Jim Rickards: A Justice System MOCKERY In Trump Trial
Summary
➡ The article discusses the reasons why Trump’s conviction might be overturned on appeal. It argues that the trial judge violated the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, and the Fourteenth Amendment ensures these apply to the state of New York. The violations include a gag order applied only to Trump, an indictment that didn’t specify the crime, and the denial of a key defense witness. The article also mentions potential conflicts of interest involving the presiding judge.
➡ The article discusses a legal case involving potential constitutional violations. The author believes that the case will likely be overturned on appeal due to these violations. However, the appeal process is lengthy and won’t be completed before the upcoming election. The author also criticizes the opposing party for using the case to tarnish the defendant’s reputation ahead of the election, regardless of the final outcome.
➡ The text discusses the potential outcomes of a court case involving Trump, suggesting he could face prison time, house arrest, or probation. The author believes that regardless of the outcome, Trump’s popularity may increase due to perceived unfair treatment, leading to increased campaign contributions and support from various demographics. The author also argues that the court case doesn’t change the current issues facing America, such as inflation and crime, which could further boost Trump’s popularity.
➡ The text discusses the current political climate in America, focusing on the perceived injustices against former President Trump. It suggests that the justice system is being used for political persecution, comparing it to the Soviet Union’s legal system. The text also mentions Trump’s ongoing legal battles and the potential impact on voter turnout. Lastly, it discusses a pending Supreme Court case about presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, which could have significant implications for Trump’s cases.
➡ The article discusses potential legal and political challenges that could arise if Trump wins the next election. It suggests that if Democrats control the House of Representatives, they could label Trump an insurrectionist, disqualifying his electoral votes under the 14th Amendment. This would lead to the House deciding the election, with each state delegation having one vote. The author believes that Democrats will continue to try to defeat Trump, and encourages readers to stay informed about these potential scenarios.
Transcript
Jim, thank you so much for sitting down with us today on short notice. Let’s get caught up here. What is your take on the Trump verdict? Sure, Matt, glad to do that. Our newsletter, strategic intelligence, and our many other newsletters, we always pride ourselves on staying ahead of the curve. We don’t just tell you, we don’t tell you what just happened. We tell you what’s going to happen. And obviously, that’s more valuable to investors. But you’re right. This topic is in the breaking news category, where a lot of people are out there, and we want to stay on top of it for our readers as well.
This verdict has a huge legal aspect and a huge political aspect. Let’s kind of take those one at a time. I’ll start with the, with the legal aspect first, not get too bogged down. The one, one point I want to make. Yeah. 34 felony convictions, 34 separate felonies. Now, this was a little bit of what they call charge stacking. It was really just one bookkeeping violation, which wasn’t even a violation. I’ll get into that. But, you know, you multiply. If there were 30, if you talk to 34 people, they somehow turn into 34 conspiracy counts. But, yeah, but their felonies punishable by four years in prison each.
If you want to sentence Donald Trump to four times, four times 34, that’s, I think, 136 years in prison, that is not impossible. Unlikely, by the way. But that’s kind of what we’re up against. One thing before we kind of jump into the details, Matt, one thing I want to, one point I want to make, I want to read a few excerpts from something we sent to our readers in October of 2023, eight months ago in our newsletter, strategic intelligence. I’m just going to paraphrase, our subscribers can go to the archives and find. It’s the October 2023 issue of strategic intelligence.
We said the following, the election won’t be decided in November 2024. It’s being decided now. Again, we wrote this eight months ago. Trump is highly likely to be convicted because the jurisdictions were carefully selected by Democrat prosecutors. Trump could be in an orange jumpsuit behind bars in November 2024 and still be elected president. There’s no constitutional prohibition against that. So the important point is you can literally be in jail behind bars and still be elected president. That is not a disqualification. And I said that that appears likely to me. Well, that’s playing out exactly as we predicted.
