Criminal defense attorney Michael O’Mara asserted Friday there is a strong chance of former President Donald Trump’s legal team overturning the guilty verdict against him in his New York trial.
A jury in Manhattan convicted Trump in the case brought by Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg on all 34 counts of falsifying business records. CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig and O’Mara said on “CNN News Central” that Trump’s appeal would be based on issues like the unprecedented nature of the case and Judge Juan Merchan not sequestering the jury. (RELATED: Stormy Daniels’ Admission On Witness Stand Sheds Light On Why Alvin Bragg Had Her Testify Against Trump)
“So I think the top grounds for appeal is the fact that we had a state court here, a state prosecutor, enforcing in part a federal election crime for the first time actually in U.S. history,” Honig said. “We’ve never before seen a case where any state or county level prosecutor has charged, as part of their case, or as a sub-part of their case as a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act. So this is the first time that’s happened. It was briefed to Judge Merchan. Judge Merchan said, ‘I find it okay, I find it acceptable under New York state law.’ But that‘s going to be issue 1A on the appeal. We don’t know what the answer will be. It’s unprecedented.” (RELATED: ‘Rigged: Death Of The American Voter’ — Stream Now)
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Host John Berman asked O’Mara about the likelihood of the appeal being “successful.”
“I think there’s a great likelihood, and the reason why is there are a number of issues,” O’Mara answered. “Elie brought one up. I have always complained about the way this jury was or was not handled during the trial. I think with the massive focus on this case that they should have been sequestered. They certainly should have been sequestered during the deliberations. I think they should have been sequestered for the week before.”
“Still don’t understand why there was a brief delay with a trial and everybody knew it was going to go to us closing arguments and a jury, but even maybe during the trial itself, it should have been sequestered, and the reason why is there is going to be thousands of examples of potential infection,” O’Mara continued. “At this point, they’ll find out who the jurors are. They will backtrack them to every house that they went to, to watch the billboards they saw, the news stands that passed by, so I have a real concern that the judge who has to ensure the freedom given by the jury process wasn’t because this jury was not well-protected. And that’s only one of one hundred.”
Trump attorney Will Scharf asserted on Thursday ahead of the conviction that the former president’s team would “speedily appeal” if the jury found him guilty.
The jury reached their verdict on Thursday evening after commencing their deliberation on Trump’s case on Wednesday. The former president faced charges related to reimbursing his former attorney Michael Cohen for a payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
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