NY Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan defends the rule of law
Trump will be a sentenced felon after all.
January 6, 2025 at 7:45 a.m. ESTYesterday at 7:45 a.m. EST
washingtonpost.com
5 min
President-elect Donald Trump will enter office as a convicted and sentenced criminal, provided the Supreme Court does not once again swoop in to spare him the consequences of his illegal conduct. The Post reported: “The decision touphold Trump’s conviction and schedule the sentencing for Jan. 10 almost certainly means Trump will be the first felon to serve as a U.S. president.” That said, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan strongly indicated Trump will face no jail time or even probation.
Despite previewing a sentence without real punishment, Merchan, to his credit, issued a blistering opinion reaffirming the foundation of our legal system. “The significance of the fact that the verdict was handed down by a unanimous jury of 12 of Defendant’s peers, after trial, cannot possibly be overstated,” Merchan wrote. “Indeed, the sanctity of a jury verdict and the deference that must be accorded to it, is a bedrock principle in our Nation’s jurisprudence.” No conspiracy, no rogue district attorney delivered the verdict. This was a jury of Trump’s peers whom he and his counsel approved in voir dire.
Merchan also gave the back of the hand to the notion that presidents-elect enjoy immunity. (We have, as the saying goes, only one president at a time.) Merchan summed up:
Essentially, what Defendant asks this Court to do is to create, or at least recognize, two types of Presidential immunity, then select one as grounds to dismiss the instant matter. First, Defendant seeks application of “President-elect immunity,” which presumably implicates all actions of a President-elect before taking the oath of office. Thus, he argues that since no sitting President can be the subject of any stage of a criminal proceeding, so too should a President-elect be afforded the same protections. Second, as the People characterize in their Response, Defendant seeks an action by the Court akin to a “retroactive” form of Presidential immunity, thus giving a defendant the ability to nullify verdicts lawfully rendered prior to a defendant being elected President by virtue of being elected President. It would be an abuse of discretion for this Court to create, or recognize, either of these two new forms of Presidential immunity in the absence of legal authority. The Defendant has presented no valid argument to convince this Court otherwise.
Lastly, Merchan declined to dismiss the case in the “interests of justice.” In some of the harshest language invoked against Trump by any court, Merchan wrote:
Here, 12 jurors unanimously found Defendant guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records with the intent to defraud, which included an intent to commit or conceal a conspiracy to promote a presidential election by unlawful means. It was the premediated and continuous deception by the leader of the free world that is the gravamen of this offense. To vacate this verdict on the grounds that the charges are insufficiently serious given the position Defendant once held, and is about to assume again, would constitute a disproportionate result and cause immeasurable damage to the citizenry’s confidence in the Rule of Law.
(Merchan also noted that “a total of 22 witnesses testified at trial, and over 500 exhibits [were] admitted, all of which supported the jury’s verdict.”)
Merchan demolished Trump’s argument that his good character (!) justified dismissal:
Defendant’s disdain for the Third Branch of government, whether state or federal, in New York or elsewhere, is a matter of public record. Indeed, Defendant has gone to great lengths to broadcast on social media and other forums his lack of respect for judges, juries, grand juries and the justice system as a whole. In the case at bar, despite repeated admonitions, this Court was left with no choice but to find the Defendant guilty of 10 counts of Contempt for his repeated violations of this Court’s Order Restricting Extrajudicial Statements (“Statements Order”), findings which by definition mean that Defendant willingly ignored the lawful mandates of this Court. An Order which Defendant continues to attack as “unlawful” and “unconstitutional,” despite the fact that it has been challenged and upheld by the Appellate Division First Department and the New York Court of Appeals, no less than eight times.
Merchan drily observed that “Defendant’s character and history vis-a-vis the Rule of Law and the Third Branch of government” hardly weigh in favor of canceling the verdict.
Merchan’s unequivocal language is welcomed. “On the positive side, Judge Merchan and [Manhattan District Attorney Alvin] Bragg have pressed forward with the case, rightly brushing aside all the bogus arguments about immunity and otherwise,” Norm Eisen, who reported from the courtroom and wrote a book about the trial, tells me. “Those 34 Trump convictions for 2016 election interference and coverup ... are a permanent stain that the judge and the DA are rightly refusing to erase.”
Put differently, Bragg and Merchan were the only prosecutor and judge whose defense of the rule of law at least delivered a conviction and therefore some measure of accountability. Nevertheless, to say these two bested the slothful pace of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Supreme Court (not to mention the excruciating slow-walking and bias demonstrated by U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon) is to damn with faint praise.
As former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade tells me, “It is a half-a-loaf result. Trump will receive no prison time or fine, but his 34 convictions will stand.”
It does stick in one’s craw that an ex-president/president-elect does not face the same brand of justice (even if the sentence would need to be delayed) as an ordinary felon. Anyone convicted of these crimes would have faced up to four years in prison. Even a first-time offender would, in all likelihood, have received at the bare minimum probation.
Regrettably, we have learned that “everyone is equal under the law” comes with a significant caveat. In the era of a hyper-partisan Supreme Court that pushed off Trump’s Jan. 6 trial beyond the election and concocted a sweeping and vague grant of immunity more fitting a king than a president, presidents and ex-presidents are treated differently. As a result, Trump likely will never be tried for his role in instigating a violent insurrection let alone his alleged violation of the Espionage Act.
If Americans remain aggrieved over the lack of real punishment for Trump’s New York crimes, however, our ire should not be directed solely at Merchan. The failure to enact a punishment to fit the crime is largely the fault of the voters. They knew he was a felon. They still voted him into office. They determined he would essentially never face accountability. They decided tax cuts or mass deportation or “owning the libs” or something was more important than keeping a convict who abused his oath out of office. They, not Merchan, are the ones who flaunted their disdain for the rule of law and decided that character no longer should be a qualification for president.
Trump voters, supporters and enablers — who shrugged at the New York conviction and decided character was not a qualification for president — must shoulder the blame for the decrepit state of our democracy and the rule of law. Granted, the legal system from the Supreme Court down failed to hold Trump responsible for full scope and seriousness of his actions before the 2024 election. But if not for the voters who elected him, the legal system might still have pushed forward to try him for his extraordinary array of misconduct.
It turns out that the rule of law is no match for voters determined to elect a convict, serial liar and insurrectionist leader to the presidency. |
