Trump sentencing: A BS conclusion to a BS case - Washington Examiner

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

66% : On Nov. 5, Trump was elected president for a second time.
55% : If it were real, Trump would be able to use the powers of the federal government to quash it.
53% : Anti-Trumpers came to support the case because they saw it as the only chance to get Trump before the 2024 election.
45% : "Once Trump is in office, a state cannot interfere with his ability to execute the duties and responsibilities of the office -- this seems guaranteed by the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
43% : "Now, a year later, with the trial finally underway ... the charges against Trump still have an oddly inchoate quality."
42% : Yoo noted that Merchan could sentence Trump to community service, or jail, or lots of things, but it would all be a political gesture.
42% : And that is why Merchan's non-jail sentence is a cynical ploy -- he wants to tag Trump as a felon, but not in any way that is other than symbolic.
35% : Like everything else in the Democrats' multifront lawfare campaign against Trump, the Manhattan verdict backfired.
35% : That would mean that the case would be over, Trump would be an officially convicted felon -- good for those Democratic sound bites -- and Trump could also begin appealing the verdict, as he has been itching to do.
35% : " Yoo continued: "I think Trump could order the Secret Service to block any effort by New York authorities -- who would they send, the NYPD?
33% : Trump, of course, moved that Merchan throw the case out entirely.
33% : He said it was not his "inclination" to sentence Trump to jail, even though he has the authority to do so.
32% : Trump could also go to federal court to have Merchan's decision suppressed.
32% : "His comments show that the whole purpose of the case was not to correct bookkeeping fraud, but to punish Trump for his 2016 campaign," Yoo said, "which is forbidden under federal law.
30% : Nevertheless, as the other cases against Trump fell by the wayside -- the two federal prosecutions brought by special counsel Jack Smith were bogged down in litigation, and the Georgia case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was sunk by prosecutorial misconduct -- the Bragg case stayed on track.
30% : At the end of May, Bragg, aided by a key veteran of the Biden Justice Department, convinced a jury in deepest-blue Manhattan to convict Trump.
30% : Who would have no authority outside the city of New York -- to apprehend and force Trump to obey a sentence.
29% : But maybe they could still damage Trump with some sort of attention-getting sentence before he took office.
28% : This Friday, though, Trump will have to put aside his work to attend, either in person or virtually, his sentencing in the Manhattan criminal prosecution in which he was convicted of falsifying business records.
28% : For one thing, the charges, questionable as they were, were misdemeanors, past the statute of limitations, which Bragg inflated into felonies by alleging that Trump falsified records in a plot to steal the 2016 presidential election, which Bragg did not have the authority to police.
28% : And that would surely include freedom from state criminal punishment, which -- in whatever form it took -- would have to take Trump physically away from doing the job of president.
26% : " So, given the circumstances, it appears Merchan has decided to sentence Trump to make a point.
18% : The case, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, was widely viewed as the weakest of the four criminal cases brought against Trump by elected Democratic prosecutors and the Biden administration.
16% : "When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg first brought charges against Donald Trump in March 2023, the legal theory behind the indictment remained remarkably unclear," Quinta Jurecic, an editor of the journal Lawfare, from the liberal Brookings Institution, wrote last April.

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