I said none of the possible defenses or defective charges may matter. There are lots of defenses. The charges were a complete joke. But Trump’s lawfare opponents among the prosecutors carefully selected the venues to maximize the likelihood of a conviction. And of course, they got the conviction. And I said the venues were chosen to ensure anti Trump juries, and they certainly got that. So just to summarize, it’s a longer excerpt, but I’m just picking a few highlights. I said the 2024 presidential election may come down to a convicted felon behind bars on the republican side. The point of reciting that, Matt, is just to say, we told our readers this was going to happen eight months ago.
It’s a very unfortunate result. It’s a sad day for America. I’m very, as a lawyer, in addition to analysts, very unhappy with the result. But our job is not to do happy talk. Our job is not to tell you what already happened. Our job is to tell you what’s going to happen. And eight months ago, when this was barely on the radar screen, people were not talking about this particular outcome. We said to readers that that’s exactly what’s going to happen. That is exactly what did happen. So in kind of keeping with this idea of staying ahead of the curve, let’s talk about what’s next in the judicial process.
Again, I want to, you can put on CNN or MSNBC or Fox or any other channel to find out they’ll be dissecting what happened in the trial, etcetera. I’m not saying that’s not important, but we’ve always prided ourselves on looking ahead and telling people what’s going to happen next. So this case will certainly be appealed. And I think it’s important. I just want to spend a minute on the New York state court system, because the names are completely different than what people expect. I am a New York lawyer, so what most people think of the Supreme Court as being the highest court in the Supreme Court of the United States or maybe the Supreme Court of the state of, I don’t know, Iowa, New Jersey, or whatever.
New York, the Supreme Court is the lowest court. They just have a funny name system. So the Supreme Court is the lowest court. So that’s the trial court. Usually you think of a trial court, and then you appeal up to the Supreme Court. In New York, the trial court, where Trump is just convicted, is called the Supreme Court. Okay, so where do you go for appeals? Do you go to the court of appeals? No. New York has a funny name called the appellate division, and it’s broken into numeric divisions, first division, second division, etcetera. Manhattan, where Trump was convicted, is the first division.
Where I was sworn in. The courthouse is a little, you know, it’s kind of a cute old, almost neocolonial building on things around 24th street, right off Madison Square. Not Madison Square Garden, but the old Madison Square down around 24th of Madison. But yeah, you can walk right past it and not even know it’s there. But that is the first appellate division. So that’s where this appeal will go. And then if you, you want to take it further to what most people consider the Supreme Court in New York, that’s called the court of appeals. So if you hear the appellate division, that’s where the appeal is going.
If it gets to the New York state highest level court, that’s called the court of Appeal. So a little bit of a confusing name system, but I just wanted to spell that out for viewers. And just a quick question, since you know the insides of this, are any of those courts level headed? The answer is yes, fortunately, and I do expect this to be appealed, I’ll talk about specifically why, but here’s the thing with appellate courts that people don’t understand. When you appeal a case like this, you haven’t yet a trial. You got a verdict. It was a miscarriage of justice, but the verdict is in.
When you appeal, you don’t do the trial over. There are no witnesses, there are no exhibits at the appellate level. It’s pure points of law. So when you get to the appellate division, is the first division on this appeal, there’s not going to be any stormy Daniels, there’s not going to be any Michael Cohen, there’s not going to be any, there’d be no witnesses, no exhibits, no discussion of pornographic films or anything of the kind. It’s strictly points of law, number one. Number two, there’s a bench. I don’t know exactly how many judges will be on the bench, but it could be three or more, could be the entire first division.
So it’s, it’s lawyers only arguing points of law for a panel of judges. No witnesses, no exhibits, no stormy Daniels. That’s over. This is just lawyers talking to judges about the law, which is good for Trump because the law very much favors, favors him. And now I’ll go through the, some of the points of appeal in a minute. But, but here’s the point. At the appellate level, these judges are focused on two things. Number one, they want to get the law right. They’re not there to judge whether Michael Cohen was a liar or Stoney Daniels was credible, or whether her testimony about the bedroom antics were relevant.
