Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy on Friday suggested Judge Juan Merchan’s friendliness toward Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will damage former President Donald Trump’s defense.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of allegedly falsifying business documents in connection to reimbursing his former attorney Michael Cohen, who is a witness against him in the current trial, for $130,000 paid to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. The prosecution’s first witness, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, was not significantly damaging to Trump, but the jury may not comprehend that because of how the judge is treating Bragg compared to the defense, McCarthy asserted on “Fox & Friends.” (RELATED: Jonathan Turley, Leo Terrell Say Bragg’s Team Still Hasn’t Proven Trump Committed Crime)
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“Prosecutors generally want to start very strong,” McCarthy said. “And the witness that Bragg seems to have put on, Alvin Bragg, the elected district attorney of Manhattan is David Pecker, a long-time friend of President Trump, who clearly was not hostile to President Trump and I think given the Trump’s team understanding of the case, what they realize is that while there seems to be a lot of evidence offered, it’s evidence of conduct that’s actually legal. So he can’t have thought that that was a bad day for him.”
The National Enquirer published “salacious” headlines about Trump’s 2016 opponents, with prosecutors presenting them to the jury and legal analysts warning this could be a “misstep.”
“On the other hand, you asked me what is the biggest defense fear,” he added. “It’s one thing to be watching the trial through the media, if you are watching it on our channel, you hear me. You hear Kerry Kupec, you hear Jonathan Turley talk about the weaknesses of the case. The jury is not getting that filter. The jury is getting the district attorney’s version of events and taking its cues from a judge who has been very friendly to the district attorney. So if you’re watching this with legal commentary, you know they’re not really proving a conspiracy in there and don’t really have federal campaign finance in there. But I don’t know that the jury knows that.”
Merchan has placed Trump under a gag order that bars him from making statements about witnesses, prosecutors other than the district attorney, court staff, their families and prospective jurors, which Bragg alleges Trump has breached multiple times. The judge told Trump’s defense attorney Todd Blanche on Tuesday that he is “losing all credibility” during a hearing on the former president’s alleged gag order violations.
Bragg has pushed for the judge to warn Trump he could face 30 days in jail for gag order violations. Trump should not face a prohibition on speaking about witnesses like Cohen who publicly and frequently criticize him, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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