Both sides have now rested in the latest Get Trump By Any Means Necessary lawfare effort in New York City. But before the dust settles and the Manhattan jury finds Cheeto-Man guilty, there are a few curious moves made by Judge Juan Merchan that need a bit more going-over, such as his heretofore unknown expertise in federal elections law.
It’s already been established that the judge is unfamiliar with the constitutionality of gagging a defendant so he can’t defend himself in the court of public opinion, as I explained in one of my many pieces about this issue entitled, “Trump Just Made Huge Point About ‘Unconstitutional’ Gag Order in His NYC Case.” But such a sweet move is hard to resist when your daughter can fundraise off of Judge Daddy’s trial and denigrate Orange Man while working for the Democrat money-raising operation and never expect a retort from the defendant. Ditto for the prosecutors. Trump’s lawyers appealed the gag order, lost, and are appealing now to a higher court so it doesn’t happen to anybody else. This indeed may be one of the biggest pieces of evidence to show this trial for the election interference it is.
Comes now the understanding that the judge fancies himself an expert in federal elections law. He is a man of many talents, for besides this heretofore unknown federal elections expertise, Merchan is also an expert in legal surgery.
To wit: Merchan took his legal scalpel to do surgery on Team Trump’s federal elections law expert’s allowable testimony, and the only thing left behind was a patch of Brad Smith’s hair. Team Trump didn’t bother putting the box of hair on the stand.
The battle over Smith has been going on since pretrial motions, as I explained in a previous piece entitled, “Trump Isn’t the Only One Silenced at His Trial.”
There was a logical explanation. Honest. The judge told the defense that he didn’t want to confuse the jurors’ understanding of federal election law with an expert on federal elections law and the judge’s own interpretation of federal elections law. Gee, we wouldn’t want to confuse jurors with accurate information, now would we?
Related: Spoiler Alert: Prosecutors’ Tortuous Trump Case Is ‘Confusing’ to Nearly Everyone
So while Team Trump wrote down yet another reversible error in its Lizzo-sized binder of reversible errors, the judge explained “that allowing Smith to testify expansively on that topic would supplant the judge’s role to determine what the law is,” Politico reported.
And we can’t have an expert countermand the judge who was chosen not in a randomized selection process, but explicitly to hear this case. It just might ruin everything.
And we don’t have to wonder what animated the judge’s decision, according to Stephen Miller, the founder of America First Legal and former Trump White House top aide. He wrote on X:
The Biden-donor judge in NYC ruled that Trump’s defense *cannot* have expert witness Brad Smith — former FEC head— testify that using private funds to resolve a private legal matter is not and could never be a campaign finance violation (meaning there is no crime).The fake campaign finance violation is the entire foundation of the phony case (the felony that gets Bragg around the statute of limitations for his bogus misdemeanor booking charge). Under Bragg’s “interpretation,” Trump would have been *obligated* to use campaign funds for private business expenses. Had Trump done so, DOJ would have prosecuted Trump for NOT using private funds. All of this lunacy underscores a single point: this is raw communist political persecution of Joe Biden’s opponent.
If you’re a tin pot despot in a third world s***hole country, you’d see what Joe Biden’s DOJ is doing to Trump and think, Hey, I’m not so bad.
For his part, Smith went to X and laid out his thoughts about whether any NDA payment to adult contortionist extortionist Stormy Daniels were campaign expenditures.
Smith explained the state wants to leave the jurors with the idea that Michael Cohen’s guilty pleas to two counts of FEC violations in exchange for a shorter prison sentence shows there was illegality there that extends to Trump.
What Smith would have said, had he been allowed, was that the FEC and the Department of Justice refused to bring charges because the acts weren’t illegal.
Bragg’s theory hinges on the claim that Trump tried to influence an election through “unlawful means.” To do that, he’ll have to show that Trump violated the Federal Election Campaign Act. But since neither the FEC nor DOJ sued Trump, he’s got to show it on his own evidence.
If that’s the case, isn’t it entirely relevant (not dispositive, but relevant) to the jury’s fact-finding on that question that neither DOJ nor FEC chose to prosecute? But Judge Merchan won’t allow that in.
The upshot is that Michael Cohen was the only one in the trial who was allowed to testify about the legality of the NDA payments.
He will, though, allow in numerous references to Cohen’s guilty plea, and allow Cohen to testify as to how he thinks he and Trump violated FECA–though it appears that Cohen is a dunce about campaign finance laws. This, he admonishes the jury, is solely for “context.” Right.
Apparently, that’s the “context” the judge wants the jury to understand before they go back to deliberate this case.
The jury will get the case next week sometime. Merchan told jurors to come back next Tuesday.