{"id":2258492,"date":"2024-06-03T11:26:11","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T15:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trumps-own-defense-and-judges-instructions-led-to-guilty-verdict\/"},"modified":"2024-06-03T11:29:39","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T15:29:39","slug":"trumps-own-defense-and-judges-instructions-led-to-guilty-verdict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trumps-own-defense-and-judges-instructions-led-to-guilty-verdict\/","title":{"rendered":"The guilty verdict resulted from Trump&#8217;s defense and the judge&#8217;s instructions"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ftrumps-own-defense-and-judges-instructions-led-to-guilty-verdict%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2258492&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Former President Donald\u200d Trump&#8217;s transformation from a clean record to a \u2063felon was\u2064 sealed with a guilty verdict in\u200d a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trump-drops-appeal-to-move-manhattan-hush-money-case-to-federal-court\/\" title=\"Trump drops appeal to move Manhattan hush money case to federal court\">hush\u2062 money case<\/a> \u200dby a Manhattan jury. Legal experts point to\u200b flaws in his defense strategy, including his insistence on a rigged verdict, and his defense\u2064 team&#8217;s failure to secure an acquittal. The conviction has\u2062 unified elected Republicans in support of\u2063 Trump, despite his denial \u2062of \u2063the accusations.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Former President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/donald-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Donald Trump<\/a> went from having a clean record to becoming a felon after a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/new-york\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Manhattan<\/a> jury found him guilty in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trump-sees-delays-in-civil-fraud-verdict-and-election-interference-trial\/\" title=\"Trump's civil fraud verdict and election interference trial face delays\">criminal hush money case<\/a> last week \u2014 in part due to his imperfect legal strategy and damning instructions given by the judge.<\/p>\n<p>Legal experts say Trump\u2019s conviction can be traced to the defense\u2019s strategy from the beginning of the weekslong trial. Trump insisted the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/campaigns\/presidential\/3024042\/trump-vows-defeat-guilty-verdict-biden-tower\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>verdict was \u201crigged\u201d<\/a> and driven by politics after a jury found him guilty on Thursday of all 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money reimbursements made to his ex-attorney Michael Cohen.<\/p>\n<figure><figcaption>Former President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Trump Tower on Friday, May 31, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo\/Julia Nikhinson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Trump\u2019s inability to gain an acquittal or a mixed jury verdict could be the fault of the judge and the former president\u2019s defense tactics, some legal experts have written in the days since the verdict.<\/p>\n<p>Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andy McCarthy for the Southern District of New York said Trump\u2019s strategy in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/donald-trumps-criminal-hush-money-trial-set-for-march-25\/\" title=\"Trump's hush money trial scheduled for March 25\">hush money trial<\/a> was riddled with \u201cill-conceived, self-destructive defenses\u201d that helped Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, secure \u201chis coveted convictions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trump and his defense team insisted on telling voters and jurors that porn star Stormy Daniels and <em>Playboy <\/em>model Karen McDougal, two women who said they had an affair with Trump that he, in turn, tried to conceal with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-rejects-trump-bid-to-shield-financial-records\/\" title=\"Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid To Shield Financial Records\">hush money payments<\/a>, were lying about their claims.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reason for this is clear: Trump insisted that his lawyers subordinate his defense at trial to the political narrative he wants to spin in the 2024 campaign,\u201d McCarthy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2024\/05\/merchan-and-trump-conceal-the-holes-in-braggs-case\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">wrote<\/a> for the <em>National Review<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>The conviction, in turn, has unified elected Republicans in support of Trump against what nearly all GOP lawmakers have described as an unfair legal process.\u00a0Despite being found guilty on 34 counts, Trump has maintained his innocence and denies the affairs.<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s repeated denials of the sexual encounters were significant, especially in the context of concerns about his wife, Melania Trump, and his youngest son, Barron Trump, who was a child at the time of the alleged 2006 affair with Daniels. Even if the affair between Trump and Daniels did happen, the former president may have denied it still to save embarrassment for his family.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPolitically speaking, this is dumb because voters long ago made up their minds about Trump\u2019s extramarital affairs, and if he admitted them at this point, he\u2019d merely be admitting what is notorious and not credibly deniable,\u201d McCarthy wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Other questionable decisions by Trump\u2019s legal team may have factored into his courtroom loss, such as keeping two lawyers on the 12-member jury. The defense team also told the jurors it would call up a Trump Organization accountant as a witness to explain why the payments to Cohen were categorized as legal expenses, but Trump\u2019s attorneys did not do that.<\/p>\n<p>Trump also made the decision not to testify despite wanting to get his side of the story out, according to attorney Todd Blanche. While his reason for declining to testify is not exactly known, the prosecution would have been able to cross-examine him on a long list of past legal entanglements in New York civil court cases.