34 Reasons the Bragg-Biden Show Trial Should Have Been Tossed Out

1. Unconstitutional Gag Order that prevented President Trump from criticizing the trial, exposing the many conflicts that should have forced the judge to recuse himself, and the railroading of his fundamental due process rights.
2. Judge Merchan’s many, many conflicts of interests – all of which were disqualifying. His daughter, Loren Merchan, is President of Authentic Campaigns, a political consulting firm that hires the likes of the Biden-Harris Campaign, Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar, and many other far left Democratic lawmakers. Loren’s firm has made tens of millions off these clients – Juan Merchan, through his daughter, had a direct financial stake in the outcome of this trial, a flagrant breach of the canons of legal ethics, both under the ABA and NY State, that under any other judge would have been grounds for a recusal.
3. Judge Merchan’s wife was previously employed by Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York State who campaigned on “getting” Donald Trump.
4. Bragg’s Lead Prosecutor was Matthew Colangelo, the former #3 official at the DOJ. We are told Colangelo graciously decided to step down from his prestigious office to work for a lowly state DA’s office – of course, a reasonable inference would be that he was directed to do so by the Biden Regime to persecute his leading political opponent in Donald John Trump.
5. Statute of Limitations (2 years, NY State) had long expired for the business records falsification scheme that served as the primary charge brought against Trump. For this reason, the case was passed over by the DOJ and even Alvin Bragg over seven years because it was so weak. Only once Bragg felt political pressure, externally via Clinton attorney Mark Pomerantz, who previously worked in Bragg’s office, and internally via Colangelo, a Biden lackey, did Bragg buckle under the political weight and press charges.
6. Venue in bright-blue Manhattan, a borough that voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump at almost a 9 to 1 clip, prevented the President from ever getting a fair trial, because the pool of jurors was naturally biased against the 45th President, and could not possibly rule fairly and impartially (8 of the 12 cited the NY Times as their main source of news). Any pro-Trump jurors who were considered chose to self-select out themselves because they claimed they “could not rule fairly.” Case in point: no way in hell is the burden of proof met on any of these charges, and yet the jury pool consisted of two lawyers, who evidently believed just that. No reasonable juror, and especially no reasonable lawyer-juror, would have found that the elements of every single crime brought against Trump met the burden of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt.
7. Election Interference: This was not a new case: it had been circulating in various court systems, federal and state, for years. These charges were only brought this year to interfere with the 2024 presidential race, period. President Trump is now the leading presidential candidate, by every reputable poll, and the frontrunner by significant margins, a gap that has only expanded over time. There is no reason why this case should be brought now, six months before Election Day, unless there was a conspiracy to prevent President Trump from being on the campaign trail in key swing states, like PA, MI, AZ, and GA, which is exactly what occurred.
8. Stormy Daniels’ Testimony was unnecessarily detailed and flagrantly prejudicial against President Trump. Bragg’s Prosecutors asked her about her impressions on the Access Hollywood Tape, which should have never been allowed and have absolutely no bearing on anything. They also probed her on intimate, irrelevant details about her alleged affair with the President, including such inappropriate, salacious, and prejudicial questions as whether he wore protection, and where she testified to a “power imbalance” – all part of a character assassination campaign to smear his image before the jury.
9. Greatest Liar of All Time Michael Cohen’s Testimony, on which the entirety of the Prosecutor’s case was based, was unreliable, prejudicial, and grounds for reversible error; he contradicted himself and committed perjury on the stand in this proceeding. He admitted to lying and committing perjury in the past, which resulted in his prosecution and imprisonment. He admitted to waging a political vendetta against Donald Trump because of his previous conviction; he admitted to stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump Organization, lying before a Congressional Committee, and financially profiting off this ongoing trial – and verdict, among other serious crimes.
10. Bragg’s Theory of The Case was flawed from start to finish – and unconstitutional. He claimed, under NY state law, that ordinarily the business falsification charge is deemed a Class A misdemeanor under the State penal code, which had expired by the SOL. However, by combining that misdemeanor with another misdemeanor, under the same law, Bragg claimed you can elevate the underlying crime to a felony, which has a longer statute of limitations than a misdemeanor and thus, in his view, is still actionable. The problem is that nothing in the NY State penal code spells this out expressly, or even implicitly: there is nothing that says combining two misdemeanors is sufficient to contrive a felony. This is a bespoke crime intended to fit a one defendant and one defendant only: Donald John Trump.

