Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy on Thursday took a somber tone as he bemoaned the fact that a jury found former President Donald Trump found guilty on all 34 counts against him.
The jury began deliberating on Trump’s case on Wednesday in the case where Trump faced 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records pertaining to reimbursing his former attorney Michael Cohen for a payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. McCarthy said the case was “political” and that Trump was unfairly targeted, expressing hope that the appeal will be more just.(RELATED: ‘Kangaroo Court’: Denying Mistrial Over Stormy Daniels’ Testimony Is One Of Many Mistakes By Judge, Legal Experts Say)
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“It’s a historic trial of a former president of the United States by his partisan adversaries. Whatever you think of the results, it’s inconceivable in New York that anyone else other than Donald Trump would ever have been indicted in this way by Alvin Bragg, the elected progressive democratic district attorney who campaigned on the fact that he would go after Donald Trump, that he had a history of going after Donald Trump,” McCarthy said. “This is a very political exercise.” (RELATED: ‘Rigged: Death Of The American Voter’ — Stream Now)
“And you have to say that it accomplished what it set out to accomplish. What they wanted was to have a situation where they could call Donald Trump a convicted felon in the run-up to the election,” he continued. “We have an elected Democrat who got that accomplished. He got a very friendly judge, who ruled his way on every important thing, and turned the jury instructions into a road map to conviction. So now I assume with the mission having been accomplished, we’ll have more procedural regularity … as you just said, there will be a pre-sentence investigation. There should be a sentencing scheduled and we will go from there. But this case will be appealed, and I hope there’ll be more fairness and equity than there was in the trial.”
Prosecutors alleged the payment was part of a wider conspiracy Trump was involved in to influence the 2016 election through “unlawful” means. Judge Juan Merchan gave instructions to the jury that did not force them to reach a unanimous conclusion on what specific “unlawful” means Trump allegedly used, enabling them to pick from the three theories put forward by prosecutors: a federal campaign finance violation, the falsification of other business records or tax fraud.
Trump attorney Will Scharf on Thursday said the former president’s team would “speedily appeal” if there was a conviction.
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