Constitutional expert warns New York state justice system ‘walking into infamy’
The judicial system in the state of New York once was “considered the premier legal system in the country.”
Not anymore, according to constitutional expert “Jonathan Turley, a Fox contributor and Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
He cited the sentencing of President-elect Donald Trump on Friday on wild business records claims by Juan Merchan, a sentence of no jail or probation or fines under a “discharge” standard.
“With the sentencing of Donald Trump on Friday, the final verdict on the New York criminal trial of the president-elect is in. The verdict is not the one that led to no jail or probation for the incoming president. Acting Justice Juan Merchan has brought down the gavel on the New York legal system as a whole,” Turley explained.
“Once considered the premier legal system in the country, figures like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Justices Arthur F. Engoron and Juan Merchan have caused the system to be weaponized for political purposes.
“Trump will walk away from this trial and into the White House in less than two weeks, but the New York system will walk into infamy after this day. The case has long been denounced by objective legal observers, including intense Trump critics, as a legal absurdity. Even CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig denounced the case as legally flawed and unprecedented while Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., simply called it total ‘b—s–t.'”
He explained the New York system was unable to “handle the truth.”
It was a “case based on a non-crime. DA Bragg took a long-dead misdemeanor and zapped it back into life with a novel and unfounded theory,” he explained.
In fact, Bragg, who campaigned for office on the idea of prosecuting Trump, for something, anything, claimed that a “long-dead misdemeanor” actually was a live felony “by using federal violations that were never charged, let alone tried.”
Then the judge, who has been known to financially support Democrats, and whose daughter was raising money for Democrats off her father’s courtroom rulings against Trump, joined in.
Merchan “not only allowed those charges to be brought to trial but then added layers of reversible errors in the effort to bag Trump at any cost,” Turley explained.
In the court of public opinion, the New York agenda failed, as Trump got 3.6 million New York votes, or 42.7%, in the 2024 election.
“Many polls showed that the public saw the Manhattan criminal case for what it was: raw lawfare targeting a leading political opponent. The election itself felt like the largest verdict in history as citizens rejected the political, legal and media establishments in one of our nation’s most historic elections,” Turley explained.
He said the state system still has a chance to redeem itself, but few “are holding their breath.”
It still could toss James’s “equally absurd civil lawsuit against Trump. Despite judges expressing skepticism over Engoron’s use of a law to impose a grotesque $455 million in fines and interest, we are still waiting for a decision.”
He said the Merchan agenda now will end up before the Supreme Court itself, after the judge’s “lack of seriousness in the case” was on display.
In the case, Bragg claimed business reporting errata by Trump’s companies amounted to felonies, even though they ordinarily would have been misdemeanors for which the statute of limitations had expired.
Bragg said they were felonies because they were in pursuit of some other, unidentified, crime. In fact, jurors failed to identify that crime, and Merchan inexplicably said their verdict didn’t have to be unanimous in the case that was just one prong of Democrats’ multi-jurisdiction lawfare campaign, a failed effort to use various created civil and criminal cases to keep him from running for president again.
Bragg brought to court, and Merchan allowed, salacious testimony from a former porn star and a discredited lawyer in order to convince jurors in the leftist enclave of Manhattan, which repeatedly has voted by vast majorities against Trump, to convict Trump of 34 counts.
The issue was that Trump’s lawyer paid the porn star for silence about an alleged affair both denied happened. The payments made to the lawyer were labeled as legal expenses.