Several other problems persist with the above:

11.  Whether combining two class A misdemeanors to create a class E felony is supported by any legal precedent at all, or logically makes sense (it doesn’t);
12. Whether combining two misdemeanors to contrive a felony is constitutionally lawful – i.e., does not violate due process or is constitutionally operative as an unlawful bill of attainder, etc.; and
13. Even if that combination establishes a theory of liability to raise a misdemeanor into a felony, whether doing so to circumvent a long-expired SOL does not also violate due process?

14. The Second alleged crime, that Bragg combined with the business falsification crime, to contrive a felony, is inapplicable to President Trump. Bragg maintained that President Trump violated state campaign law. But that is problematic for at least two reasons:
    15. President Trump ran for President, a federal office, and not state office – and thereby, state campaign law does not apply to him;
    16. to the extent state campaign law does apply or is controlling, it is preempted (i.e., barred) – based on President Trump’s office and acts – by federal campaign law. In short, this matter should have been brought under the FEC or DOJ, not state court. Merchan’s court had no jurisdiction whatsoever to prosecute the matter.

17. The State Election Law, to the extent it was lawfully controlling, established a predicate crime scheme that is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled in Ramos v. Louisiana that non-unanimous jury verdicts are a violation of fundamental due process rights. This is well-settled law.  Federal precedent applies with equal force to state criminal court proceedings. Thus, the “mix and match” or “buffet” scheme that Merchan laid out, allowing the jury to select one of three predicate crimes under the relevant statute to reach a guilty verdict, is a flagrant violation of President Trump’s due process rights.
18. The three predicate crimes that Bragg’s theory of the case lays out: FECA violation, tax law violation, or record-keeping violation, each cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
19. The FECA violation should’ve been tossed out immediately, because a state court has no jurisdiction over the matter. The Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) has its own rules and procedures for administering election law violations, as well as a doctrine of sequencing that it is required to employ to administer disputes. This sequencing doctrine would require that Merchan refer any such FECA allegations to, for instance, the Federal Election Commission first, which might have primary jurisdiction over the matter, and then from there, the FEC might coordinate with the DOJ to prosecute any potential crimes. The point is: order matters; a rogue state court judge cannot unilaterally take up an issue belonging in federal court.

To the extent an alleged FECA violation controls here, there are a number of problems:

20. what statute are we talking about;
21. how do we know that the alleged violation can be prosecuted as a crime, and isn’t just a civil matter;

22. even if the alleged violation is a crime, how do we know
23. such crime is a felony; and
24. that crime can be adjudicated independently by an independent agency of the United States? In other words, does the FEC have the power to prosecute crimes unilaterally, and independently of the DOJ? That alone is sufficient grounds for a due process violation.