That’s not their job. They just want to get the law right, number one. Number two, an appellate court judge’s greatest concern, other than the law itself, is getting overruled. Because if you’re in the appellate division, you hope maybe someday you’ll be appointed to the court of Appeals, which, as I mentioned, is the highest court in New York, where judges who get overruled a lot more than even once or twice don’t get those appointments, they don’t get the promotion, in other words. So they really care about the law and they really care about not being overruled. So if you’re in the appellate division, the first division, as I mentioned, you’re sitting there saying, hey, I better get this right because I don’t want the court of Appeals to overrule me.
So they’re very, as I said, they’re completely focused on the law, not the facts of the case. And they’re in the backs of their minds. They’re saying, I don’t want to get overruled by a higher court, so I better get this right. That’s all good news for Trump, because Trump should win on the law. What happened at the trial court was saying a joke is maybe not strong enough. It was a complete miscarriage of justice. So I don’t want to dwell on that. It was a farce. It’s over. But let’s get to the appellate division. So here are some of the reasons why Trump’s conviction will be reversed on appeal.
Number one, the trial judge violate the first amendment of the US Constitution with the gag order. I mean, the gag order gives you free speech. Now, gag orders are not unusual. I’ve been involved in some major litigation where the judge put a gag order, kind of a non disclosure order, if you want to think of it that way. Gag order is like the popular version of it, but he applied it to everybody, the prosecution, the defense or the plaintiff and the defense, all the lawyers, all the witnesses, basically told everybody, you can’t talk about this. And as I say, I’ve been involved in some big cases.
I’m not going to talk about them now because we had those gag orders. But the point is they applied to everybody and they were narrowly limited to the facts of the case. I mean, I had one where, again, I’m not going to mention the name, but one of the biggest investment managers in the world and I had to sit and plow through 5000 emails. I was an expert witness in the case. 5000 emails looking for things that would help our client. So they’re not unusual. But what was unusual and what’s probably unconstitutional is, one, it was applied to Trump only.
Nobody told Michael Cohen to shut up. Nobody told Stormy Daniels to shut up. Nobody told anybody else in the case. They couldn’t talk about it. They just told Trump, number one. And number two, there were a lot of things that were, Trump’s running for president. I mean, he’s not just some, you know, he’s not Robert De Niro, you know, kind of mouthing off in the street. He is running for president. He’s in the middle of a campaign Trump wanted to talk about Judge Mercantjudge. Juan Macan, by the way, was the presiding judge in this trial. His daughter is a major fundraiser and political operative for the Biden campaign.
She makes millions of dollars personally, not just raising for the Biden campaign, but makes millions of dollars personally. If Trump is damaged in any way, I can’t think of a more clear. And by the way, the judge gave contributions to Biden. These are total conflicts of interest. The first thing the judge is supposed to do is recuse himself. Say, you know, interesting, but I can’t preside in this case because my charge is making millions of dollars bashing Trump. I can’t be a neutral judge. The judge did not recuse himself and he told Trump that Trump couldn’t talk about the daughter.
Now, he dressed it up as, you know, we don’t want to jeopardize the families, etcetera. Well, her role is well known. It’s on the Internet. I mean, so you’re not jeopardizing the family. What you’re doing is telling the truth. And the judge said he couldn’t do that. So that’s a violation of the First Amendment, number one, because it was selective and it was not relevant to the case at hand. So the judge also violated the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody shall be tried for a major offense, unless there’s an indictment which states with specificity the causes of the complaint.
Now, Trump was indicted. They did go to a grand jury, but the contents of the indictment had nothing to do with the crime that was alleged. These were two expired misdemeanor charges. When I say expire, they were past the statute of limitations. Well, how do you elevate two misdemeanors, if that’s what they were? Even how do you elevate two misdemeanors past the statute of limitations into 34 felonies where the statute of limitations isn’t over yet? Well, the way that, the way they did it, this is Alvin Bragg. But I mean, Alvin Bragg’s kind of a dope, but what they did, they got a top lawyer at the Justice Department in Washington.
