With the Trump Sentencing, the Verdict is in . . . for the New York Legal System

Columns, Criminal law, Lawyering, Politics January 10, 2025

Below is my column at Fox.com on the sentencing of President-Elect Donald Trump.The conviction should be overturned on appeal. However, the most lasting judgment will be against the New York court system itself in allowing this travesty of justice to occur.

Here is the column:

With the sentencing of Donald Trump Friday, the final verdict on the New York criminal trial of the president-elect is in.The verdict is not the one that led to no jail or probation for the incoming president. Acting Justice Juan Merchan has brought down the gavel on the New York legal system as a whole.

Once considered the premier legal system in the country, figures like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Justices Arthur F. Engoron and Juan Merchan have caused the system to be weaponized for political purposes.

Trump will walk away from this trial and into the White House in less than two weeks,but the New York system will walk into infamy after this day.

The case has long been denounced by objective legal observers, including intense Trump critics, as a legal absurdity. Even CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig denounced the case as legally flawed and unprecedented while Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., simply called it total “b—s–t.”

It is a case based on a non-crime. Bragg took a long-dead misdemeanor and zapped it back into life with a novel and unfounded theory. By using federal violations that were never charged, let alone tried, Bragg turned amisdemeanorinto dozens of felonies and essentially tried Trump for federal offenses.

Merchannot only allowed those charges to be brought to trial butthen added layers of reversible errors in the effort to bag Trumpat any cost. For that, he was lionized by the liberal media and many New Yorkers.

However,Trump still managed to pull in 3.6 million New York votes, or 42.7%, in the 2024 election. After all of the lawfare and every advantage (including a heavily biased media and a larger war chest), Vice President Kamala Harris lost hundreds of thousands of votes in 2024 comparison to Joe Biden just four years earlier.

Many polls showed thatthe public sawthe Manhattan criminal case forwhat it was: raw lawfare targeting a leading political opponent. The election itself felt like the largest verdict in history as citizens rejected the political, legal, and media establishments in one of our nation’s most historic elections.

The New York court system will now have a chance to redeem itself but few are holding their breath.The appellate court has still not ruled on an appeal of Attorney General Lettia James’s equally absurd civil lawsuit against Trump. Despite judges expressing skepticism over Endoron’s use of a law to impose a grotesque $455 million in fines and interest, we are still waiting for a decision.

Most are waiting for this criminal case to escape the vortex of the New York court system. With this appeal, this peddler’s wagon of reversible errors will finally pull up in front of the Supreme Court itself.

With its ruling on Thursday night, the setting for a decision could not be better for Trump.The Supreme Court has again demonstrated that it has shown restraint and independence in these cases.

In response to the ruling,Trumpstruck the perfect note Thursday night anddeclined to criticize the Court, stating that“This is a long way from finished and I respect the court’s opinion.”

The ultimate penalty on Friday morning from Judge Merchan reflects the lack of seriousness in the case. It was more inflated than the Goodyear blimp, pumped up by hot rage and rhetoric.The sentence was the pinprick that showed the massive void within this case.

The verdict is in. The New York legal system has rendered it against itself.

Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).

https://jonathanturley.org/2025/01/10/with-the-trump-sentencing-the-verdict-is-in-for-the-new-york-legal-system/#more-227473

It wouldn't surprise a bit, if Merchan retires very soon because of the legal cases that will brought against, and the entire NY court system is investigated by the new DOJ, due to massive corruption. These cases in NY revealed how the entire government needs to be investigated for Federal crimes.

>>22329583

Article before this morning sentencing.

Green Light: Supreme Court Votes to Allow Trump Sentencing But Could Merchan Pull a Bait-and-Switch?

Criminal law, Supreme Court January 10, 2025

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow the sentencing of President-elect Donald Trump to go forward today.The bare majority was secured when Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrettvoted with their liberal colleagues,Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. However, part of therationale for the decisionwas that Acting New York Justice JuanMerchan indicated that he was going to issue an unconditional dischargewithout any jail or probation. The question is whether Merchan could pull a bait-and-switch and decide to impose punishment. It is highly unlikely but intriguing.

President-elect Donald Trump struck the right note and declined to criticize the Court. He simply stated that “This is a long way from finished and I respect the court’s opinion.”

Some of us predicted this result and specifically noted that Chief Justice Roberts would not want to issue a stay. Roberts prefers regular order and,like many jurists, prefers for cases to be finalized to allow for a complete appellate review. They tend to oppose interlocutory appeals for that reason.

In his earlier order,Merchan discussed various options and only said “an unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solutionto ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue hisappellate options.”

That is where some of us said that this case would land after the conviction. After the election, such a sentence became all but certain.It is the only option that would avoid the constitutional problems — and likely reversal— for Merchan.

The majority took that as a done deal and noted that the President-elect would not have to attend in person and would not face any punishment. The Court may believe that it has sealed Merchan’s suggestion in legal amber. There is little likelihood that Merchan will depart from the course, but could he?

