Guest Post by Jim Rickards
As you know by now, Donald Trump was found guilty yesterday on all felony counts in his hush money trial in New York.
Sentencing in the case is scheduled for July 11, 2024. That’s just four days before the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee on July 15. That’s not a coincidence, by the way. It’s calculated to further tarnish his image ahead of the convention.
It’s part of the pattern of lawfare and abuse of the judicial system that began with the Russia hoax in 2016 even before Trump was elected president that year. The campaign against Trump only increased from there, which included two impeachments.
I wasn’t at all surprised by yesterday’s verdict — I’ve predicted that Trump would likely be convicted in at least one of the several criminal trials against him. This is what I wrote eight months ago:
The Trump indictments are already handed up. There are two federal cases, two state cases and 91 felony charges in total.
Trump is highly likely to be convicted of something because the jurisdictions were carefully selected by Democrat prosecutors to be 90% Democrat… so the jury pools will be out to convict Trump…
None of the possible defenses or defective charges may matter. Trump’s lawfare opponents among the prosecutors carefully selected the venues to maximize the likelihood of a conviction… The venues were chosen to ensure anti-Trump juries.
Unprecedented
I won’t get into the details of the verdict here. There are plenty of talking heads available on the internet to break the case down.
I’ll just say that as an attorney with decades of legal experience, I can tell you that this is the weakest case I’ve ever seen. It’s a jumble of novel legal theories strung together in pursuit of a predecided outcome. That’s not just my opinion.
Retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz says it’s the weakest case he’s seen in 60 years of legal experience. Other legal experts have expressed similar opinions. Never has a case like this been held in New York. It literally has no precedent.
The fact that it ever got to trial at all is itself remarkable. Former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. declined to pursue the case because it was so weak, as did federal prosecutors within the Justice Department.
Meanwhile, Matthew Colangelo, third in line at the Biden Justice Department, left his post to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in 2022. That’s a downward career move. It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that it was a calculated move to coordinate federal and state efforts to pursue this case against Trump.
When you add it all up, Trump was facing the full force of lawfare in a hostile venue so no one should be surprised by what happened yesterday. Having said that, the New York case will almost certainly be reversed on appeal. Here’s why…
Egregious Violations
The trial judge violated the First Amendment with his gag order on Trump. The idea that a defendant in a criminal case couldn’t criticize those persecuting him would have been anathema to the authors of the First Amendment.
The judge also violated the Fifth Amendment because the crime was not specified in the indictment and Trump was denied due process of law.
He violated the Sixth Amendment because Trump was denied the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation” and was denied the right to have “process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.”
The judge also violated the 14th Amendment, which applies the First, Fifth and Sixth Amendments to state actions under the due process clause. Four constitutional violations should be more than enough to get the case reversed, but there were scores of other reversible errors committed by the judge.
He never should have heard the case in the first place because he had a conflict of interest. He couldn’t be impartial. He personally donated to the Biden campaign in 2020 and his daughter is a Democratic lobbyist who’s raised millions of dollars to defeat Trump. Even Democrat lawyers have said that this judge never should have been assigned the case.
Also, is it coincidence that the judge assigned to this case is the same judge who presided over the case against the Trump Organization and the case against Trump’s former campaign manager Steve Bannon? It’s highly unlikely. His assignment to this case was almost certainly deliberate based on his anti-Trump bona fides.
The question everyone wants answered is where do things go from here?
The Next Steps
Skeptics may believe that the New York appeals courts (The First Appellate Division where I was sworn in as a lawyer decades ago, and the Court of Appeals) will be as biased as the trial court. That’s not true.
Appellate law is quite different from trial law. There are no witnesses and the facts are not disputed. The matters considered are all points of law. The lawyers submit briefs and deliver oral arguments. Stormy Daniels and the proven liar Michael Cohen (on whose testimony the case was largely decided) will not be in the First Division courtroom.
The First Division Appellate Court will be concerned about two things: getting the law right and not being overruled by the Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York. Both considerations lean in favor of reversing Trump’s convictions and that’s likely to happen.
The difficulty is that the appeals process is unlikely to be concluded before the election. It simply takes time to file the motion, prepare the briefs, schedule the oral arguments and render a judgment. An emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is possible, but that’s a legal long shot.
“For My Friends, Everything; for My Enemies, the Law”
The bottom line is lawfare against Trump succeeded in this case. They got their conviction and can now call Trump a convicted felon to discredit him ahead of the November election, which was always their plan.
They don’t care about truth or the law. They just wanted the opportunity to call Trump a convicted felon to damage his election prospects. That’s just the reality of it. It’s what lawfare is all about. It’s purely political.
After yesterday’s conviction, people from corrupt third-world nations in Latin America and elsewhere are saying that Trump now knows what it’s like for opponents of their own corrupt regimes.
As the authoritarian former leader of Peru Oscar Benavides once said, “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” That’s a perfect summation of the lawfare we’re currently witnessing against Trump. And that’s sad. It’s not supposed to happen in the United States, but here we are.
Love Trump or hate him, America’s a different place because of this verdict. The lawfare warriors have crossed the Rubicon.
Get ready, this is going to be a wild election season.
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I still talk to smart people who were surprised by the “guilty” verdict.
Kangaroo courts ALWAYS deliver a guilty verdict against their enemies.
Always without fail..
Ammo up. This corruption will have to be removed root and branch by We The People.