The number three official in the Department of Justice was sent to New York and signed up with Bragg’s office to conduct the case. Bragg. Alvin Bragg was not smart enough or capable enough to run this trial, but this guy from Washington was, and he actually conducted the trial. But in order to get the misdemeanors turned into felonies, etcetera, you had to find another crime. So these bookkeeping entries were in pursuance of a conspiracy to commit another crime, which was a felony, which was not. Pass the statute of limitations, etcetera. They never said what the crime was.
To this day right now, now as we speak, I can’t tell you what the crime was. The indictment didn’t say what the crime was, etcetera. So that violates the Fifth Amendment because there wasn’t a diamond, but didn’t spell out the actual charge, which was this other mystery crime that people are guessing. I can guess, all the commentators are guessing, but no one actually knows. It wasn’t in the jury instructions. By the way, the judge told the jury, you don’t have to agree on what the ultimate crime was. Well, I’m sorry. And the New York state law requires unanimity.
You need a unanimous jury verdict. Pardon me? Jury verdict. Twelve out of twelve have to agree. The judge said, you don’t have to agree. You know, four of you think one thing, two of you think something else, whatever, that’s fine. Well, I’m sorry, that violates the unanimity requirement. The judge violated the 6th amendment. The 6th amendment says, and I’ll quote in part, the defendant, quote, has the right to be informed of the nature and the cause of the accusation. Again, he wasn’t informed. How do you defend a client if you don’t know what the charge is? Well, that’s what they did.
They didn’t spell out the charge. They had these bookkeeping entries, but they had to be bootstrapped onto something else, and they never said what the something else was. And the 6th amendment also says the defendant has the right to have, quote, process for obtaining witnesses in his favor. Well, the most powerful witness that the defense, that Trump’s defense wanted to call was the former head of the federal election commission, because again, we’re guessing a little bit, but when you say, well, what was the violation that bootstrap these expired misdemeanors into felonies? Well, one of them was a violation of federal election law, that somehow paying the hush money, by the way, hush money is kind of a pejorative phrase.
It’s a non disclosure agreement. In my career, I did dozens of these, and somebody complains in the workplace, you sit down, you hash it out, you give them $100,000, they sign a nondisclosure agreement. Everyone parts ways, nobody talks about it. We do those things all the time, and so does everybody. I never had any porn actresses, but they were always messy cases. But you do it all the time, and so does every company in America. And Trump’s business was not any different in that respect. But somehow this was turned into a crime. But it was only because of this other crime, violation of the election law.
Well, Trump’s team wanted to call the head of the Federal election commission to say, no, there’s nothing wrong with what he did. Paying, again, call it hush money, but paying an amount to get a non disclosure agreement. Even if you’re running for something, maybe you’re running for something, and maybe it’s better for your campaign if this doesn’t become front page news. Okay, but that’s not a campaign expenditure. It’s something you would do anyway for business reasons, for family reasons, for personal reasons. There are lots of reasons. Not, you know, if you take an Uber to a campaign event, is that a campaign expenditure? Well, not really.
You got to get around. So that was a violation of 6th Amendment. And then finally, there’s the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment, because the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the 6th Amendment, which I mentioned originally at the time of the Bill of Rights, only apply to the federal government. It did not apply to state governments. And this was a state case. But the 14th Amendment does that. The 14th Amendment says due process of law, meaning all the other things I mentioned do apply to the states. So even though this was, you know, in. In 1787, it was a federal constitution, it did not originally apply to the states, did apply to the federal government.
But the 14th Amendment, after the Civil War, because of states abuses studying slavery, did apply. So everything I just mentioned does apply to the state of New York. So you got the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the 6th Amendment and the 14th Amendment. I think four constitutional law violations is enough to get this thing reversed. But notice I was talking about the law, not the facts, and that’s what appellate courts do, and I think they’ll zero in on that. By the way, there’s a long list of other violations, other both constitutional violations, procedural violations, etcetera. So I don’t want to go down the whole list.
