Is Trump’s criminal sentence justice served or vindication? It depends on who you ask.
President-elect Donald Trump's historic sentencing draws mixed reactions as the unprecedented criminal case is expected to see appeal to the Supreme Court.
After officially being sentenced on Friday by a New York court, Donald Trump will enter the White House on Jan. 20 by making history as the first convicted felon to serve as president of the United States.
The president-elect quickly aimed to change the narrative after the sentencing from Judge Juan Merchan, declaring in a Truth Social post that the “Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt.” Trump celebrated his “unconditional discharge,” which means he will see no jail time or probation for his criminal acts related to business fraud and hush money paid to conceal an affair with a porn star. The alleged motivation for the bribe was suppressing potentially harmful information to influence the 2016 presidential election.
“That result alone proves that, as all Legal Scholars and Experts have said, THERE IS NO CASE, THERE WAS NEVER A CASE, and this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED,” Trump said falsely. “The real Jury, the American People, have spoken, by Re-Electing me with an overwhelming MANDATE in one of the most consequential Elections in History.”
While Trump is wrong about legal experts concluding there was no merit to the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, there is a sense of vindication for Trump and his team, as he is shielded from serving time behind bars due to a decades-old Department of Justice policy legally barring a sitting president from being indicted or criminally prosecuted.
As Judge Merchan told Trump on Friday morning, “… despite the extraordinary breadth of those protections, one power they do not provide is a power to erase a jury verdict.” Merchan added, “Donald Trump, the ordinary citizen [and] Donald Trump, the criminal defendant, would not be entitled to such considerable protections.”
“A jury of American citizens determined that he was guilty of 34 counts of falsifying records to hide his activities from the public, yet he has been able to use the presidency to evade consequences,” said Jamar Brown, executive director at Color of Change PAC. He told theGrio, “The person holding the highest office in the land should be subject to a basic threshold for accountability, as prescribed under the law.”
Brown continued, “This is a continuation of a pattern we have seen by Donald Trump – where he shirks accountability and seeks to rewrite the rules to benefit himself.”
Despite Trump’s claim of victory, Trump has already said he would seek an appeal of the sentence and called the case a “despicable charade.”
Anthony Coley, a legal analyst and former Justice Department official during the Biden administration, told theGrio, “This case is far from over.”
“Once it is fully adjudicated at the state level, I fully expect Trump to appeal it again to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Coley predicted. “Trump’s main argument will be that his conviction relied on some official acts — including testimony from White House aides at the time, and other evidence — and because of the Supreme Court’s own ruling last summer granting president’s broad immunity for official acts, that evidence is out of bounds, and the entire conviction should be overturned.”
Considering the Supreme Court’s conservative majority — three of which were nominated by Trump — and their previous rulings like granting Trump broad “presidential immunity” from prosecutions, Coley said, “Given this Supreme Court’s track record of ignoring facts and law and creating new precedent to protect Trump, I suspect they’ll eventually overturn this conviction.”
Brown of Color of Change said, “Donald Trump went as far as petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the sentencing hearing.” He added, “While the Supreme Court ultimately ruled against him, it is dangerous that four Supreme Court Justices, two of whom he appointed, were willing to allow him to avoid today’s hearing.”
The civil rights leader said Color Of Change PAC will “continue to fight for accountability for government officials at all levels, especially to Black communities.”
No matter how the president-elect tries to politically spin his conviction, Coley said Trump will “enter the presidency on Jan. 20 as a convicted felon, and that’s fitting since he led a criminal conspiracy to keep the truth of his affair with Stormy Daniels from the voting public, and lied about it through his business records.”
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