Top legal scholars and critics expressed utter disgust and disbelief over the bias and injustice they say unfolded in the courtroom in the business records trial of former President Donald Trump in Manhattan.
Harvard scholar Alan Dershowitz said it was a “spectacle” far worse than anything he has seen anywhere in the world, including in corrupt countries such as China, Russia, and Ukraine, writing in a New York Post op-ed Tuesday:
[I]n my 60 years as a lawyer and law professor, I have never seen a spectacle such as the one I observed sitting in the front row of the courthouse yesterday.
Alan Dershowitz (Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“The judge in Donald Trump’s trial was an absolute tyrant, though he appeared to the jury to be a benevolent despot. He seemed automatically to be ruling against the defendant at every turn,” he wrote about Judge Juan Merchan, after sitting in the courtroom and witnessing the proceedings.
Dershowitz recalled Merchan’s treatment of the Trump defense team’s witness Robert Costello, who was a former lawyer for Democrat District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “star witness” Michael Cohen.
He said Merchan “went berserk” after he raised his eyebrows at one of his rulings and cleared the entire courtroom, including of journalists.
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Dershowitz said he witnessed “one of the most remarkable wrong-headed biases I have ever seen”:
The judge actually threatened to strike all of Costello’s testimony if he raised his eyebrows again. That of course would have been unconstitutional because it would have denied the defendant his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses and to raise a defense. It would have punished the defendant for something a witness was accused of doing.
He said if the judge had struck Costello’s testimony, it would have been “utterly improper and unlawful.”
“The judge’s threat was absolutely outrageous, unethical, unlawful and petty,” he added.
Judge Juan Merchan, left, castigates witness Robert Costello about his “decorum” in the courtroom in Manhattan criminal court on May 20, 2024, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
Gregg Jarrett, a former defense attorney and current Fox News legal analyst, said the trial bore “no resemblance” to the “cherished constitutional promise” of the right to a fair trial.
Jarrett said:
District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s absurd case made a mockery of our legal system. Judge Juan Merchan compounded the injustice by dismantling the principles of due process that every defendant deserves. His rulings from the bench consistently favored the prosecution and foreclosed Trump’s lawyers from presenting a bona fide defense that would be permitted in any other courtroom.
…
Working in tandem, Bragg and Merchan proved they have little respect for the rule of law or the rights of the accused. This is not an impartial tribunal. It’s an Orwellian show trial with a preordained outcome. There’s no presumption of innocence, only the expectation of guilt.
Jarrett argued that Merchan allowed Cohen and another witness, porn actress Stormy Daniels, “unfettered latitude to trash Trump in court.”
“Gratuitous, sordid details and rank speculation meant to prejudice the jury were eagerly welcomed by Merchan,” Jarrett wrote.
Stormy Daniels testifies on the witness stand as a promotional image for one of her shows featuring an image of Trump is displayed on monitors in Manhattan criminal court on May 9, 2024, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
“But when Costello was sworn in and began to accurately portray his former client as a con artist who lied to the jury about the pivotal issues in the case, the judge shut him down faster than a New York minute,” he wrote.
Jarrett also slammed Merchan’s restrictions on the defense team’s other planned witness, Brad Smith, a former Federal Elections Commission commissioner and campaign finance law expert. Merchan’s restrictions were so excessive that the defense decided they could not use him, Smith posted on X after he was not called to testify.
Jarrett said Merchan’s decision to restrict Smith empowered Cohen to “misinterpret federal campaign laws over which he has no knowledge or expertise.”
“But Merchan would not permit the defense to call a qualified expert — the former head of the Federal Election Commission — to properly explain to the jury the true meaning of election statutes and how Daniel’s non-disclosure agreement did not qualify as an unlawful campaign contribution,” Jarrett said.
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House Judiciary GOP“Without the expert’s testimony, jurors will now be left to make an uninformed guess. Which is precisely what Bragg and Merchan are counting on,” he said.
Fox News show host Sean Hannity said after Merchan’s outburst, “Joe Biden-donor Judge Merchan has been against Donald Trump from day one. Now he sees what has happened in his courtroom. And now he’s trying to save Bragg’s absurd case that has fallen apart against Trump and try and get it over the finish line”
He added:
Make no mistake Judge Juan Merchan is doing now everything he can do to save Alvin Bragg and get Donald Trump — throw[ing] a lifeline after lifeline after lifeline. Don’t forget the devout Democrat not only donated to Biden, his daughter is a political operative, a democratic operative who reportedly raised millions from this very case, but no recusal from Judge Merchan. It’s no greater dream for this New York Democrat than to impugn Donald Trump.
He noted Merchan was “not picked at random.”
“He was hand-selected for his experience in previous anti-Trump cases,” he said. “This case is not about law and justice. It’s about keeping Trump in a courtroom, smearing him in public hoping for a conviction based solely on politics.”
The legal experts also argued that Merchan and Bragg have violated the Smith Amendment by never outlining clearly what “crime” Trump has allegedly committed.
Judge Juan M. Merchan poses in his chambers in New York, March 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Bragg has put forth a novel and dubious legal theory that Trump had violated a New York state law against falsifying business records by classifying an alleged campaign expense as a legal expense, and that the falsification of records violation — which would normally be a misdemeanor — should be upgraded to a felony because the falsification of records was an attempt to hide some other “crime” of trying to influence the 2016 elections.
Jarrett ripped Merchan and Bragg for never clarifying what that second “crime” is. He wrote:
Throughout the trial, the judge enabled the prosecution to conceal the so-called ‘mysterious crime’ that somehow elevates an expired misdemeanor into felonious conduct. So, here we are at the end of the trial, both sides have rested their respective cases, and closing arguments are set to begin next Tuesday. Yet, we are no closer to understanding what underlying crime Trump supposedly committed. It’s a farce.
Jarrett continued:
No capable or impartial judge would have permitted such an egregious violation of the Sixth Amendment. Every defendant has the fundamental right ‘to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation’ against him. But Bragg never abided by that constitutional guarantee. Even worse, Merchan let him get away with it — the same way he allowed his local court to be misused to enforce a federal law over which he has no authority or jurisdiction.
Hannity noted that “the only real crime detailed during the case involve not Donald Trump, but Michael Cohen, their star witness stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump Organization.”
Jarrett also slammed the restrictive gag order on Trump throughout the trial, which banned Trump from commenting on Cohen and other witnesses, while Cohen were free to trash Trump the whole time.
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The damage the case has done to the judiciary will stretch “well beyond the verdict,” Jarrett predicted.
“The corrupt actions of the prosecutor and the transparent prejudice of the judge constitute moral failings that will inevitably breed cynicism about democratic government,” he wrote, adding:
The concept of a level playing field was relegated to a bad joke. Instead, Bragg and Merchan colluded to poison the trial by indoctrinating the jury with false information and phony testimony. At every turn, they attempted to brainwash the panel into believing that criminal activity was afoot despite evidence to the contrary.
In reality, none of the essential elements of the alleged crimes in the indictment have been met by prosecutors. There is no credible evidence that Trump engineered or even knew about booking entries by accountants that were not false at all. Nor is there any plausible evidence that he willfully violated campaign laws that were not violations at all. Where is the fraud that prosecutors argued in their opening statement? Like Bigfoot, it’s a fictitious missing link in the case.
“This has always been a trial in search of an imaginary crime and a disgraceful charade,” he said. “This case has reasonable doubt written all over it. But the jury has been fed a litany of lies and deceptions by District Attorney Alvin Bragg that were endorsed by presiding Judge Juan Merchan. Together, they have trampled on the rights of the accused through the tyranny of mendacity and unchecked power.”
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