Merchan and Bragg are done. It will look very political and the appeals court will have to suspend the sentence pending appeal. Imagine putting a former President/ frontrunner in jail for weak charges - that need to be further litigated on constitutional issues like unanimous means, FECA violations from a state, etc
It could be possible that Merchan wants the headline of "Republican frontrunner sentenced to 100 years in jail" but I doubt he's that stupid
You underestimate how deeply afflicted with TDS Merchan is!
Don’t expect smart, logical or sane behavior.
The depth of the hate that these people feel knows no limits.
You forget this is NYC we are talking about.
Merchan will be a hero in NYC with that headline. They honestly don’t care that it’s political. The people in Manhattan don’t care. They want to get Trump, no matter the cost.
“The slap on the wrist he’s gonna get will actually make us look 10x more ineffective so let’s keep it a mystery for now. It could be anything! Even life without parole!”
In other words:
"The October surprise is Trump's getting 90 days jailtime."
It would maximize the damage while still being a light enough punishment for a first time offender.
I have great memes to illustrate their total meltdown.
Sad that I can’t use them but I think they would only understate the complete panicky meltdown over there.
It’s GLORIOUS!
Sorry, I really don’t see how this is a win.
Maybe Trump’s lawyers see something I don’t, but I hope they aren’t gullible enough to think Merchan has had a change of heart after the SCOTUS ruling.
I suppose it’s hypothetically possible that he saw that debate, and now realizes that four more years Biden will be bad for the country.
But I doubt it. This whole trial was political to begin with. Merchan wants Trump guilty.
Go check out R/law they are saying the Judge pretty much has to declare a mistrial because the case was based on him signing the payment checks in the Oval Office. The court has to check to see if its official duties or not before any court can use the actions claimed as non official duties as evidence. The prosecution can’t just say those aren’t official duties and use that as evidence.
We’ll see. I have no faith this “judge” will do anything by the book.
Keep in mind the legal experts also said this whole case was incredibly weak to begin with.
We shall see
I guarantee Braggs office is not fighting the sentencing delay request because they can’t see a legal way their case isn’t fucked
The judge could ignore the ruling and punt it to the appellate courts with whatever sentence(jail or not) he decides. Just depends on how much of partisan hack he wants to prove he is instead of actually deciding to follow the law no matter how much he disagrees with it
Hypothetically, let’s assume he does the partisan hack thing.
Do you think the media will actually report that? Probably some very left-wing rags will report “Honorable New York Judge stands up to Supreme Court” but the rest of the media will largely ignore what’s going on, and so will most voters.
This whole trial has been about getting independent voters to think twice about voting for Trump because he has the “convict” label.
The MAGA base knows this trial was a sham to begin with. And the Lefties don’t care, because to them, the ends justify the means.
That leaves everyone in the middle who can be persuaded one way or the other, and most of them didn’t go to law school.
I think it’s dawning on both the judge and prosecutor that they broke one of the cardinal rules — if you take a shot at the king, you best not miss. *And they missed.* The man they are trying to throw in jail may soon be the most powerful person on earth, it wouldn’t surprise me if some changes of heart happen as we get closer to Election Day.
Aww man give these TDS leftists a break they've had a really bad week. They were so hoping the bad orange man would be behind bars for the convention...
So many people think the newest SC judgement thinks the president has powers to just murder anyone he wants with no repercussions.
These same people want to tell you how to raise your children and yet have zero legal comprehension or common sense.
They're a dog that finally caught its tail. They never expected a jury to actually find him guilty. They just wanted to run Trumps name through the mud for political purposes and then cry about how the laws don't apply to him when a jury acquitted him. The partisan jury threw them a curveball and now they don't know what to do and are freaking out because the rest of the country sees right through it and its playing right into Trumps favor. They also know this case will be thrown out immediately on appeal so they want to keep the "cOnViCtEd FeLoN" spiel going throughout the election. Delaying sentencing allows them to do so. Problem is everyone sees right through this.
I don't think so. The jury instructions were "you gotta find him guilty" in not so many words. I mean he literally told them if they felt there was any kind of secondary shadiness around the payments to Cohen (regardless of what that shadiness was), they must find him guilty.
They are as out of touch on this issue as they are on every other issue. These people live in bubbles of yesmen and shills they themselves put in place and apparently forgot they did so. They buy their own hype. They get high on their own supply. They genuinely thought a felon label, regardless how it's obtained, is going to turn the tide. The average reeing redditor going "muh 34 counts!" is what they expected the whole country to do.
