Alan Dershowitz Rips Judge Juan Merchan Over ‘Scam’ Conclusion To Trump Case

Veteran trial attorney and legal analyst Alan Dershowitz was perplexed by Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan’s decision to sentence President-elect Donald Trump just under two weeks before he is set to be inaugurated. Dershowitz — who has been a fierce critic of Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg throughout the entirety of the highly controversial case — took issue with the judge’s decision to reveal the sentence in advance. In announcing the January 10 sentencing, Merchan made clear that Trump would not be sentenced to prison or probation, a move that renders the entire sentencing process a “scam,” according to Dershowitz.

Trump appeared virtually for sentencing at 9:30 a.m. on Friday after exhausting available legal options. After initially postponing the sentencing indefinitely, Merchan announced last Friday that Trump will be sentenced on January 10, leaving him little time to advance legal challenges. The judge added that Trump would avoid jail time, fines and probation in a decision that was made before Trump even appeared in court. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that president’s are entitled to immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted while in office leaving him out of reach of the Democrat judge’s courtroom once he is sworn on.

The president-elect did attempt to obtain a delay, though he was denied by a Democrat-controlled New York court on Thursday morning. The New York Court of Appeals issued a brief order on Thursday denying Trump’s legal team a hearing, effectively allowing the sentencing to proceed as scheduled. Trump then filed a last minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, though the petition was denied by a 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, joining the court’s three liberal justices in voting against.

“It is the office of the President that bestows those far-reaching protections to the officeholder. And it was the citizenry of this nation that recently decided that you should once again receive the benefits of those protections, which include, among other things, the supremacy clause and presidential immunity,” Merchan said during Friday’s hearing. “Which include, among other things, the Supremacy Clause and presidential immunity. It is through that lens, and that reality, that this course must determine a lawful sentence.” Trump has framed the highly controversial case as a politically motivated with hunt and has vowed to appeal the verdict.

While appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity” a few hours after the hearing, Dershowitz speculated that Merchan’s decision to announce the decision ahead of time was an attempt to “persuade” Supreme Court justices to refrain from intervening. “What we saw today was a scam, a ploy,” he said. “It started with Judge Merchan telling in advance what a sentence was going to be. I’ve been doing this for years. I’ve never been told by a judge what the sentence is going to be. When I go into the courtroom with my client, I tell him to bring his toothbrush because he doesn’t know whether he’s going home or going to Rikers or some other lockup. The only reason Merchan said in advance what he was going to do is to try to persuade the two justices of the Supreme Court not to take the case now and they use that fact.”

The Harvard Law professor then pointed to the fact President-elect Trump filed an emergency petition to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday in an effort to prevent the sentencing. Trump’s lawyers, in their petition to the high court, said it should “immediately order a stay of pending criminal proceedings in the Supreme Court of New York County, New York, pending the final resolution of President Trump’s interlocutory appeal raising questions of Presidential immunity, including in this Court if necessary.”

“The Court should also enter, if necessary, a temporary administrative stay while it considers this stay application,” the filing added.

Dershowitz believes that Merchan’s decision to spare Trump from any punishment effectively convicted Roberts and Barrett to avoid the controversial case, effectively allowing Democrats to apply the “convicted felon” label for political gain. “And they said the reason we’re not taking the case now and stopping the sentencing from going forward was because the judge said in advance that he’s not sentencing him to prison. So this was a ploy and the two justices unfortunately fell for the ploy,” Dershowitz said of Judge Merchan. “This is the worst thing that’s happened to the American criminal justice system since McCarthyism and the civil rights abuses back in the 1950s and the victims of the American people. Trump, yes, it was hard he said very honestly, that it was tough for him, but he prevailed, he won and the American people won because they rejected lawfare.”