Our institutions are now fully corrupted.
I’m not a Trump fan mostly due to “warp speed”, the non built wall, and support of those who cannot be criticized in the middle east, among other things. I was planning not to vote, but with this action they are enticing me to vote for Trump anyway.
Well good for you, whoever you are today.!
Ikr?!?…..I have been known to call them Chickenshits for not having the COBBLES to get a handle,use it every time,stand behind your words and last but not not least,when conversing I know WHO I’M TALKING TO!!…..get it?…makes convo a lot easier…..but no,surrounded by Anonymous Cowards!……
“…still talk to smart people…”
That really isn’t saying anything at all, as YOU are the yardstick you’re using to measure other people’s “intelligence”.
To say your observations are biased doesn’t begin to describe the situation in reality.
You can take that as an insult if you choose. It’s simply a statement of fact gained by observation.
TRUMP DISTRACTS FROM IMMINENT WORLD WAR
They are turning Trump into a Nelson Mandela/Mahatma Ghandi figure
Groundswell of support. He has already released a video vowing to destroy the deep state and globalism. He also has some swampland in FL if you are interested. He has been”chosen” to lead the US into WW3.
“NATO is cooking up something big” and Putin is ready for all-out war” Benny Morris- Redacted News
Insiders says the decision has been made to initiate direct conflict with Russia.
NATO Deep State media and politicians want to give missiles to Ukraine, a move that Russia warns would lead to the use of strategic nuclear weapons. COVID didn’t work. There is a banking crisis. Benny Morris says they will use war and martial law to control us. Includes Tucker Carlson predicting World War ten months ago. Watch this excellent video.
Ominous sign: Ukrainian drones are attacking Russia nuclear defence radar, making Russia vulnerable to nuclear attack.
Russia threatens to attack sources of NATO aid to Ukraine
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240529/the-west-depends-on-putins-rationality-to-avoid-wwiii-1118692662.html?
“NATO representatives, especially in Europe, should be aware of what they are playing with,” Putin said at a press conference in Uzbekistan on Tuesday. Western countries don’t fear allowing Kiev to strike inside of Russia because they already have and those countries didn’t suffer any significant consequences, noted Sleboda. “They don’t believe that Russia will strike back except against Ukraine, which they don’t really care about,” he said.
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Oklahoma becomes 2nd US state to pass a law that denies jurisdiction to the WHO, UN and WEF No edicts coming directly or indirectly from WHO, UN or WEF will be enforced in Oklahoma
https://merylnass.substack.com/p/oklahoma-becomes-2nd-us-state-to?
24 Governors, 22 state Attorneys-General and 49 Senators said NO to globalism, and the states are passing legislation to implement it. This will protect the citizens of Oklahoma in perpetuity from these captured organizations.
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Catherine Austin Fitts
Klaus Schwab resigning as WEF head “is not good news, it’s bad news. They are building up to another big move…there are rumors that the current [UK] PM doesn’t want to be a wartime PM and they’re going to move in somebody who…is a member of the Trilateral Commission…”
“[O]ur risk levels just went up, so it’s not good…This is not good, it’s the opposite,” Fitts says. The investment banker notes that “we’re seeing this in many positions across the establishment” and adds that she’s dubbed the phenomenon “The Hitman Cometh.”
Fitts goes on to say that “They’re moving…someone like [Klaus Schwab] into a behind-the-scenes role where he can work more effectively on big moves–so he’s not leaving, he’s putting his wife as the public face [of the WEF], and then he’s going into the backroom to sort of engineer things.” Fitts adds, “of course, as I said, all of this is subject to the approval of the Swiss government, which tells you who’s really in control–and I would say it’s the Bank of International Settlements in Basel.”
Fitts goes on to say, “be that as it may, we are watching positions all across Europe and the United States…[where] the last guy’s being moved out and a new guy’s being moved in.” Fitts adds, “They are building up to another big move. We really see that by the head of the UK calling for a general election. There are rumors that the current PM doesn’t want to be a wartime PM, and they’re going to move in somebody who basically is a member of the Trilateral Commission, I think, who is happy to be a wartime leader. So don’t celebrate this.
This is not a good look.”
Received my 3rd Qtr. Solari Report, “Dutch Farmers And Fishermen”. Will get to it Thursday, when back in town Thursday.
It would be Wednesday, but always get soused before any Robert Earl Keen concert. If he’s back home, Bill Murray will be there, two rows below us.
The Shadow knows…
New York license plates proclaim that it’s the “Empire State”. The Upstate Republlcans should introduce a bill to change it to the “Kangaroo Court State”.
The Empire Strikes Back.
You better believe I will cross the street in order to take a shit on a New Yorker.
And that’s just me being tolerant.
Wondering how much tax money Judge Juan pays for his security detail?
We still don’t know what Federal election law NY is saying Trump broke, that was never named in the sham trial. We do know the feds said there were no violations of any federal election law, which is what exactly makes in a sham.
And yet NOBODY stood up for the system(as flawed as it is)……the NY state AG should have put a stop to it!.How is changing misdemeanors into felonies and vice versa ,NOT MAKING LAW?….which is not the power DA’s have….and yet….crickets from all corners?…..Shakespeare was right….lawyers first!……
the chick lawyer looks like trump just grabbed her by the coochie lol
I wonder where Trump gets those 60″ ties…