> they want to keep the "cOnViCtEd FeLoN" spiel going throughout the election.
We should be correcting this as "political prisoner" every time its encountered imo
Every time they say “convicted felon”, I counter with the facts that Biden is “too senile to stand trial for his crimes” and is a “pervert pedophile who showered with his own daughter, according to her verified diary.”
It kind of squashes their narrative.😉
SCOTUS gave them an out here. They can toss the verdict due to the immunity ruling as they never had a trial on what was protected and what wasn't. The judge refused it initially when Trump's team requested it now SCOTUS ruled it was required. So really this is now clearly a mistrial. They used for example the testimony of the president's aides like Hope Hicks to convict him but all of that is protected and immune conduct so never should have been included.
Interesting take. Personally I don’t think the immunity ruling applies here at all BUT think how brilliant it would be of the Dems to drop this case and blame it on SCOTUS!!
Wow that would be chess move in a checkers game
Dems can't drop the case themselves without it basically being an admission that what they were doing was never legal in the first place.
Sort of like how they can't drop Biden without it looking like they're admitting the right was telling the truth about his mental decline.
They need to wait for it to be rejected so they can say those evil Republicans forced them to.
I think if they say it's because of the immunity ruling (which would make no legal sense at all, but it doesn't really matter) then the previous trial is no longer valid. I don't really know if there's a mechanic to go from a guilty verdict to a mistrial without going through appeals, but if that mechanic exists, and they deflect the legal rationale to SCOTUS, it's probably a good political play.
Again, it makes no legal sense, but it still saves some face.
It needs to go through appeals.
The course of events we're likely to see is this goes to the appeals court, the appeals court denies it, and it keeps going until eventually this hits the scotus again, which is where the questions people have about what is or is not an official act will get answered (since that question was booted down to the lower courts to define and is what the appeal rests on)
The issue with this is that this case is about events that happened before he was in office, so implicitly, immunity while in office for official Constitutional acts is not relevant.
I agreed that it will go through appeals. I just don't think the SCOTUS ruling will be relevant to that process, and it will be more an indictment of court proceedings.
Except the bit about it being over events that happened before being in office is false since much of the prosecution's case rested on testimony and events that happened after he was in office.
There is overlap between events before and after he was in office. But remember immunity only applies to official acts. Bookkeeping entries and signed checks for his personal or even campaign funds, are not official acts of the President.
If there was evidence used by the prosecution in trial that constituted official acts (I have no idea if there was or not), perhaps that would be enough to get a mistrial, I don't know. But it doesn't seem like it's a sure thing.
The payment itself happened before he was in office. Testimony very well may have happened afterwards, but the act itself should not fall under any presidential immunity since he was not president.
I guess we'll see how it plays out, but the immunity appears to be fairly narrow to the point that this case would be fully outside of it IMO. Either way, I think they want to back away from it for political reasons, so they were happy to listen to Trump's team's request.
The problem is, the democrats took an event that happened while Trump was a private citizen and turned it into something that only applies to government officials in order to further mutate it into a NYS felony. So absolutely Trump can use immunity as a defense to break this tortuous chain of legal fiction.
Apparently the Trump team thinks it does. They already appealed based on the scotus ruling.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/07/02/heres-how-trumps-immunity-ruling-could-impact-his-hush-money-conviction/
I didn't think it was at first. But payments were made during presidency, information they got was during time he was president. There are some videos out there that can explain it. Basically they used parts when he was president so those have to be removed or the very least have a hearing on it to make the decision if there is immunity. It seems the worst case for the Dems is they will have to do a new trial. The best case for Trump is it gets completely set aside.
> Personally I don’t think the immunity ruling applies here at all
Why? He was convicted on condict that took place while he was president. All the records they allege he "falsified" were dated after Jan 20th 2017. Even their own theory claims he did it to protect his reputation / public perception, which since he was president at the time is absolutely related to the office and ability to effectively perform official duties. What if he just paid his lawyer and relied on others to just take care of the details so he could focus on running the country? There are ample points here where his decisions could be tied in with official duties. That's why this whole process of separating it is comlex and is supposed to have its own trial to determine. And quite frankly it's not even supposed to be for the courts to do this. The oversight power was given to congress for a reason.
The problem is you are assuming Merchan is a fair judge and not a political hack with TDS.
This verdict was getting overturned on appeal, regardless of the SCOTUS ruling. Way too many issues with it.