<\/p>\n<p>Blanche <a href=\"https:\/\/transcripts.cnn.com\/show\/skc\/date\/2024-05-30\/segment\/01\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>told<\/a> CNN\u2019s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday evening that Trump always listened to his defense team\u2019s counsel but admitted, \u201cUltimately, it\u2019s his decision. \u2026 And he reached the decision that he thought was right, which I very much agreed with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another area in which the defense may have faltered was keeping the case entirely about Cohen\u2019s credibility problems while only calling on Robert Costello, an adviser to Cohen when he was subject to federal investigation, as a witness to impeach his testimony. Much of Blanche\u2019s closing argument focused on painting Cohen as a liar, possibly leaving holes in the defense\u2019s narrative if jurors did not buy into the primary theory that Cohen had invented claims about Trump.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, the key witness testimony appeared to come from David Pecker, the former <em>National Enquirer<\/em> publisher who testified that he agreed to be Trump\u2019s \u201ceyes and ears\u201d for negative stories about him ahead of the 2016 campaign. Jurors last week asked to rehear testimony about Pecker\u2019s 2015 meeting with Trump and Cohen in which they said they plotted an effort to bury any damaging reports that may come out about Trump.<\/p>\n<p>For all of the defense\u2019s flaws, Bragg\u2019s indictment contained its own flaws, given that the underlying falsification of business records charges are ordinarily misdemeanor offenses that have a two-year statute of limitations. But prosecutors insisted for this Trump case that the charges could be upgraded to felony counts because they accused Trump of doing so with the intent to commit \u201canother crime.\u201d They did not specify until the end of the trial that the other crime involved a violation of New York\u2019s election law with the commission of an unspecified additional crime, on which, the judge decided, jurors did not need to be unanimous.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou may consider the following: (1) violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act otherwise known as FECA; (2) the falsification of other business records; or (3) violation of tax laws,\u201d the judge\u2019s jury instructions <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nycourts.gov\/LegacyPDFS\/press\/PDFs\/People%20v.%20DJT%20Jury%20Instructions%20and%20Charges%20FINAL%205-23-24.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">read<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The jury guidelines basically allowed the jurors to agree that Trump falsified the records in order to convict but did not require unanimity about what the three predicate offenses were. Given this significant disadvantage to Trump on the instructions, his supporters say Trump could only ever prove his innocence before New York\u2019s appellate divisions or even its highest court, the Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n<p>Veteran appellate lawyer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EuRw6aanFTk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Alan Dershowitz<\/a>, who has for months said the hush money indictment was a \u201czombie\u201d case dating back to when former District Attorney Cy Vance declined to bring charges, suggested that the jury trial was flawed in part because it pooled jurors from a jurisdiction in which only 5% of the population voted for Trump in the last election.<\/p>\n<p>Dershowitz implied the prosecution\u2019s failure to call in former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and not include him as a \u201cmissing witness\u201d instruction to the jury is likely one of many grounds for an appeal. Additionally, the gratuitous information about Trump and Daniels\u2019s alleged sexual encounter that was told to the jury was likely a significant factor in swaying him away from testifying on his behalf.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a winnable appeal. This is an appeal that a first-year law student could win if the defendant\u2019s name wasn\u2019t Donald Trump and it wasn\u2019t New York,\u201d Dershowitz said.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER<\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>A 30-day clock for Trump\u2019s legal team to appeal will begin following a July 11 sentencing hearing, in which the judge will determine what punishment Trump will have to face, such as house arrest, jail time, or fines. Legal experts have suggested there may not be any detention for a first-time offender, though several have said that Judge Juan Merchan could factor in the 10 times Trump was found in contempt for violating his gag order in the case.<\/p>\n<p>Sentencing for Trump is also slated to come just days before Trump becomes the Republican nominee for the 2024 election at the Republican National Convention, raising the stakes in an election year in which the outcome may determine whether a candidate gets sent to prison.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former President Donald Trump faced a clean record turned felon status post a guilty verdict by a Manhattan jury in a hush money case. His legal strategy flaws and the judge&#8217;s damning instructions played a pivotal role. Legal analysts attribute Trump&#8217;s conviction to these critical factors<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2633,"featured_media":2258493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/AP24152697909598.jpg.optimal.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[538],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2258492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-washington-examiner"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/AP24152697909598.jpg.optimal.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2633"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2258492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2258493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2258492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2258492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2258492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}