25. Again, we run into the issue of how 2 misdemeanor crimes mysteriously turn into an underlying felony. Is the law that any two misdemeanors creates a felony? Does it matter if the misdemeanor is a state crime versus an alleged federal crime? It cannot possibly be the case that all misdemeanors are created equal – nor can it be the case that if a jury found President Trump guilty of the predicate FECA misdemeanor, that the business falsification statute incorporates a federal misdemeanor to contrive a Class E felony. When has that ever been done before? Never!
26. Merchan has no knowledge of Federal Election Law. Typically, federal election law issues (FECA issues) are preempted by federal court. Putting all that to one side, however, considering that Merchan ignored all of that, and was hellbelt on prosecuting this nebulous crime in state court, he should have at least allowed an expert witness to opine on federal election law-related matters. That expert witness, former FEC Commissioner and government lawyer, Brad Smith, should have been allowed to testify on federal election law, a notoriously complex and highly specialized area of law. But Smith was not permitted to testify, because Merchan did not want the jury to hear expert testimony from someone competent in the relevant body of law. That prohibition of Smith’s testimony is prejudicial, and grounds for reversible error.
27. In addition to the FECA predicate crime issue, which is teeming with due process and other constitutional violations, both the alleged tax law violation, and general bookkeeping violation are also laden with due process problems.
28. Merchan has absolutely no authority to say that President Trump can be found guilty of violating “tax laws” or erroneously reporting a tax filing as a legal expense (when in fact, legally and definitionally, it was a “legal expense”); these two miscellaneous predicate crimes are constitutionally overbroad and cannot for those reasons alone satisfy the requisite burden of proof – due to concerns of being overbroad, Bragg’s theory of criminal liability violates due process as well.
29. Nondisclosure Agreements, Hush Money Payments, and “Catch and Kill” schemes are and have always been perfectly lawful; none of these things can serve as a basis for criminal liability, however controversial they might sound – nor too does consensual sexual activity, including out of wedlock sex, even with a pornstar, ever, ever impute criminal liability or the pretext of criminal liability upon the one doing the act. All of these acts are lawful, case closed.
30. Running for President of the United States, even if your name is Donald Trump, is lawful. It is not a “conspiracy” to run a presidential campaign, nor is it conspiratorial – let alone criminal – to take lawful measures to win a campaign. Under Bragg’s twisted theory, however, every single political campaign ever carried out in the history of the United States would be considered unlawful – including the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
31. Stormy Daniels denied an affair with Donald Trump, in writing, multiple times over many years. That said, the Daniels-Trump story had long been in the public domain years before the 2016 presidential election. The NDA at issue was formalized in 2011, five years before the 2016 presidential election. How it is even possible that a 2011 NDA can be a component of a larger conspiracy to criminally manipulate the results of the 2016 race was never addressed. At trial, through the testimony of Hope Hicks and Madeleine Westerhout, what became crystal clear was that any such nondisclosure agreements were to protect President Trump’s family and had no bearing on the 2016 election.
32. Indeed, it is unclear just how the dissemination of the Daniels story, which was already widely distributed in the public domain by the time President Trump launched his 2016 campaign, would have impacted the race. By conflating the Daniels story with the Access Hollywood Tape, which was frequently referenced in the examinations of several key witnesses, Merchan allowed undue prejudice into his courtroom – providing a basis for reversible error. Stormy Daniels and Access Hollywood have absolutely nothing to do with one another; Access Hollywood had no bearing on any NDA agreements signed between President Trump’s counsel, and Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, or anyone else. Asking Daniels, during her testimony, about her impressions of the Access Hollywood Tape was completely inappropriate for a courtroom and prejudicial.  Conflating these facts, many of which were wholly inappropriate to bring into the courtroom, unfairly prejudices the jurors – because they serve no other purpose than to smear President Trump’s character.
33. The alleged bookkeeping error that was the basis for this entire criminal trial – marked as “legal expenses” – of which the President had no knowledge, as revealed in the testimony of Robert Costello and others, occurred after the President won the 2016 presidential election! How could the President unlawfully conspire to promote or prevent his election after he had already been elected to federal office? This entire trial operated like a bill of attainder, unlawful to the core.
34. The judge conducted this trial unfairly from start to finish, and treated the defendant, his attorneys, and his witnesses horrendously.  He prevented President Trump and his lawyers from bringing in key expert witnesses. He admonished President Trump’s lead attorney, Todd Blanche, on the stand, and cast multiple, unnecessary wanton barbs at him. He excoriated the only pro-Trump witness he allowed to testify, Robert Costello, an experienced lawyer of the SDNY; at one dramatic point, in a complete and unprecedented breach of the code of judicial ethics, Merchan lost his composure and vacated the entire courtroom, press included, because he did not like Costello’s “tone” and “mannerisms” from the witness stand. Merchan allowed Bragg Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass to go on for hours in his summations – allowing Steinglass to explain fundamental aspects of the law, including the burden of proof, for the jury, even though he previously admonished President Trump’s lawyers from making even the slightest reference to the law. He also allowed Steinglass to go on wild tangents unrelated to anything having to do with the alleged crime, allowing discussions of “Bill Clinton” and “Monica Lewinsky” to enter the courtroom.  Merchan had previously declared, like a tyrant, that only he can interpret the law in his courtroom.  But then he allowed Steinglass to explain the law at great length, over and above the objections of President Trump’s attorneys. Merchan also buttered up the jurors to win over their sympathy, complimenting random things like their “note-taking” skills, attention, and timeliness. All these factors, in addition to everything stated above, are egregious breaches of professional and judicial ethics and serve as grounds for a mistrial.

Paul Ingrassia is a Constitutional Scholar; Communications Director of the NCLU; a two-time Claremont Fellow, and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club and the Italian American Civil Rights League. He writes a widely read Substack that is regularly posted on Truth Social by President Trump. Follow him on X @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, Instagram, and Rumble.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.