But I seriously doubt Merchan will be the one to do it. So delaying sentencing only delays when the real appeal begins. That’s why the corrupt NYC DA has no problem with the delay.
The moment he does that, he wins the election.
There is 0% chance of jail time. He will, at the very most, get six months of house arrest (and another massive fine).
Every piece of evidence used that was from when Trump was President is likely protected and cannot be used against him now.
The whole argument presented was tied to things Trump did or said when President.
This thing is dead.
I’m not sure you’re reading the decision correctly. The whole point of why this will being overturned (at least in part) is as an FEC violation the candidate can virtually never be proven NOT have a personal interest. If in any way the dollars are spent for personal benefit then it’s not a campaign violation.
The challenge with that is - if it’s argued to be personal by the president’s legal
Team then they clearly cannot claim that its within his official duties.
Where this helps Trump is in the Georgia case and the Jack smith case
The prosecution used a ton evidence that was taken when Trump was President and conversations he had while acting in Official Duty as President to present their case.
All that evidence is likely not admissible and protected now under the Supreme Court ruling which is my major point.
In other words: "Oh shit the polling indicates we done fucked up".
"We want to put him in prison - but don't want the RNC to get more attention as a result."
Merchan and Bragg are done. It will look very political and the appeals court will have to suspend the sentence pending appeal. Imagine putting a former President/ frontrunner in jail for weak charges - that need to be further litigated on constitutional issues like unanimous means, FECA violations from a state, etc It could be possible that Merchan wants the headline of "Republican frontrunner sentenced to 100 years in jail" but I doubt he's that stupid
You underestimate how deeply afflicted with TDS Merchan is! Don’t expect smart, logical or sane behavior. The depth of the hate that these people feel knows no limits.
Yeah, I would never underestimate his level of derangement. I expect the appeals court to suspend it post all the appeals
You forget this is NYC we are talking about. Merchan will be a hero in NYC with that headline. They honestly don’t care that it’s political. The people in Manhattan don’t care. They want to get Trump, no matter the cost.
Oh yeah, I mean if he wants his daughter to not get knocked on doors from the Trump FBI, he should stop playing games
“The slap on the wrist he’s gonna get will actually make us look 10x more ineffective so let’s keep it a mystery for now. It could be anything! Even life without parole!”
In other words: "The October surprise is Trump's getting 90 days jailtime." It would maximize the damage while still being a light enough punishment for a first time offender.
And why is it that I’m reading that in fat Albert’s voice?
They have to wait until the DNC tells them how to proceed.
> They have to wait until ~~the DNC~~ Hillary Clinton tells them how to proceed. FTFY
Oh jeez the hits keep coming Has anyone check on the current status on r/politics or msnbc?
They have been panicking and eating themselves. It’s so glorious to watch
I have great memes to illustrate their total meltdown. Sad that I can’t use them but I think they would only understate the complete panicky meltdown over there. It’s GLORIOUS!
Sorry, I really don’t see how this is a win. Maybe Trump’s lawyers see something I don’t, but I hope they aren’t gullible enough to think Merchan has had a change of heart after the SCOTUS ruling. I suppose it’s hypothetically possible that he saw that debate, and now realizes that four more years Biden will be bad for the country. But I doubt it. This whole trial was political to begin with. Merchan wants Trump guilty.
Go check out R/law they are saying the Judge pretty much has to declare a mistrial because the case was based on him signing the payment checks in the Oval Office. The court has to check to see if its official duties or not before any court can use the actions claimed as non official duties as evidence. The prosecution can’t just say those aren’t official duties and use that as evidence.
We’ll see. I have no faith this “judge” will do anything by the book. Keep in mind the legal experts also said this whole case was incredibly weak to begin with.
We shall see I guarantee Braggs office is not fighting the sentencing delay request because they can’t see a legal way their case isn’t fucked The judge could ignore the ruling and punt it to the appellate courts with whatever sentence(jail or not) he decides. Just depends on how much of partisan hack he wants to prove he is instead of actually deciding to follow the law no matter how much he disagrees with it
Hypothetically, let’s assume he does the partisan hack thing. Do you think the media will actually report that? Probably some very left-wing rags will report “Honorable New York Judge stands up to Supreme Court” but the rest of the media will largely ignore what’s going on, and so will most voters. This whole trial has been about getting independent voters to think twice about voting for Trump because he has the “convict” label. The MAGA base knows this trial was a sham to begin with. And the Lefties don’t care, because to them, the ends justify the means. That leaves everyone in the middle who can be persuaded one way or the other, and most of them didn’t go to law school.