Think of those as the big four. One other point, Matt, which was raised by Alan Dershowitz, but this is my experience also when I was preparing for trials, and I’m not a litigator, but I was general counsel of a number of Wall street firms and hedge funds, and I hired some of the absolute finest, best, most famous litigators in the country, certainly in the late 20th century and early 21st century. And I don’t have to mention all the names, but they’re household names. So I worked with the best of the best. What we always did, preparing for a trial, we did whatever we were going to do, but we always hired a top notch appellate lawyer.
In other words, you hope to win the case, you’re going to do your best and you hope to win the case, but you know that you might lose. That’s just being realistic. And you want to get ready for the appeal. You don’t wait until you lose the case and say, oh, gee, what’s our appeal going to be? You hire the appellate lawyer on day one. The appellate lawyer sits through the whole trial. He’s not interviewing. He’s not examining any witnesses or doing cross examination or anything else. He or she is just sitting there, in effect, taking notes, saying what mistakes are being made along the way, what motions have been denied, what witnesses we not allowed to call, what testimony was allowed in that should not have been allowed in, et cetera.
In other words, you’re creating the appellate record so that when you, if you lose, you’re trying to win, but if you lose, you’re good to go. Now your appellate lawyer takes over. Trial lawyers don’t do appellate work. Typically, they’re appellate specialists, and Dershowitz is one of them. By the way, Dershowitz for the von Bulow case, he was not the trial lawyer in the von Bulow case. That was the guy who gave his wife, allegedly the dose of insulin that put her into a long term coma. But he did the appellate work. He argued that case in front of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and got the conviction reversed.
And the guy who did the second trial and got von Bulow acquitted was my good friend. Again, top litigator that I worked with for decades. Now, what Dershowitz is saying is that Trump’s team did not do a good job of getting ready for the appeal stage. Now, I just outlined four grounds for appeal, constitutional grounds. There are many others, but there’s more they could have done. So I don’t want to nitpick. Alan Dershowitz, he’s a Harvard Law school professor emeritus, one of the top appellate lawyers in history. But it’s an interesting point. He may be right about that.
But I think the record here is so bad that even any appellate lawyer could step into the situation and make a good case. So I would expect this can conviction to be reversed. Now, here’s the problem. It won’t be reversed before the election. It’s possible, but very unlikely. You gotta, first of all, we still have to wrap up the trial. We haven’t had the sentence. So the sentencing is July 11. I’ll come back to that, but we haven’t even had the sentencing stage. Number one, two, you actually have to file notice of appeal. There’s a certain time limit to do that, but I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s usually 21 days or 30 days.
So that’ll take time. Then you have to get, you have to write your brief, your appellate brief. You have to prepare your arguments. You got to get on the court calendar, you got to actually submit the briefs, make the argument, and then the court has to take time to make a decision and issue a decision. And then, who knows, you might want to take it beyond that to the court of appeals, which is the highest court in the state of New York. That’s all going to take time. It would be very surprising if it got done before November 5.
So Trump’s going to have to wear this convicted felon badge, which is what the Democrats really wanted. They don’t care if Trump wins this case. In the end, they don’t really care if Trump’s in jail or not. What they want to do. What they do care about is winning the election. And that just means making Trump look as bad as possible, as quickly as possible, regardless of the outcome. That’s a disgrace. That violates legal ethics, in my view. The code of professional responsibility and a lot else. But the judge doesn’t care. I mean, Judge mercant at the trial court level just doesn’t care.
So with that, Matt, the legalities are, well, we talk about the sentencing if you want. I think that’s important. But the case will be appealed. It’s very likely to be reversed. The verdict is very likely to be reversed on appeal. There’s a process for that, lots of grounds, but it won’t be done before election day. Yeah. And you can see it. I mean, if the Democrats in this in law fair, which you’ve been covering now for, for a long time and just saying this is what they’re doing to try and get Trump, you can see it.
