Donald Trump trial’s four “compelling problems” outlined by legal analyst

Following former President Donald Trump‘s guilty verdict in his criminal hush money case, attorney and legal analyst Jonathan Turley outlined his thoughts on four “compelling problems” in the trial on Saturday.

In a case brought forward by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a New York jury on Thursday found Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels by Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen shortly before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels alleged she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, which he denies. Trump has maintained his innocence and says the case is politically motivated. His legal team says they will fight the case, which will include an appeal, if necessary.

In an opinion piece published by The Hill on Saturday titled, “Bragg’s thrill kill in Manhattan could prove short-lived on appeal,” Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School who has been highly critical of Bragg’s office prosecuting the former president, discussed how “some of the most compelling problems can be divided into four groups,” including the judge, charges, evidence and instructions.

Newsweek has reached out to Bragg’s office via email for comment.

The Judge

In his opinion piece, the attorney pointed out problems with Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the case, as he wrote that Merchan was “hand-picked for this case rather than randomly selected” as he took aim at the judge for “a record of highly biased decisions.”

He added: “This is only the latest in a litany of Trump cases where Merchan has meted out tough rulings against Trump and his organization. In watching Merchan in the courtroom, I was shocked by his rulings as at times incomprehensible and conflicted.”

The Charges

In regards to the charges, Turley wrote that Bragg’s office was unclear with them, referencing federal election laws the Department of Justice (DOJ) declined to charge Trump with.

“With no federal prosecution, Bragg decided to use an unprecedented criminal theory not only to zap a dead misdemeanor into life (after the expiration of the statute of limitation) but to allow him to try violations of not only federal election law but also federal taxation violations. In other words, the Justice Department would not prosecute federal violations, so Bragg effectively did it in state court,” he wrote.

Trump was charged with 34 counts of first-degree falsification of business records, with the prosecution laying out the charges in a chart that jurors saw several times during the trial.

The Evidence

Turley continued to point out witness testimony as part of the evidence factor, citing Merchan for allowing the plea agreement of Cohen to be introduced.

“Merchan was equally conflicted in his other orders. For example, he allowed the prosecutors to introduce the plea agreement of Michael Cohen to federal election violations as well as the non-prosecution agreement of David Pecker on such violations. However, it was allowed only for the purposes of credibility and context,” he added.

Cohen, who was the prosecution’s star witness, served prison time after pleading guilty to eight criminal counts, including campaign finance violations related to the alleged hush money scheme.

The Instructions

Turley has also previously called the jury deliberations “a canned hunt” based on Merchan’s jury instructions as he reiterated on Saturday by writing, “The court largely used standard instructions in a case that was anything but standard. However, the instruction also allowed for doubt as to what the jury would ultimately find.”

Opposing Views

However, other legal analysts have disagreed with Turley’s points.

In a Substack article titled “Felon” that was published on Friday, Joyce Vance, who served as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017, outlined four areas she believed would be key issues, including evidence, if an appeal were to happen.

“Defendants frequently argue this on appeal but only rarely win,” her post said. “The question is whether a reasonable jury could have found the defendant guilty, and there was sufficient evidence here to support that conclusion.”

Vance also wrote another point of contention that could be raised would be whether the judge was correct to allow the jury to return a unanimous verdict about the object crime “but not the means used to accomplish it.” On this point, Vance wrote she believed Bragg appeared to have a “strong argument.”

Vance had explained this in a previous post: “There are a number of different unlawful means Trump and his co-conspirators could have used to try and influence the election. The law says the jury doesn’t have to agree unanimously on which one of them Trump used, and that’s how the Judge instructed the jury. This is consistent with New York law; there is nothing wrong about this.”

When asked on MSNBC‘s Morning Joe on Friday what swayed the jury to convict Trump of all 34 counts with expediency, legal analyst Lisa Rubin said, “I think what happened, is evidence happened. And the evidence in this case was overwhelming.”

Rubin added that Trump “was convicted largely on the words of two categories of people, his acolytes—starting with [former media executive] David Pecker and ending with [former Trump aides] Hope Hicks and Madeleine Westerhout—and his own words heard by the jury,” citing a recorded 2016 phone call between Trump and Cohen.