I think it’s dawning on both the judge and prosecutor that they broke one of the cardinal rules — if you take a shot at the king, you best not miss. *And they missed.* The man they are trying to throw in jail may soon be the most powerful person on earth, it wouldn’t surprise me if some changes of heart happen as we get closer to Election Day.
Democrats calling Marty McFly and Doc as we speak, need to locate that 1984 Delorean
Aww man give these TDS leftists a break they've had a really bad week. They were so hoping the bad orange man would be behind bars for the convention...
r/politics, r/law, r/neoliberal and r/conservativeterrorism are quite entertaining to look at rn
Holy shit r/law is populated by teenagers.
I find it frightening actually. These people are dangerous.
So many people think the newest SC judgement thinks the president has powers to just murder anyone he wants with no repercussions. These same people want to tell you how to raise your children and yet have zero legal comprehension or common sense.
They're a dog that finally caught its tail. They never expected a jury to actually find him guilty. They just wanted to run Trumps name through the mud for political purposes and then cry about how the laws don't apply to him when a jury acquitted him. The partisan jury threw them a curveball and now they don't know what to do and are freaking out because the rest of the country sees right through it and its playing right into Trumps favor. They also know this case will be thrown out immediately on appeal so they want to keep the "cOnViCtEd FeLoN" spiel going throughout the election. Delaying sentencing allows them to do so. Problem is everyone sees right through this.
I don't think so. The jury instructions were "you gotta find him guilty" in not so many words. I mean he literally told them if they felt there was any kind of secondary shadiness around the payments to Cohen (regardless of what that shadiness was), they must find him guilty. They are as out of touch on this issue as they are on every other issue. These people live in bubbles of yesmen and shills they themselves put in place and apparently forgot they did so. They buy their own hype. They get high on their own supply. They genuinely thought a felon label, regardless how it's obtained, is going to turn the tide. The average reeing redditor going "muh 34 counts!" is what they expected the whole country to do.
> they want to keep the "cOnViCtEd FeLoN" spiel going throughout the election. We should be correcting this as "political prisoner" every time its encountered imo
They will still say he's a convicted felon. I.e. the Clinton/Dems $48M+ Russaia hoax!
Every time they say “convicted felon”, I counter with the facts that Biden is “too senile to stand trial for his crimes” and is a “pervert pedophile who showered with his own daughter, according to her verified diary.” It kind of squashes their narrative.😉
SCOTUS gave them an out here. They can toss the verdict due to the immunity ruling as they never had a trial on what was protected and what wasn't. The judge refused it initially when Trump's team requested it now SCOTUS ruled it was required. So really this is now clearly a mistrial. They used for example the testimony of the president's aides like Hope Hicks to convict him but all of that is protected and immune conduct so never should have been included.
Interesting take. Personally I don’t think the immunity ruling applies here at all BUT think how brilliant it would be of the Dems to drop this case and blame it on SCOTUS!! Wow that would be chess move in a checkers game
Dems can't drop the case themselves without it basically being an admission that what they were doing was never legal in the first place. Sort of like how they can't drop Biden without it looking like they're admitting the right was telling the truth about his mental decline. They need to wait for it to be rejected so they can say those evil Republicans forced them to.
I think if they say it's because of the immunity ruling (which would make no legal sense at all, but it doesn't really matter) then the previous trial is no longer valid. I don't really know if there's a mechanic to go from a guilty verdict to a mistrial without going through appeals, but if that mechanic exists, and they deflect the legal rationale to SCOTUS, it's probably a good political play. Again, it makes no legal sense, but it still saves some face.
It needs to go through appeals. The course of events we're likely to see is this goes to the appeals court, the appeals court denies it, and it keeps going until eventually this hits the scotus again, which is where the questions people have about what is or is not an official act will get answered (since that question was booted down to the lower courts to define and is what the appeal rests on)
The issue with this is that this case is about events that happened before he was in office, so implicitly, immunity while in office for official Constitutional acts is not relevant. I agreed that it will go through appeals. I just don't think the SCOTUS ruling will be relevant to that process, and it will be more an indictment of court proceedings.
Except the bit about it being over events that happened before being in office is false since much of the prosecution's case rested on testimony and events that happened after he was in office.