I mean, I see it just in the last day and we’re within 24 hours of the verdict coming out. But I’ve seen it with, you know, you have liberal friends or your Democrats or whatever they are, they’re very happy. They’re excited. They’re like, they got him. That’s the type of people that they want to, like, it’s some of these, well, those are, those are probably far left leaning, but they want to get some of these middle of the bell curve people to be like, oh, he, he’s kind of bad. They’re not going to pay attention to any of these facts that you know very well.
It’s just kind of like a shot across the bow from the Democrats. So what if we switch, not switch gears, but talking a little bit more about lawfare? This is just one piece of what they’ve been trying to do, right? They’re trying to get him off the ballots. They’re doing like, they’re trying all these different things that have nothing to do with a vote. They’re just trying to make him look bad. How is that going to impact the election? And are there other things that could be coming? Yeah, at this point after, because this really started in 2015 when Trump came down the escalator and Trump Tower and said he was running.
That’s when it all began. And that’s when Hillary Clinton started the russian diet, the dossier and the hiring Christopher Steele, you know, kind of a washed up Mi six Moscow bureau chief who just created this complete fabrication of lies, the Russia hoax. You know, they tried to damage Trump in the election, didn’t work. He wins, but paralyzed his administration for three years. We don’t need to go through all that. I think our readers know. But my point is that they don’t quit, they don’t stop. So, yeah, Trump convicted of 34 felonies. Okay. That’s score one for the, for the Biden team, score one for the Democrat team.
But don’t think for a minute they’ve given up. They’re not going to stop until Trump’s, like, bankrupt, behind bars, disgraced. They’re just not going to quit. So to your point, Matt, let’s go down the timeline a little bit, because this is really our specialty, which is looking forward. So the next thing that’s going to happen is the sentencing is July 11. Now, interestingly, the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which is going to nominate Trump for president of the United States, is July 15. So the sentencing is four days before the, before the nominating convention. That is no coincidence.
The judge knew exactly what he was doing. He said, we’re going to slam this guy with some kind of sentence. I’ll talk about that in a minute before he gets to Milwaukee. So when he’s standing up on the stage, if he’s even allowed to go, by the way, again, we’ll come back to that. He’ll be not just a convicted felon, but he’ll have some sentence hanging over his head, etcetera. So again, that’s, you would think that the conviction would be enough, but no, it’s not enough. Let’s use the sentencing in a law, fair sense as a political tool.
That could have been done at the end of July. It could have been done in August. But no, let’s do it four days before the convention as one more shot across the bell. So what will the sentence be? Well, it could be, as I mentioned, 136 years in jail. Very unlikely. But that’s just to set the stage a little bit. Four times 34 in terms of years in jail, by the way, we’re talking about state prisons. We’re not talking about federal prisons. So you’re talking about Rikers island, which is a hellhole. Sing sing, Attica. I don’t know the Danamore, I don’t know all the New York prisons that are still in business, but that’s what we’re talking about, which is far, far more just disgusting rats running around and all that.
The federal prison system is, they’re not country clubs. I’ve been to some, but they are a little better. So my estimate is because I’ve heard some analysts say, okay, so they got the 34 felony convictions. They accomplished their goal. So the judge is going to go easy on the sentencing pending appeal. And this is up to the judge. The judge can send you right to jail or he can leave you out pending appeal. And the appeal will take months, possibly longer. As I described, he said, approve their points. They’ll just let Trump run his campaign pending appeal? I don’t think so.
The judge has shown no restraint, no sense of ethics, no sense of judicial temperament. He’s a Trump hater through and through, evident not just from his donations and his daughter’s activities, but from the rulings in the case, in the trial itself. I don’t know. Why is the judge suddenly going to change his stripes? Why is he going to be a nice guy at the sentencing after he was a total disgrace through the entire trial? So it doesn’t mean he’ll send Trump to jail, although he could. So don’t rule that out. If Trump gets sentenced to a year in jail, go to Riker’s pending appeal.
