MSNBC Legal Expert Fears Lawyers On Jury Will ACQUIT Trump

A former Department of Justice spokesman and MSNBC legal analyst is worried that some members of the jury in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial may be too skilled at parsing the evidence against him — and that’s bad news for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case.

Closing arguments in the trial begin Tuesday, leaving jurors with a final opportunity to hear reasons for and against President Trump’s culpability in paying to silence an affair that has mushroomed into a referendum on business records and campaign finance law. Anthony Coley, who served as director of the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs and was a top advisor to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, predicted on MSNBC that the presence of attorneys on the jury could result in an acquittal for Trump.

VOTE: Do YOU Stand With Harrison Butker Against The Woke Mob?

Appearing on “Jonathan Lemire Reports,” Coley warned that having lawyers sit among the 12 men and women tasked with determining Trump’s fate will give them an outsize role. They are professionally skilled at parsing the evidence and persuading others, he said, something that could hurt the prosecution’s reliance on jurors being sold by the salacious nature of the charges, rather than their basis in law.

“I think what I would worry about if I’m on the prosecution case, and I say this tongue in cheek, because I ran communications at arguably the largest law firm in the world, the U.S. Justice Department, I do worry that there are lawyers on this jury, not one but two lawyers,” Coley said, the Daily Caller reports. “And by my own experience, lawyers can sometimes be overly analytical. They can be hyper-technical. I worry that the nonlawyers on this jury may rely on the lawyers who, quite frankly, don’t have expertise in this area of the law.”

Defense attorneys, meanwhile, should continue hammering Michael Cohen’s reliability as a witness, Coley added. Cohen was pummeled over four days on the stand where attorneys for Trump made the former fixer relive his lies in front of Congress and admit to stealing money from the Trump organization.

“I think their strategy can really be summed up in four words,” Coley said. “Don’t believe Michael Cohen. And what we saw in four days of meandering testimony and cross-examination towards the end of this trial, we saw them take a couple hits at Michael Cohen’s credibility. We now know, for example, that in addition to being a convicted felon and a liar, we know that Michael Cohen by his own admission is a thief. So I expect to see defense attorneys return to those schematics.”

WATCH:

The case will serve as a bellwether on prosecuting Trump in an election year, a strategy that Democrats are panicking has backfired. Bragg’s case could be decided within days or a few weeks; an acquittal would vindicate Trump’s argument that allies of President Joe Biden conspired to kill his campaign in the courts, while a guilty verdict could breathe new life into Biden’s claims of Trump’s extremism. Other cases against the Republican have largely stalled while the Supreme Court continues to mull his claims of immunity.

(BREAKING: Glenn Beck reveals new Biden initiative that will bankrupt America)