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Gov. Abbott sides with Greta Van Susteren: Desperate judge ‘willing to break the law’ to convict Trump

May 26, 2024 | | Print Article

A ruling from the presiding judge in the former president’s New York criminal trial smacked of desperation to two well-known judicial experts who contended effort to “get Trump” included a willingness “to break the law to do so.”

While considerable focus was getting placed on former President Donald Trump’s one-time “fixer” Michael Cohen flailing as a key witness for the prosecution, it appeared to some that Judge Juan Merchan may have been orchestrating his own fix for the looming outcome of the New York case to satisfy the left’s political narrative.

Specifically, Newsmax host Greta Van Susteren called out a ruling from Merchan that contended while the jury must be unanimous in agreeing Trump falsified documents to land a conviction in the alleged hush money trial, they didn’t have to agree on what alleged crime had been committed that was supposed to be covered up, be it an alleged tax crime or election crime.

Saturday, the former criminal defense and civil trial lawyer that transitioned to corporate media as a judicial analyst blasted the judge as simply wrong and asserted, “This is wrong-jury must be unanimous on every element (it can’t be 4 believe one predicate and 8 believe another); judge is wrong.”

In support of her take, Van Susteren shared text from the 1999 Supreme Court ruling of Richardson v. United States that detailed, “The jury must be unanimous as to the ‘series’ of underlying offense in a CCE prosecution. That is, the jury must unanimously agree not only that the defendant committed some ‘continuing series of violations,’ but also about which specific ‘violations’ make up that continuing series.”

Her conclusion on Merchan’s ruling was backed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) whose own legal career had seen him climb the judicial ranks to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court of Texas prior to his election as the Attorney General of Texas.

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Not long after Van Susteren posted the text of Richardson, the Lone Star State executive boiled down the details to suggest that a conviction against Trump under the outlined circumstances would be bound to be overturned by appeal.

“The judge in the Trump case may be inserting ‘reversible error’ into the jury charge,” wrote Abbott. “They so desperately want to convict Trump, they are willing to break the law to do so.”

The accord from the governor and the Newsmax host aligned with the widely held belief that the president was the victim of political persecution, chiefly because he had decided to seek another term in the White House. To that end, it was readily expected that a conviction of Trump would sway the GOP leader’s support and any effort to appeal and overturn such an outcome would be unlikely to conclude prior to the November election.

As one supporter surmised on X, “This disgraceful ‘judge’ wants a ‘conviction’ that will last thru the election, only to be successfully overturned on appeal AFTER the election, because even he knows his rulings are in error & unlawful. They just want to tarnish President [Trump] with a bogus verdict.”

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Kevin Haggerty
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