Legal expert: How 'unique system of justice for Trump' puts America on 'road to hell'

01 April 2024

As Donald Trump ramps up his social media attacks on New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan and his daughter, Loren Merchan, legal experts and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg are urging the judge to expand the gag order in the ex-president's criminal hush money case.

Trump believes the fact that Loren Merchan, a political consultant whose firm has worked on Democratic campaigns, means that the case — in which he was charged on 34 felony counts for falsifying business documents to cover up hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels — is a partisan attack.

Two weeks ahead of the hush money trial start date, Bragg filed a brief Monday, April 1, saying Trump's "dangerous, violent, and reprehensible rhetoric fundamentally threatens the integrity of these proceedings and is intended to intimidate witnesses and trial participants alike including this Court."

Merchan's original gag order on Trump bans the MAGA hopeful from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and their families. Now Bragg is asking that the order warns the "defendant that any further disregard of the Order will result in sanctions under Judiciary Law."

During the latest episode of MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Nicolle Wallace asked former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) counsel and legal analyst Weissmann to put the leniency Trump has received rehearing his behavior "into context" of his decades-long career as a prosecutor.

"It seems to me, and I concluded on Friday, that at some point it stops being about Trump," Wallace said. "Even mob defendants have a desire not be in prison while they're awaiting trial, and their shenanigans seem to have some responsiveness to that desire to not be in prison. His behavior seems to be outside all the levers of the criminal justice system. So put this in real time in relation or in context to what else you have seen in your career."

Weissmann replied, "You know, when I look at this, it's not a reflection of Donald Trump. We know what he is. He has engaged in this behavior. It will increasingly be over the top as he gets closer and closer. This is about our institutions about how they are incapable of actually handling these situation for a variety of reasons."

The former FBI lawyer continued, "In normal cases, when I've handled organized crime cases — violent criminals — there is a process where they are held to standards, and if they were to engage in this context — yes, they're given sort of one bite at the apple — they're given one warning, And then there are consequences, which can include, and often does include jail. Just think about not that long ago, Paul Manafort, he committed obstruction of justice by coaching two witnesses to lie, and he was remanded by the federal judge who oversaw his case."

"So, I really think this is a situation where you have so many people bending over backwards, giving the former president the benefit of doubt over and over again," he emphasized. "And I think that is the road to hell, by not having held these trials already, by not investigated in a timely way, by not holding him to the exact same standard that we hold anyone else to, we're both violating or oaths of office, we're violating what it means to have at justice system that holds everyone to the same standard."

Weissmann added, "And I know a lot of times it's born out of the trying to be ultra-fair, but it's leading to beyond two systems of justice, it's a unique system of justice for Donald Trump, which is not constant with what it means to have a democracy. And we may find ourselves without a democracy if we don't wise up and hold him to the same standard that we do everyone else that has ever been treated that way in all of the criminal cases I've done in my entire life."

Watch the video below or at this link.

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