was involved, but still come to a conviction.

Rule of thumb; when a prosecutor is using a novel interpretation of the law against political opponents, or promising while campaigning for the job to "get" someone he's politically opposed to, injustice is being served. And if they can do it to Trump, they can do it to you, and will when they feel the need.

There are 17 people who need to be punished for this, and not one of them is named Donald Trump. They are Judge Merchan, Alvin Bragg, and his team of 15 lawyers who ignored serious violent crimes to spend years on this. They should all be disbarred.

Nothing could be more reassuring to a rational person than this trial.

DA elected on the promise to go after Trump. This is what they find to go after?

Trump must be way more squeaky-clean than I expected.

The evil democrats are so petrified of Trump, they will do anything. That's enough.

Here is an interesting side note for those of you who believe that Trump "stole" the 2016 election by improperly reporting the payment as "legal fees." If he had reported it as "campaign expenses"- based on the timing of the payment- he would not have been required to report that expense in his campaign disclosure form until December of that year. The election occurred in November. Just to clarify, November is before December. Thus, if your argument is that he was defrauding the voters by not following the law and disclosing this information before the election, the law allowed him to disclose it after the election. The irony is that the judge would not allow testimony about election laws in the trial. For those of you that think it is justice to not allow testimony about what the actual laws were that were supposedly violated- I fear you misunderstand justice.

Coming from The Dispatch run by self-identified Never Trumper Jonah Goldberg, I wouldn't expect anything else.

More and more like the Roman Empire.

Wally,

Yep, totally right. The apotheosis of Trump and his desire not to be bound by the judicial branch closely mirrors with Ulpian, a Roman jurist, writing on the support that the Emporer should be above the law, a practice held within the Roman Empire.

Irony. Our current president is defying a Supreme Court ruling and the above poster seems to be ignoring that while suggesting that our former president is doing something wrong by asking for the Supreme Court to rule on a matter that would affect him. Interesting.

Regarding Trump's appeal to the Supreme Court, if a New York State Supreme Court (in)Justice named "Juan Merchan" fails to ensure the defendant's right to (a) know the actual charges against him and (b) have compulsory provision of evidence in his favor, the only real place for Trump to appeal with any chance of success is SCOTUS, no? And in that light, it's particularly galling that one of Biden's hallmark programs, loan forgiveness for people whose income is far higher than the national average, was shot down by the same.

Maybe I'm misreading things, but if a trial can proceed without a clear statement of the charges made, then we've got an effective denial of several facets of due process. And that is a big deal. Not much of a fan of Trump, especially inasmuch as he appears to have cheated on Melania with Ms. Daniels while Melania was pregnant with Barron, but even scumbags deserve a fair trial.

"Everyone gets their day in court" has to include knowing what in the world you're at court for. From all that I've read D.A. Bragg never specified the "crime(s)" that the past-limitation misdemeanor was in service of (how he Frankensteined this into a supposed felony). The clearly biased judge was consistent in instructing the jurors that they could, a la Burger King, "have it their way" in reaching a "unanimous" guilty verdict. With a blank in the "felony crime" box, of course the jury could furnish their own answer, just as long as every juror put something in the blank.

Trump's far from an admirable person. But this ruling strikes at the foundation of our system of justice. Slightly editing another's opine, we have a legal system, but we no longer have a justice system.

Trump can appeal and will likely prevail. But the 98% of Americans who lack vast resources to sustain multiple appeals would be squashed by the legal might of the prosecuting government. Effectively, never being exonerated because they couldn't afford multiple days/months/years in the court system. This is why this ruling is far less about DJT and far more about the rest of us.

Finally, the same scriptures which condemn adultery also condemn injustice. In this case, we appear to have both.

Trump's far from an admirable person. But this ruling strikes at the foundation of our system of justice.

