Liberal legal legend Alan Dershowitz writes for DailyMail.com about the guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump.
Long before Donald Trump’s hush-money trial concluded, I predicted that his conviction wss a forgone conclusion – despite the obvious weakness of the case against him.
Had the prosecution been brought in another part of the country, or even in another part of New York State, which was more fairly balanced with anti and pro-Trump voters, I am in little doubt that the outcome would have been different.
But instead, on Thursday, Trump became the first former president to be found guilty of a crime – convicted on all 34 flimsy counts of ‘falsifying business records.’
Why? Because this case was tried in Manhattan, where practically every man on the street wants to keep one Donald Trump out of the White House.
Perhaps the most important function of an independent jury in criminal trials is to keep a check on the biases of prosecutors and judges.
But for this constitutional protection to work, jurors must not be biased themselves against a defendant.
It’s quite apparent that this essential protection was absent.
Nor did this case seem to be based on the evidence or the law. In fact, I saw no credible evidence of a crime.
The case brought by District Attorney Alvin Bragg – elected to ‘Get Trump’ – was so woefully weak on the facts and the law that it makes Trump’s conviction even more dangerous.
It now means that future prosecutors can concoct extremely weak cases against political opponents and be assured of a conviction – albeit if they just pick the right venue and select the right jurors.
This trial was without precedent.
Never in American history has anyone ever been prosecuted for – as Trump’s defense argued was the case – erroneous bookkeeping made by a company underling who failed to disclose the payment of ‘hush money’.
What there is plenty of precedent for is… the payment of hush money.
