Trump attorney Todd Blanche teased Thursday evening on CNN the possible argument he may be delivering with an appeal against the former president’s guilty verdict announced.
Blanche appeared on “The Source With Kaitlan Collins” to discuss his reaction to the New York jury’s unanimous verdict of Trump on all 34 felony counts brought forward by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. As Collins questioned Blanche about his perspective on the jury, the Trump attorney called out the deliberation in deciding the panel of twelve noting how many couldn’t go through with participating because of their bias against the former president. (RELATED: ‘I’ll Lose Friends For This’: Ultra-Wealthy Former Dem Donor Cuts Massive Check To Trump After Conviction)
“I think that at the end of the day, I do think it comes to something that we talk about a lot of times in our profession where there’s a bias that you have that you can’t get past. I mean, you say that this is where he built his business. That’s true. Every single person on that jury knew Donald Trump, either as president, as candidate, from ‘The Apprentice.’ So I don’t accept that this was a fair place to try President Trump,” Blanche stated.
“What’s your main argument going to be in your appeal?” Collins pressed.
“That is certainly an argument. I think the timing of this trial was really unfair to President Trump. There’s so much publicity around the witnesses and around leading up to the trial. Our system of justice isn’t supposed to be a system where every person that walks in the courtroom knows about the case. I mean and it sounds —” Blanche responded.
“But it’s one of those cases where you can’t avoid it. I mean, no matter what jurisdiction he’s tried in, everyone knows Donald Trump,” Collins jumped in.
“The law doesn’t say, ‘but if you can’t avoid it, tough luck,’ right? That’s not what the law says. The law says that a person is entitled to a fair trial in front of a jury of their peers. We just think that because of everything around the lead up [in] this trial, it made it very difficult for the jury to evaluate the evidence kind of independent of what they knew coming in. We knew that and that‘s not something that we haven’t — we’ve been screaming that from the rooftops,” Blanche pushed back.
Collins continued to press Blanche on his potential argument for his appeal, asking when he plans to file the paperwork.
“This is one step in the process, right? So we have motions due in a couple of weeks in front of Judge Merchan, which we’re going to vigorously fight and restate a lot of what I’m saying to you tonight. And other things that happened during the trial that we think just made the trial unfair, including the testimony of Ms. [Stormy] Daniels. If that is not successful, then as soon as we can appeal, we will. The process in New York is [that] there’s a sentencing and then we appeal from there,” Blanche stated.
After two days of deliberation, the jury’s verdict was met with immediate backlash from Republicans and legal experts calling out various aspects of the trial. Over the last few weeks, some have continuously slammed the prosecution’s key witness, former Trump attorney and convicted liar Michael Cohen, who claimed that Trump allegedly not only directed him to pay a nondisclosure agreement to porn star Stormy Daniels but agreed to have the plan reimbursed through falsified business records.