Those celebrating this verdict have been striking at our justice system for a long time. While going after Trump, Bragg has refused to prosecute actual criminal behavior. This is not isolated to Bragg and NY. Democrat DA's all across the nation are refusing to prosecute criminals. Kevin Bauder recently had his car stolen in the Twin Cities metro area and he said the police were great to work with, but the police were frustrated because they knew if the criminal was apprehended, he would not be prosecuted. What happened to Kevin is not an isolated incident. Within the last 2 months my sister-in-law went to the Twin Cities with a friend and their car was also stolen. I have another friend who recently moved back from Kansas City after his car was stolen. He thought he would like the big city, but the crime was too much for him.

So much wrong information in this thread.

Biden is flouting Supreme Court on student loans - Not true. He's continuing to cancel student loan debt using different means than what the Supreme Court shot down.

Merchan said the jurors could reach a unanimous verdict by any means possible - Not true. Merchan clearly explained what he meant in that part of the jury instruction and gave the supporting law. This has been refuted numerous times (including in the article above this thread) and is still being pushed by the MAGA crowd.

Bragg and Merchan didn't even specify what law was broken - Again, not true and has been refuted numerous times. Just because Trump keeps saying it doesn't mean it's true.

One one hand, it's mindblowing to me that 12 jurors listened to the evidence for weeks and all decided to convict on every count, and yet the MAGA crowd demeans them as stooges of Biden. Many of the jurors are intelligent and highly educated, not so stupid that they couldn't figure out if the law was being unfairly applied. One of them only gets their news from Truth Social, and still agreed on all 34 counts. When the jury was being seated, Trumps lawyers didn't even challenge 11 of the 12 jurors, so they must not have found them too objectionable.

On the other hand I'm not at all surprised, because it was entirely predictable that if Trump was convicted the MAGA crowd would say "rigged", and if he was cleared they would say the justice system works as intended.

It's amusing to me that Trump, according to himself, is the best at everything and no one ever gets the best of him. In every circumstance, no one else has ever done it as well or has had the amazing numbers that he does. And yet Trump shouts that Biden (with dementia, mind you) is the one who has been doing all these awful things to him...able to steal an election from Trump, get multiple indictments against him, and have him unanimously convicted of all counts.

I'm going to make a prediction: The Hunter Biden trial is starting now, and I think I can foretell what the MAGA response will be. If he is convicted they will say we have the greatest justice system in the word and it worked exactly as intended. If he is acquitted they will say that the malevolent Biden (again, with dementia) was able to orchestrate the justice system and the jury was rigged to provide an acquittal.

What specific felony was Trump found guilty of? Whose testimony did the conviction depend on? A surprisingly balanced article on the issue: https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/trump-conviction-new-york-da-bragg-justice-20240531.html

Ken - not sure which postings you are drawing your conclusions from. I don't see anyone saying "jurors could reach a unanimous verdict by any means possible." They had to vote and they had to find guilty. That's what happened. And based on the prosecution's shambolic case, the judge's tilted administration and instruction, the jury could hardly have found differently.

From far more learned minds, particularly even-headed Andrew McCarthy, Bragg did not specify in the indictment what the "other crime" was. This is central to my point that to have some sense of justice for one's day in court, one should know what they're showing up to be accused of. Foundational principle of America's legal system. How would any one of us approach a summons to appear at trial and being told we will be charged with a felony, and we may find out which felony once the trial is underway?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/06/in-memory-of-justice/

I find Trump to be quite unsavory and am certainly not a MAGA member (not that you said I was - just being clear). If Trump had been found not guilty, I would not hold that the justice system worked as designed. Though grateful that Bragg failed (to discourage future abuses like this), I would yet decry the government's abuse of its prosecutorial power.

The secondary crimes are all spelled out here by Judge Merchan. I don't know how it can be any more clear.

Also for clarity, I'm not trying to say that the commenters on this thread are all MAGA people. But most of my friends and family are definitely MAGA people, and they are vigorously pushing the claims above.