Turley: No Way Trump Should Be Found 'Guilty' In Hush Money Trial

Turley: No Way Trump Should Be Found 'Guilty' In Hush Money Trial


Legal expert and Georgetown University Law School Prof. Jonathan Turley said over the Memorial Day observance that the jury in Trump’s hush money case cannot logically come up with any verdict other than “not guilty.”

In an op-ed for the New York Post, Turley asserted that Trump’s defense lawyers “are in a rather curious position” because they are not certain exactly what crimes they are defending their clients against since prosecutors did not clearly state what laws he allegedly violated.

“Even liberal legal analysts admitted that they could not figure out what was being alleged in [District Attorney Alvin] Bragg’s indictment. Now, after weeks of trial, the situation has changed little,” Turley wrote, adding that Judge Juan Merchan has even instructed jurors they do “not have to agree on what that crime is.”

“The jury has been given little substantive information on these crimes, and Merchan has denied a legal expert who could have shown that there was no federal election violation,” he added.

Turley then likened Trump’s case — and every legal case, for that matter — to a three-legged stool, writing that should “any leg is missing, the stool collapses”:

–Falsification of records

–Secondary crime

–Criminal intent

In the alleged falsification, defense witnesses made it clear during their testimony that it was an antiquated system that labeled payments as “legal expenses,” and “there was no evidence that Trump knew of how the payments were denoted,” Turley wrote.

As for a secondary crime, there isn’t any, Turley said: “The defense has to hammer away on the fact that no one has testified that it was a federal campaign violation.”

The prosecution relied heavily on Cohen’s testimony to show criminal intent, “yet even Cohen did not offer a clear basis for showing a criminal intent to use unlawful means to influence the election,” Turley wrote. To be sure, after defense attorneys discredited Cohen, the only real crime he could even attest to was stealing $60,000 from the Trump Organization, the professor wrote.

“In the end, this three-legged stool is the very thing that all of us must stand on when accused. Who on the jury would want to stand on this stool with their own liberty at stake?” he wrote.

“In the end, we are all standing on that wobbly stool when the government seeks to convict people without evidence or even a clear crime. If we allow a conviction, it is more than a stool that will collapse in this Manhattan courtroom,” he concluded.


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