I think that it was the great Miranda Devine, she of the “laptop from hell” fame, who first called the world’s attention to the latest wrinkle in the long-running “Get Trump” extravaganza in New York. Anyway, I first heard about it from her post on X Friday. “If this is legit,” she wrote, commenting on a letter purportedly from Acting Justice Juan Merchan to Donald Trump’s Counsel and the Manhattan DA’s office, “it should wipe out Trump’s conviction.”
Eh, what?
At issue was someone who (again, purportedly) posted on the Court’s public Facebook page a message from one “Michael Anderson,” a self-described “professional shitposter,” who claimed to have inside information that Trump was about to be convicted. “My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted. Thank you folks for all your hard work!” The comment, Merchan wrote, was posted on May 29, a day before Trump’s guilty verdict rolled off the tongues of Merchan’s jury.
For a brief moment, the internet was ablaze with speculative comment, elated or anguished depending on the ideological coloration of the poster. If it turned out that a juror had disobeyed his orders and spilled the beans about the verdict to someone who then posted the bulletin on Facebook, would that constitute grounds for a mistrial? After all, “prejudice to the defendant” is one of the stipulated grounds for a mistrial. CPL § 280.10 of the statute says, in part, that “the court must declare a mistrial” “upon motion of the defendant, when there occurs during the trial an error or legal defect in the proceedings, or conduct inside or outside the courtroom, which is prejudicial to the defendant and deprives him of a fair trial.”
Is that what we have here? It’s hard to say. The original Facebook post was removed. As far as I know, the juror in question has not been identified—and that’s assuming that a juror did inform “Michael Anderson” of the verdict. Did the post result in “substantial and irreparable prejudice to the defendant’s case?”
And leaving that question to one side, who would it be who would declare the mistrial even if such prejudice were irrefragable? Why, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, Acting Justice, New York Supreme Court, that’s who. Has there ever, outside the annals of Tammany Hall, been in American history a more conflicted jurist than Merchan? He is certainly up towards the top of that rogues’ gallery.
If you’re a judge, you are forbidden from making political contributions. But Merchan, who was “randomly selected” to preside over three Trump-related cases, has made contributions to several Democrat causes and politicians, including Joe Biden. The contributions are all small. But as Andy McCarthy pointed out, you don’t make small-dollar contributions to affect an election. You do it to show that “you’re on the team.”
If you are a judge, you are supposed to take special care to avoid conflicts of interest and even the “appearance of impropriety.” But Merchan’s daughter Loren, president of the Chicago-based progressive consulting firm “Authentic Campaigns,” has raised millions for such Democratic figures as Adam Schiff, who took the lead in bringing articles of impeachment against Donald Trump. Rep. Elise Stefanik brought an ethics complaint against Merchan but that, predictably, has gone exactly nowhere.
Why do I say “predictably?” Because in Democratic redoubts such as New York and Washington, D.C., the fix is always in. They are, as a friend pointed out to me, run like casinos. In the long run, the house always wins. The whole-of-government judicial assault against Donald Trump has abrogated several of his Constitutional rights, not least those outlined in the Sixth Amendment. “In all criminal proceedings,” that brief Amendment reads, in part, “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State . . . and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.” But Judge Merchan declined to tell Trump (or the jury) exactly what crime he was accused of and forbade his counsel from bringing several favorable witnesses to testify.
The travesty that was New York v. Trump has been subject to reams of expert analysis and microscopic dissection, as much by public-spirited anti-Trump commentators as by those on the pro-Trump side of the docket.
Judge Merchan will simply skate over this embarrassing Facebook post, just as he skated over the rights of the defendant, Donald J. Trump. The house always wins in the end. Applied to the rule of law, that means that the regime party’s interests always take precedence over the rule of law.
Rather, the “rule of law,” just as Lenin taught us, is simply whatever the party demands. For the dedicated communist (or Democrat progressive), the very idea of “impartiality” is a bourgeois construct, a MAGA (or ultra-MAGA) fiction, and therefore eminently dispensable. Juan Merchan and his alter-ego District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, have just earned themselves a footnote in the dismal annals of legal depravity. Do not, however, expect any smidgeon of remorse to trouble their consciences. Those presiding over the house accounts do not have time for such sentimentalities. Ideological conformity and the power and perquisites such conformity brings are their heart’s desires, their existential cynosures.
The house always wins. That’s what matters—fairness, impartiality, and the very idea of a non-partisan application of the law be damned.
Welcome to the end of the republic.
Rather, the “rule of law,” just as Lenin taught us, is simply whatever the party demands. For the dedicated communist (or Democrat progressive), the very idea of “impartiality” is a bourgeois construct…
And so, we are soon to discover, are free and fair elections. As I’ve been saying ad nauseum for four years, people who steal presidential elections don’t lose subsequent elections. But we will see soon enough.
It will be interesting to observe the reaction of those blinded by normalcy bias when the reality of home-grown despotism finally pierces their stubborn denial.
The idea behind the perpetuation of a mistrial, which could be real, imagined or deliberate, has nothing to do with the application of Constitutional justice nor does it have anything to do with rigging a new trial to discovery new felonies. After all that was already maximally acheived. So what is it about?
The neoliberal Communist left loves persecutions of rich capitalists and, as typical psycho sadists, they can’t get enough of voyaging, via their imaginations, with a lust for what amounts to more than pornography or even a repeat performance of what they would love to turn into a musical to run for a decade in the NYC theater district. However, time is running short and the election will soon be upon us and they do not fare well in the polls. Consequently, most of all, they want Trump off of his campaign trail where he can do more damage to their propaganda apparatus with only one rally than they can, by full throat propagandizing with the help of CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times and the Washington Post, for a month. A new trial and an additional 6 to 8 weeks of court time is what the fascist NY government has in mind. Short of jail time, to obstruct Trump’s campaign strategy, the only other consideration is to do what Robert Kennedy Jr. has been speaking about regarding his uncle and father.
The time is past due for the chicken SCOTUS to prevent NYS from denying the opposition candidate protection from the US fascist government and to prevent the installed powers from stealing another election so that the other 49 states gets the opportunity to choose the president and not just the fascist State of NY.
I agree with both Maximus-Cassius and Task, but would also offer that, right now, Donald Trump might be thinking-------with enemies like this, who needs friends? Democrat over reach, and the front page, over the top coverage has been the greatest boon to his campaign since similar antics in 2015/16.
The continued attacks by the Left grew his constituency by some 10 million votes in 2020. The good Lord only knows how many more he will gain in 2024. Reading the polls and statements from former Democrat voters of all racial stripes, we re witnessing the greatest backfire of propaganda in political history.
The Department of Indoctrination and Propaganda (circa 1979), camouflaged as an Education bureaucracy, although sufficiently infiltrated, has not yet managed to fool all of the people all of the time. I totally agree with Max regarding an election heist coup. That’s for certain but what is not for certain is the public reaction since it has already been bitten once by the unconstitutional, feral, mad dog, that defeated MAGA at the drop boxes while the guardians looked the other way. This is why this election is sure to be associated with violence via the Apostles of Chaos and Anarchy (BLM and ANTIFA). They can’t win any other way unless they kill our Champion.
The risk of the time honored tradition of assassination by losers is always with us. And for anyone wondering if the Left is stupid enough to try----the answer is yes. And the patsy involved would surely be a product of the Department of Indoctrination and Propaganda. But somehow, I don’t think it will happen. I can’t really tell you why I think this, because right now the reasons are just percolating around in my gut. I can say, part of it is biblical. I don’t have much more than that.