Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, April 15, 2024
Having failed in its effort to keep Donald Trump off the 2024 presidential ballot, the Left turned to Page 2 of its lawfare playbook, keeping the former president off the campaign trail and in the courtroom.
During the first day of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush money trial against Trump, Judge Juan Merchan on Monday said that if the GOP's 2024 candidate does not appear in court each day the trial is in session he would be arrested.
Former President Donald Trump in Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday was told, “If you do not show up there will be an arrest.” / Video Image“If you do not show up there will be an arrest,” Merchan told Trump.
Merchan directed a series of questions to Trump directly, asking whether he understood that his failure to attend the trial or appear for sentencing could result in penalties. After each question, Trump responded, “Yes,” or “I do.”
Outside the courtroom, Trump said in a statement:
As virtually every legal scholar has powerfully stated, the Biden Manhattan Witch Hunt Case is, among other things, BARRED by the Statute of Limitations. This “trial” should be ended by the highly conflicted presiding Judge. The Radical Left Democrats are already cheating on the 2024 Presidential Election by bringing, or helping to bring, all of these bogus lawsuits against me, thereby forcing me to sit in courthouses, and spend money that could be used for campaigning, instead of being out in the field knocking Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the History of the United States. Election Interference!
Day one of the trial in New York City kicked off with jury selection.
Human Events Editor Jack Posobiec noted:
Jury selection in Trump’s first case begins today and really shows how crazy this all is. They’re going to find 14 people in NYC who don’t have an opinion of Donald Trump? And the judge will say he believes them. Absurd on its face. … Remember even Alvin Bragg passed on this case at first, bc it was even too stupid for him.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton stated:
It will be nearly impossible for Trump to receive a fair trial in a courtroom run by biased, anti-Trump Democratic Party politicians. Today’s s kangaroo court proceedings in the Manhattan Supreme Court mark the first-ever criminal trial of a U.S. president. Today is a sad day that will go down in infamy. This is a dangerous attack on the rule of law and a brazen attempt to rig the 2024 elections for President Biden and Democrats.
As for the actual charge that Trump paid hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair, Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene noted that Daniels herself is on record as saying the affair never happened [see below] and key prosecution witness Michael Cohen “committed perjury and is a serial liar.”
During the trial's first day on Monday morning, Judge Merchan said that the Access Hollywood tape that resurfaced ahead of the 2016 election could not be played during the trial.
According to NBC News, Merchan reiterated his previous ruling that the prosecution could not play the tape. “The tape itself should not come in.”
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said Bragg’s office wanted to admit into evidence the transcript of the tape, saying that the tape included admission of sexual assault, but acknowledged that the tape itself could not be shown. The prosecution also sought to include Trump's deposition in the E. Jean Carroll case, but Merchan did not agree.
As with all of the prosecutions of Trump, conservative analysts note that the legacy media is playing a dutiful role in amplifying the Democrat narrative while at the same time downplaying the fact that the prosecutors in three of the cases against Trump are Democrats.
Honor their memory: The ‘shot heard round the world’
“Despite the obvious political implications of such a prosecution, a new study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage shows at least 90% of their coverage failed to inform viewers that Bragg and the other elected Democrats going after Trump are 'Democrats,' ” Rich Noyes wrote for Media Research Center on Monday. “It’s as if the networks prefer to disingenuously portray the indictments and civil lawsuits as the work of nonpartisan career prosecutors, rather than as partisan attempts to use the court system to hobble the electoral prospects of the country’s top Republican.”
ABC’s World News Tonight has aired 56 stories discussing Bragg’s “hush money” case against Trump, yet sharp-eared viewers only once heard that Bragg was a Democrat — on February 26, 2024, when correspondent Aaron Katersky relayed how “a spokesman for Trump… called Bragg ‘another deranged Democrat prosecutor.’ ”
That’s still better than the CBS Evening News, which aired 48 stories discussing Bragg’s case, none of which revealed that the District Attorney is a Democrat. NBC Nightly News was the most informative on this score, informing viewers that Bragg is a Democrat in 16 out of 59 stories, or about 27% of the time — still barely one-fourth of stories.
Trump trial kicks off as media-political spectacle in anti-GOP NYC added by Editor Two on April 15, 2024
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