It’s hard to tell if local Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan will receive compensation beyond adoring fandom by the New York gliteratti for this cockeyed prosecution of Donald Trump. What we do know for sure is that on Friday when he sentences the president-elect, there will be no orange jumpsuits involved.
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For those who have forgotten, this “case” against Trump is a Frankenstein’s monster contrived in Norm Eisen’s and other lawfare queens’ labs. The case involves time-barred — lapsed — state misdemeanors grafted onto a federal elections case, and spiced with 2017 payments to a former mattress actress for the purpose of stealing the 2016 election. Got that?
Trump ally and Article III Project founder Mike Davis says Merchan’s actions will earn the “partisan, corrupt, and dangerous” judge an investigation.
The Trump 47 Justice Department must put partisan, corrupt, and dangerous Democrat Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan in prison.
18 U.S.C § 241
Not doing this, according to Merchan’s own words, “would . . . cause immeasurable damage to the citizenry’s confidence in the Rule of Law.” https://t.co/BuJykZ7WtZ
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) January 5, 2025
At the time, constitutional law professor and commentator Jonathan Turley called the charges that had been previously turned down by the Feds and New York’s state district attorney “outrageous and legally pathetic.” And, yes, they are. The trial was an embarrassment. The gag order put on Trump and his team was worse.
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Related: The Trial Still in Search of a Crime
But there’s a silver lining here. After Judge Merchan takes the last twirl of his star-turn for this embarrassment when he sentences incoming President Hitler on Friday, Trump finally has a chance to appeal it.
Under New York law, a person may not appeal a conviction until after sentencing.
Of course, this means that the news media will use the sentencing to label Trump a “convicted felon” on his inauguration day but what can you do? They’ve been inaccurately calling him that since the verdict in May.
The Hill is out with my column on the scheduled sentencing of Trump by Judge Merchan in Manhattan. At 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 10, 2025, the curtain will fall on the longest off-Broadway performance of “Hamlet” in history… https://t.co/ZaMeJMg4cK
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) January 4, 2025
The ethical lapses of Judge Merchan are legion. His daughter is a Democrat political operative whose company made millions of dollars touting her father’s trial. Her boss was the leader of the faux political group “White Dudes for Kamala.” Trump could say nothing about these obvious conflicts of interest because of the outrageous gag order put on the presidential candidate. Neat arrangement, huh?
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The case was declined for prosecution by the Southern District of New York DOJ office and even by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office. But the lawfare crowd reanimated the case into this Frankenstein’s monster. Merchan refused to recuse himself. An election-year gotcha case was born. Multiple reversible errors during the trial were ignored, including allowing individual jury members to choose their own felony on which to “Get Trump.” And as day follows night, a Manhattan jury convicted Trump.
Trump receives no presidential immunity in the case because, unlike Jack Smith’s federal cases, the local judge ruled that Trump’s actions involved in this case were not official acts, though he’d already been elected.
Merchan denied the president-elect a motion to dismiss the case.
Turley says that Merchan’s order on sentencing indicates that he might “follow the advice of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and suspend sentencing for four years.” He calls that “a terrible option.”
As some of us noted after the verdict, this type of case would often result in an unconditional discharge or a sentence without jail time. That prediction became more likely after Trump was reelected in November. Limits on Trump’s freedom or liberty would likely result in a fast reversal, and Merchan knew it.
The next best thing was to suspend proceedings and leave Trump in a type of legal suspended animation. Merchan would hold a leash on the president as a criminal defendant awaiting punishment.
But the whole point of a trophy-kill case is the trophy itself. Merchan will not disappoint. While indicating that he is inclined to a sentence without jail or probation, he will finalize the conviction of Trump just 10 days before his inauguration. In so doing, he will formally label the president-elect a convicted felon.
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Turley wrote, “One could call that passively aggressive, but it seems quite actively aggressive.”
At the very least.
