Trump questions the crime as jury requests testimony review

A New York jury has been sent home after day one of deliberations in the Donald Trump hush money case. If Judge Juan Merchan chooses to take the former president’s advice, however, they would be sent home for good.

In remarks to the media outside the Manhattan courtroom Wednesday, Trump said the judge overseeing the case would “save his reputation” by dismissing the charges, noting — not erroneously — that neither the prosecution nor judge seems to agree on what exactly “the crime is.”

“The confusion is nobody knows what the crime is because there’s no crime,” Trump said, according to Fox News.

“Nobody knows what the crime is. The [district attorney] didn’t name the crime of the moment,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said. “They don’t know what the crime is. That’s what the problem is. It’s a disgrace. This thing ought to be ended immediately.

“The judge ought to end it and save his reputation.”

TRUMP: “It’s a Biden witch-hunt. It’s weaponization.. We already have the win. If we had a fair judge this case would have been over a long time ago.. Nobody knows what the crime is because there is no crime.” pic.twitter.com/HoDLqTvNYG

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 29, 2024

For everyone who thinks this is bluster, you would be mistaken. Consider that the jury has sent the judge two separate notes, including one where the panel asked to hear Merchan’s instructions again.

While juries in New York criminal cases can’t rehear judge’s instructions, the request itself may be telling.

Remember, the whole theory espoused by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to charge Trump is that normally misdemeanor charges were upgraded to a felony because they were done to conceal another crime.

What crime? Well, Bragg’s team implied that it was a violation of New York’s campaign finance laws.

However, as former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy noted at National Review, Merchan “allowed the state to get away with not putting the ‘other crime’ in the indictment, and rejected defense attempts to force him to provide explicit disclosure pretrial. Prosecutors hid in the tall grass until summation and are now emphatically describing Trump as having blatantly violated federal campaign law.”

Of course, Bragg has no jurisdiction over federal campaign finance violations, which means he can’t charge Trump with that.

But don’t let Merchan disabuse you of the notion that he can, considering the presiding jurist — already under fire for his perceived lack of impartiality handling the case — has instructed the jurors that they don’t have to agree on which campaign finance law Trump broke to say he broke the law.

As former Judge Jeanine Pirro pointed out on Fox News, Merchan essentially instructed the jury that if “you believe that any of these three things happened, federal campaign violation, a tax violation or the falsification of records, and we don’t really care whether you all agree on which one of these three things happened, then you can give the defendant a felony.”

“That, to me, is the most shocking part of this,” Pirro said. “It was almost as if he was making this up as he went along.”

Indeed, this is unique.

If Trump were being charged in a courtroom with violating three different campaign finance laws and the jury couldn’t unanimously agree on any of them, it would be a hung jury.

A reductio ad absurdum of these instructions could see three different 8-4 votes for acquittal — in which four different jurors voted guilty each time — into the 12 votes needed to convict Trump of a felony.

And keep in mind — no felony, no case. The statute of limitations on the falsification of business charges that the former president faces is already up — remember, this happened during the 2016 election cycle — unless the state can prove that Trump committed these violations in the act of concealing another crime.

What crime? Well, you know … you decide, at least per Merchan. We have three to choose from. See if you can all agree that he maybe might have infracted one of them. You don’t even need a majority on each, just get 12 out of 36 possible votes on the three separate charges and we can call it a day, right?

To say that Bragg and Merchan have opened Pandora’s box is an understatement of epic proportions. Does none of the principals involved in this case realize that the “pick a crime, any crime” mentality of the prosecution and the bench here has undoubtedly caught the eye of some ambitious conservative prosecutor in some deep-red jurisdiction? Do they not also know that the current president’s family has a history of shady business dealings and other issues?

In fact, there barely needs to be an alleged crime to be a trial, judging by what’s transpired in Gotham. Anyone who wants to make a name for himself or herself in 2024 America — where all politics are intensely tribal and where fame and infamy are practically alike, judging by the fawning reaction Merchan, Bragg and the porn star at the center of this mess, Stormy Daniels, have received on the left — is well aware that a shot at President Joe Biden when he leaves office is a visible platform from which to launch a national career.

Merchan being a judge, it’s unlikely that he can use this the same way Bragg and Daniels will continue to prosper off this trial. What he can do is try to stuff all the evils of this trial back into Pandora’s luggage as best he can.

That’s wishful thinking, however — and it’s likely the charade will continue to dominate the front pages for a few more days, at the very least.

The lasting effects, however, will ripple throughout American political history going forward, and if you think I mean that in a good way, you’re as delusional as the prosecution.