A Yale Law professor suggests there is another strategy former President Donald Trump's legal team could pursue to limit the impact of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case on the 2024 presidential election, after a jury of New York found the former president guilty of 34 serious counts of forgery. commercial records.
In a newly created podcast titled Straight Down the Middle, Yale Law professor Jed Rubenfeld discussed the legal options left to Trump's defense team following the jury's verdict, as well as the planned appeal process. let it be carried out soon. .
The most obvious path for Trump's legal team to take in an effort to challenge the conviction is that of an appeal through the New York Court of Appeals system with the hope of ending up in the Supreme Court, a process that, according to Rubenfeld, it will take years to complete and could result in “irreparable damage.”
“Of course, that would take years, and that is a problem here. Why is it a problem? It is a problem because the elections will have already taken place and if this conviction is illegal and unconstitutional, it could have an effect on those elections,” Rubenfeld, said a constitutional law professor on his podcast.
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From left to right: Judge Juan Merchán, former President Donald Trump and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. (Getty Images, AP Images)
Referring to polls showing a “substantial number” of voters in the American electorate who say they will continue to vote for Trump in the next presidential election if he is a convicted felon, Rubenfeld said: “If that is true, an illegal conviction in this case could interfere with and, in fact, decide the outcome of the upcoming election of the next President of the United States.”
“Even if the conviction were overturned on appeal years later, that effect could not be undone. In legal terms, that is called irreparable harm,” Rubenfeld said.
If the conviction were overturned on appeal in the future, Rubenfeld suggested that Bragg and Judge Juan Merchán would have “illegally interfered with the elections and decided the outcome of the upcoming election through unconstitutional means.”
“And no multi-year appeal could have any effect on that,” he added.
Despite media reports, Rubenfeld insisted that it is “not true” that Trump is already a “convicted felon,” arguing that “you are not a convicted felon because of a jury verdict.”
“You are not convicted until the judge makes that guilty ruling. Now, in New York, Judge Merchan will most likely hand down that guilty ruling against Trump on the same day he hands down the sentence. That would be July 11.”
Rubenfeld insisted there is “another avenue” Trump's lawyers could take to fight the conviction: sue in federal court and “ask for an emergency temporary restraining order.”
Describing what that effort would look like, Rubenfeld said: “In this federal action, Trump would sue District Attorney Bragg and other state actors and ask the judge, the federal judge, for an emergency temporary restraining order preventing Judge Merchan from issuing that guilty verdict until the federal courts have had the opportunity to review and discard the serious constitutional arguments that exist here.
Rubenfeld, expressing concern about how “this country looks bad” for criminally targeting former presidents for “unclear” crimes, also described what he believed were problems with the case surrounding Trump.
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“To criminally persecute a former president of the United States and someone who is now running for president is a very bad image for this country,” he said. “It looks especially bad when the people bringing the case and the judge deciding it are members of the opposing political party. And it's even worse when the crime is so confusing that the state is hiding what the real charges are.” throughout the trial and, in fact, until the trial.
Former President Donald Trump sits with his lawyers in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on May 29, 2024. (JABIN BOTSFORD/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
“Even now we don't know exactly what the jury found Trump guilty of,” Rubenfeld added.
Rubenfeld said that those who criminally attack members of opposing political parties, in this case Trump, the “leading candidate in the polls,” then “better have the goods.”
“You better not follow some newfangled legal theory where you have to hide the ball [and] It's not even clear what the charges are,” he said. “That could be a very dangerous precedent for this country. “A very bad and dangerous precedent.”
“That is why it is so important that a federal court review the constitutionality of this process and decide whether it was constitutional or not,” he added. “The only way to achieve this before the election takes place is for Trump's team to file an action in federal court and ask him to temporarily delay entering the guilty verdict until the federal courts, and perhaps “The Supreme Court may, on an emergency basis, decide on the likelihood of success of these constitutional arguments.”
If that doesn't happen, Rubenfeld said, then “that danger of 'irreparable harm' I mentioned before, well, that's where we are.”
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11 and could be sent to prison, just days before the Republican National Convention is held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (AP)
“But if that happens, the nation could get a ruling from federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, before the election is held,” he said. “Maybe that's what the nation needs, and maybe that's what the law here requires.”
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Last week, at his trial in Manhattan, Trump was found guilty by the jury of all 34 counts of falsifying business records related to the payment of hush money to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections.
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11 and could be sent to prison, just days before the Republican National Convention is held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
