Eight Days, The Public’s Opinion in Trump’s Case & A Thumb on the Scale - Top 3 Takeaways
- Eight days? What included 22 witnesses testifying for over 50 hours across 19 days in a court room? The New York State Trump trial. Who has been made to wait for eight full days between the last testimony presented in this case and the closing arguments being presented in it? The jury. Everything else about this case has been unprecedented, perhaps that’s the reason that New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, on Tuesday, decided that court would adjourn for a week? If anyone can find an example of a high-profile case with an un-sequestered jury being sent home for eight days before being allowed to deliberate, please let me know because I haven’t been able to find one. So many things about this case and the proceedings of the trial have been remarkable for all of the wrong reasons and you can now add this decision to the list. For eight full days the jurors who will decide the guilt or innocence of the former and perhaps future President of the United States in a criminal case, are being sent to their regular lives. Sent home with the instructions to not discuss the case with anyone. They’re not to watch, read or listen to coverage of the trial’s proceedings. They’re effectively being asked to do the impossible. And the biggest question of all is why? Why couldn’t we have immediately had closing arguments delivered in this case? Why couldn’t we have had the jury deliberate in this case? Judge Merchan did speak to this as he said: “There's no way to do this in a cohesive manner this week”. Except there’s not actually a reason why this couldn’t be done cohesively this week. The jury was excused just after ten o’clock in the morning yesterday. Why didn’t we have closing arguments instead? What makes next Tuesday better for closing arguments than Tuesday this week? And how long exactly does the judge expect the jury to need to deliberate in this case anyway? Perhaps that’s the issue. Maybe his jury instructions will include the need to deliberate for as long as it takes to convict Donald Trump in this case? And maybe the eight day pause in the action is to give the jurors time to hear from those around them about what life might be like for them in New York City if they acquit Trump in this case? Eight days? Unheard of just like everything else in this case. And what’s our perception of all this?
- Increasingly skeptical. Prior to the start of Trump’s trial most Americans already viewed the case (and broadly the criminal cases pending against him, skeptically). For example, Quinnipiac found 62% of Americans viewed the criminal cases being brought against the former and perhaps future President of the United States as being politically motivated. How about now? Let’s just say it appears as though this country is as skeptical as ever. Yesterday Sinclair’s polling on the question Do you believe the criminal investigations into Donald Trump are politically motivated? resulted in 74% of respondents saying yes. We appear to have gone from just under two-thirds of the country believing that Trump was being unfairly targeted in these criminal cases prior to the start of the Trump trial to nearly three-quarters of Americans thinking that’s now the case. Given that we know nowhere near 74% of Americans will be voting for Donald Trump this fall, or even anywhere close to the pretrial figure of 62%, what this likely reflects is two dynamics. One is that there appears to be about a quarter of the country that’s not on the Trump Train but that is objective. The other is that the court of public opinion about how this case has gone for the prosecution is in, and it’s damning. They clearly didn’t prove their case to the average casual observer of the news and what that means is that Trump appears to be positioned well politically regardless of how this case turns out. If there’s an acquittal he’s vindicated anyway. If there’s a hung jury, it’s likely to be viewed similarly in the eyes of most people given the numbers who already think this case was a political witch hunt. And, if he’s somehow convicted in this case, he potentially stands to appear as though he’s a victim of a two-tiered justice system (though I’d be shocked if it comes to that). And clearly Trump feels confident in this case. As he said in the afternoon yesterday... We have a phenomenal case. We've won the case by any standard. It remains to be seen what the ultimate jury has to say but the court of public opinion appears to have already overwhelmingly weighed in.
- Thumb on the scale? All throughout the course of this trial, arguably starting with when the judge who donated money to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign refused to recuse himself, it’s felt as though Trump’s defense team has had to effectively beat the prosecution’s case but often with a hand tied due to the influence of the judge. The legal wranglings over jury instructions Tuesday afternoon appeared to be no different. I lost count at the number of times the Trump team lost out on a request that the prosecution objected to and how many times Judge Merchan sided with the prosecution in their requests, but I was easily able to count the number of times Merchan sided with the defense over the prosecution. Once. Unless I missed something, and I don’t believe that I did, there was only one contested challenge over jury instructions that Merchan sided with the defense on. There are a couple others he said he wanted to review further – so that number may move but if it does it won’t be much. One of the keys in the jury instructions will be regarding the guidance the jury is provided pertaining to the legality of non-disclosure agreements. Judge Merchan specifically refused the defense's request for him to instruct the jury that NDAs are legal. The judge said he didn’t think that was necessary as the defense could make that case in closing arguments. What the final outcome is of Merchan’s instructions will be a key indicator of how heavy of a thumb he intends to have on the scale.