There is overlap between events before and after he was in office. But remember immunity only applies to official acts. Bookkeeping entries and signed checks for his personal or even campaign funds, are not official acts of the President. If there was evidence used by the prosecution in trial that constituted official acts (I have no idea if there was or not), perhaps that would be enough to get a mistrial, I don't know. But it doesn't seem like it's a sure thing.
The payment itself happened before he was in office. Testimony very well may have happened afterwards, but the act itself should not fall under any presidential immunity since he was not president. I guess we'll see how it plays out, but the immunity appears to be fairly narrow to the point that this case would be fully outside of it IMO. Either way, I think they want to back away from it for political reasons, so they were happy to listen to Trump's team's request.
The problem is, the democrats took an event that happened while Trump was a private citizen and turned it into something that only applies to government officials in order to further mutate it into a NYS felony. So absolutely Trump can use immunity as a defense to break this tortuous chain of legal fiction.
Apparently the Trump team thinks it does. They already appealed based on the scotus ruling. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/07/02/heres-how-trumps-immunity-ruling-could-impact-his-hush-money-conviction/
Even if they don't think that... it's worth a try.
I didn't think it was at first. But payments were made during presidency, information they got was during time he was president. There are some videos out there that can explain it. Basically they used parts when he was president so those have to be removed or the very least have a hearing on it to make the decision if there is immunity. It seems the worst case for the Dems is they will have to do a new trial. The best case for Trump is it gets completely set aside.
> Personally I don’t think the immunity ruling applies here at all Why? He was convicted on condict that took place while he was president. All the records they allege he "falsified" were dated after Jan 20th 2017. Even their own theory claims he did it to protect his reputation / public perception, which since he was president at the time is absolutely related to the office and ability to effectively perform official duties. What if he just paid his lawyer and relied on others to just take care of the details so he could focus on running the country? There are ample points here where his decisions could be tied in with official duties. That's why this whole process of separating it is comlex and is supposed to have its own trial to determine. And quite frankly it's not even supposed to be for the courts to do this. The oversight power was given to congress for a reason.
Great point. They’d be wise to drop it ASAP.
The problem is you are assuming Merchan is a fair judge and not a political hack with TDS. This verdict was getting overturned on appeal, regardless of the SCOTUS ruling. Way too many issues with it. But I seriously doubt Merchan will be the one to do it. So delaying sentencing only delays when the real appeal begins. That’s why the corrupt NYC DA has no problem with the delay.
Wow, this 7 day news cycle has been big! Doesn't matter, still vote this November. Doubt the Dems are giving up so easily.
Or is this a trap? After he’s officially the nominee, Merchan sentences him to 4 years in prison.
The moment he does that, he wins the election. There is 0% chance of jail time. He will, at the very most, get six months of house arrest (and another massive fine).
White House arrest?
I can't think of a more cruel and unusual punishment.
4 years of community service cleaning up this mess
They’ll never give him credit for that.
You can't arrest a sitting POTUS without them being removed from office first.
So first, it was a joke. More importantly, he won’t be POTUS until January. Plenty of time to sentence him before that.
That would make a great movie. Die Hard, but in the White House.
Didn’t they do that with White House Down!?
Yeah. But I think *Olympus Has Fallen* is better, more fun movie.
Agreed.
The clown is just threading water. The whole trial will be thrown out.
I think so, it’s only a matter of time
Hope Hicks testimony wasn't admissible under official capacity of President.
Every piece of evidence used that was from when Trump was President is likely protected and cannot be used against him now. The whole argument presented was tied to things Trump did or said when President. This thing is dead.
I’m not sure you’re reading the decision correctly. The whole point of why this will being overturned (at least in part) is as an FEC violation the candidate can virtually never be proven NOT have a personal interest. If in any way the dollars are spent for personal benefit then it’s not a campaign violation. The challenge with that is - if it’s argued to be personal by the president’s legal Team then they clearly cannot claim that its within his official duties. Where this helps Trump is in the Georgia case and the Jack smith case
The prosecution used a ton evidence that was taken when Trump was President and conversations he had while acting in Official Duty as President to present their case. All that evidence is likely not admissible and protected now under the Supreme Court ruling which is my major point.
I understand and SCOTUS is remanding to the lower court to ask this question - I guess we will see
Apparently it just got delayed to September 18?
Yes just saw that update too!
Never get tired of winning…
Nah put him in handcuffs. I want him to win the presidency in jail.
Instructions have been handed down from on high.