The answer is probably yes. The Supreme Courtdid not issue a conditional order that the sentencing is allowed if it is unconditional.

That makes this notably informal. Defendants are allowed to address the court before sentencing and no sentence is finalized until the sentencing hearing. What if Trump came in and expressed open contempt for Merchan and mocked the case? Some judges might take such an allocution moment to increase punishment.Merchan could threaten contempt but that increasing punishment would go against the operating assumption of the Court’s 5-4 decision.

The Supreme Court decision itself does not order Merchan to issue an unconditional discharge.It simply treats it as a done deal.

It is not as a legal matter, but it is as a practical matter.

Today, we will see the ignoble end to a raw form of lawfare by one of its most committed warriors. After millions in costs and years of litigation, it will result in no punishment.What the left will get is the labeling of Trump as a convicted felon, a fact that will then be repeated like a mantra by the media. Merchan can be expected to add to that rhetoric with punishment soundbites, as he has in the past.

However, the result shows how this case was more inflated than the Goodyear blimp. It will be punishment by soundbite in a case based on a ridiculous criminal theory.He will be sentenced without our even knowing what jurors concluded happenedin the case since Merchan did not require them to agree on the specific motivation or purpose of underlying acts.

The benefit for President Trump is that he can finally appeal this case. While expectations are low for the New York court system which failed to prevent the political weaponization of its criminal justice system, it can now be reviewed in its totality and eventually go back the United States Supreme Court.

https://jonathanturley.org/2025/01/10/green-light-supreme-court-votes-to-allow-trump-sentencing-but-could-merchan-pull-a-bait-and-switch/

Snail Darter RIP: The Species that Shut Down the Tellico Dam May Not Actually Exist

Academia, Environment January 9, 2025

In theannals of environmental law, no creature is more famous than the Snail Darter, the endangered speciesthat shut down completion of the Tellico Dam in the 1970s. It required congressional legislation to allow the dam to be finished after years in the courts where judges maintained that the species had to be protected under the Endangered Species Act. According to the New York Times.,the species may turn out to be as mythical as a unicorn.

Thecontroversy began in 1967when the Tennessee Valley Authority started constructing adam on the Little Tennessee River, roughly 20 miles outside Knoxville. Environmentalists and locals opposed the project and,in 1973, a zoologistat the University of Tennesseenamed David Etnier went snorkelingwith his students and found a possible solution. He spotted a small fish and called it a “snail darter” because of its movements and eating habits. He reportedly announced“Here’s a little fish that might save your farm.”

Dr. Zygmunt Plater, an environmental law professorat Boston College,represented the snail darterbefore the Supreme Court. He did an excellent job and, in 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that “the Endangered Species Act prohibits impoundment of the Little Tennessee River by the Tellico Dam” to protect the endangered snail darters.

That was then.

The Times now quotesThomas Near, the curator of ichthyologyat the Yale Peabody Museum wholeads a fish biology labat the university, that “there is, technically, no snail darter.” Worse yet, it was actually just another member of the eastern population of Percina uranidea, or stargazing darters, which is not considered endangered.

Near and his colleagues have published the results in Current Biology

In other words, years of litigation and millions of dollars were spent on what was a false claim, and the courts accepted the claims hook, line, and sinker.

Under the ESA, the snail darter was listed as protected and therefore triggered Section 7 of the Act barring federal agencies from undertaking actions that could jeopardize a species’ survival or destroy any of its critical habitat.

In Tennessee Valley Auth. v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153 (1978),Chief Justice Warren Burger noted that the finding of this “previously unknown species of perch” changed everything on a legal level. He added:

“Until recently, the finding of a new species of animal life would hardly generate a cause celebre.This is particularly so in the case of darters, of which there are approximately 130 known species, 8 to 10 of these having been identified only in the last five years. The moving force behindthe snail darter’s sudden fame came some four months after its discovery, when the Congress passed the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act), 87 Stat. 884, 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.(1976 ed.).”

Plater insisted that Dr. Near is merely a “lumper” who tends to rely on genetics rather than being a “splitter” who proliferates new species. Dr. Plater added that “whether he intends it or not,lumping is a great way to cut back on the Endangered Species Act.”

That was a particularly revealing point from the law professor since it suggestswhat could be an overwhelming motive could be legal and not scientific in declaring the new species— the very objection raised in the litigation and denied by many advocates.

Roughly three years ago, the government declared victory in restoring the snail darter and theFish and Wildlife Service proposed removing it from the ESA list of threatened species.

https://jonathanturley.org/2025/01/09/snail-darter-rip-the-species-that-shut-down-the-tellico-dam-may-not-actually-exist/

Good some scientists should prove the Smelt in CA are not endangered and not worthy of destroying an entire state to protect it.Nunes said at that time, the whole reason to shut down the water in CA from the Sierras was for environmental lawyers to make trillions on lawsuits