Trump’s long week in court as election looms

Trump and his lawyers have already asked for the judge overseeing the trial Juan Merchan, be removed because he donated money to Joe Biden’s election campaign.

Judge Merchan made $US35 in political contributions to Democrats in 2020, including directly to Biden’s campaign and a group called “Stop Republicans”.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case against Trump, is also a Democrat and the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo was paid thousands of dollars by The Democratic National Committee for “political consulting” when Trump was president.

Americans are used to these important positions in the justice system being politically aligned. It is a legacy of the first American settlers under Charles II’s reign in the later half of the 17th century, when the English made little attempt to supervise closely what went on across the Atlantic.

In his History of the American People, Paul Johnson notes that electing key people in the law was one of the first things a settler in America learnt to do.

“Many offices in America, which in England would’ve been filled by appointment by Lords Lieutenant or even by the Crown – key offices in the administration and enforcement of the law – became elective from the start…. Forty years after the foundation of [US state] Maryland, governors were complaining that many men chosen as justices or sheriffs could not even sign their names.”

Trump campaign emails sent to supporters have claimed that prosecutors in New York “chose their target first and have been hunting for a crime ever since”.

The former president’s lawyers this week called for a mistrial and Trump himself has been gagged by the judge, barring him from publicly commenting on jurors, witnesses and others involved in the case.

A Harvard University Harris poll this week showed that 58 per cent of people surveyed thought Trump’s trials in heavily Democratic jurisdictions should be moved to a new location by the justice system to avoid real or perceived bias, compared to 42 per cent who didn’t.

Trump, who faces more than 90 criminal charges across four separate cases, claims he is now a “proud political dissident” on a par with anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela.

But despite receiving boosts to his polling after each indictment was made public over the last year, Trump might not get the support he would have hoped for if he is found guilty.

An Emerson College poll released earlier this month indicated that if there was a guilty verdict, independent voters in only three of the seven battleground states were more likely to give their support to Trump.

In all the seven states, close to half of independents said it would have no impact at all on whether they would support or not support him.

The Quinnipiac University Poll, which takes in a more liberal pool of voters, showed 21 per cent of voters would be less likely to vote for Trump if convicted, with 62 per cent saying it would not make a difference to their vote, and 15 per cent say they would be more likely to vote for him.

Since Trump’s trial started, he has lost some ground in polls but so too has Biden who at least had the power of being able to campaign around the country. Trump is confined to a courtroom unable to campaign. On his day off he has taken to playing golf, which is something the Biden campaign has leapt on.

After Daniels, whose real name Stephanie Clifford, finished her testimony on Thursday (Friday), the trial went back to grilling witnesses about a key part of the prosecution’s case – whether payments constituted election interference.

The falsification of records needs to be proven to have been done with the intent to defraud and to conceal another crime, such as election interference.

That could elevate the misdemeanour of falsifying records to a felony. But the prosecution has to prove that Trump falsified the records, not just his then lawyer Michael Cohen, and that the act constituted election interference or tax fraud.

Independent legal expert, Alan Dershowitz, a former Democrat who says he would not vote for Trump, has said he has “never seen a weaker case” and that trying to turn a misdemeanour into a felony by alleging violation of federal law, which even federal prosecutors have refused to take up, is a weak strategy.

Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, who once declined to represent Trump, is also damning of the prosecution’s case and the need to have had Daniels testify.

“Her testimony will not materially impact the evidence on whether reimbursement to Cohen was correctly denoted on records.”

But other legal experts, such as the former Chief Assistant District Attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, are keenly supportive of the case.

“I believe the Manhattan DA trial is the most important and most serious of all,” she said.

There are plenty more trials to come for Trump which can test her view.