He Had No Shot

Fuggedaboutit

Submitted by a NYC reader

They did it. They actually did it. Alvin Bragg carried a case through the New York judicial system to convict former president Donald Trump of a felony. Oh, the eruption from all the partisan liberals was pure ecstasy. You see it now already online with the phrase convicted felon slapped before or after his name. This was set in stone once the trial started.

The pundit class was split between those who saw this as legitimate (liberal slice), a sham set up from the start (alert right wingers) and those who analyzed the jury selection and proceedings as if the normal rules applied (the deluded). New York City is a jurisdiction that lets assailants, thieves and even worse criminals out after arrest and never prosecute. New York is reducing felonies to misdemeanors at every opportunity. This was who-whom from the get go. Try, convict, sentence, bada bing bada boom.

Anyone who thought Trump had a chance with the jury was lying to themselves. This is not the Gotti era where jury intimidation and bribery was possible and people might know a guy who knows a juror. This is not the New Yok City of urban white ethnic movies like The Warriors or Saturday Night Fever. Somehow Ben Stiller was still acting as the white ethnic not in a high paying job yet living in Manhattan in movies in the 2000s, so you might have been bamboozled. If this trial had been in Staten Island or maybe Brooklyn or Queens he would have had a shot. In State Island, he might have been acquitted. We need some borough for every NYPD cop to live in after all.

This was Manhattan. Look up the voting results from 2020. That’s not blue, that’s navy blue. So dark blue you can drill down to precincts where the Golden Don received five votes total. The jury pool noted that nearly all of them consumed their news from the New York Times. Those are guilty votes no questions asked. People hung on the fact one juror said he used Truth Social, forgetting the hate followers Trump had on twitter. These are jurors from a left wing bastion who have all the software updates to know the proper verdict. Who cares about the racial mix in the jury pool, as the white liberals of Manhattan protested subway cops forgetting that the subway cops are how they were able to ride the subway the last twenty years (oh boy and is that gone now too). You thought decades of gentrification and Giuliani-Bloomberg stewardship was so Vinny and Peter could safely live in Manhattan. Manhattan is the most precious piece of real estate in America. This was not for them; this was for the creative class and professional class to enjoy. We know how they vote.

You cannot talk to them. Nothing is a safe subject except for maybe the Yanks, Rangers and Giants. Even then, you are taking your chances. Manhattan is not just liberals but proud, hypocritical liberals. Some of them might even have revenge fantasies about Trump fiddling with SALT taxation. The flip side to this is that when trump was elected in 2016, one would walk the streets and feel they were in a defeated, occupied city. They never forgot it. This was their revenge.

I am focusing on the jury because that is all that mattered, and it was a forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown situation. They did not even bother to string along deliberations or just convict on some counts to make it look better. Adding to the comedy was the insane procedural and due process issues of bringing this forward and how it was executed. Actually getting him for falsification was not hard with Cohen’s testimony, but to make it the felony relied on the underlying crime he was hiding. Quite honestly, no one paying hush money is committing a crime. It is actually a soft form of blackmail, meaning Miss Daniels was the criminal here.

Barring defense witnesses from testifying, never stating what the theory of the crime was to hamper the defense, allowing prejudicial testimony that had no bearing on the crime, et cetera et cetera it is all there as a travesty. Judge Merchan somehow was assigned every single Trump related case. The judge himself was a walking bag of conflicts of interest, but was chosen for that reason as every single move he made was to secure a conviction. Merchan had multiple off-ramps to declare a mistrial. Never took them. Being a foreign born judge is the cherry on top with Trump’s signature policy push being some type of restrictions on immigration.

Merchan has one more off-ramp. He could sentence Trump to a suspended sentence. Anyone watching these proceedings should not expect this. Expect the most ridiculous sentencing whether it is actual imprisonment, home confinement or some weird ankle bracelet scenario with a presidential candidate checking in with a probation officer for travel. The only thing that might sway the real decision makers, you know the ones who have been on the phone with Merchan and visiting him or his family, is that this did not help in polls. This actually hurt them with major donors coming out and pouring money into Trump’s campaign. Some wealthy, powerful people even said that this had gone too far. Elite opinion might be shifting, and they have good reason to as all of our billionaire class has some technicality the system can go after them for with the likes of DOJ lawyers and Norm Eisen guiding them.

If, and it is a massive if, the people behind the curtain understand the flame they are playing with, there will be a de-escalation. Woohoo, Democrat voters, we got our conviction. Enjoy it. Savor it. Save the newspaper if you still buy them. Now it is on to November! They need that too, because the right is now fired up, and polls showed a general lack of urgency or interest in the latest most important election of all time. The historical record informs us that there will be no pause, there will be no pumping of the brakes, and damn the icebergs, full speed ahead.