So don’t be surprised. That could very well happen. What may be more likely is something equivalent of house arrest, meaning you’re on probation pending appeal. Well, probation is not checking in with a guy once a month. You have a probation officer in New York. There’s a whole probation office. If Trump is allowed to go to Florida, he would have to coordinate with the probation officer in Florida. So he might be. Mar a Lago is his primary residence. He does have a place in Trump Tower, but Mar a Lago was. He moved to Florida a couple years ago as a resident of Florida, but Trump could be confined to Mar a Lago.
Mar a Lago has walls. It’s a huge estate. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of it. It could be kind of a prison for Trump so that the judge could say, okay, you don’t have to go to jail, but you’re kind of under house arrest. You’re in Mar a Lago. You have to report to your probation officer in Florida once a week. Doesn’t have to be once a month. Could be once a week. You’re subjected to drug tests, you’re subjected to body searches. It’s a very humiliating experience. Is he a flight risk? I don’t know. He’s got a private jet, a big one.
Maybe put an ankle bracelet on him. I don’t know exactly what all the details will be, but I do know that I don’t think the Trump’s sorry. I don’t think the judge McConnell is going to say, okay, do your thing, run for president, whatever. Pending appeal, we’ll deal with the sentencing later. I think, I expect that at worst, he could be sent to prison. Don’t rule it out. At best, it’ll be some kind of house arrest. But what does that mean, it means no rallies. You saw that rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, a couple of weeks ago.
Estimates vary, but 50 to 80,000 people on the beach, by the way, that’s my original hometown. I grew up, went to high school in Cayman, New Jersey, which is right next to Wildwood. I was a circulation manager for Philadelphia newspaper. I know every back alley in Wildwood. Yeah, they had 80,000 people on the beach down there. Well, you won’t see that. It might prevent him from going to the convention. That’s a rally. That’s all conventions really are these days. So no Trump at the convention, no Trump rallies, no barnstorming. And key states, we know what they are.
Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona. A few other states that are critical to the election and maybe continue some version of the gag order. So you could really. And Trump’s like a caged animal. Trump’s just full of energy. He gets energized by adversity. He loves these rallies. You won’t let Trump beat Trump. So I would say worst case, you could see a prison sentence, but even best case, something like house arrest, it’ll take him off the campaign trail, and this could be the rest of the campaign. So do you think this was affected? Do you think this helps or hurts Trump? Because this is like, this is getting him all sorts of coverage.
And then, and if intelligence, if a wave of intelligence goes over America, they’d realize this is a sham and it’s the deep state, Democrats, whatever, at work here. Do you think this helps Trump or hurts him? I think it helps him overall in terms of now we’re switching from law to politics. Yeah, I think he will be elected president. I’ve said that for a while. I didn’t think it was going to be, it might be close in terms of popular, but, I mean, Biden could actually win the popular vote. It doesn’t matter. The popular vote in a us presidential election doesn’t matter.
What matters are the state votes and the electoral votes. And Trump is leading in seven out of seven swing states. Seven out of seven. Plus the national polls, which he’s never done before, plus the betting house. That was before this verdict. After this verdict, I expect Trump’s margins to increase. The fundraising is off the chart. I’m sure a lot of our listeners know that the Donaldj Trump.com is his main authorized website. You can volunteer, but you can also make contributions that’s run by something called, I think, win red or red win or something like that. But Donaldj Trump.com is the campaign website, it crashed yesterday.
So many millions of Americans were logging on to give money to Trump. Whether it was some guys gave a million bucks, other people gave $25. That’s fine. All contributions welcome. But my point is, so many people did that. They crashed the website. And by the way, these are high capacity websites. It’s not like a high school science project. I mean, they were ready for massive volumes, but it overwhelmed even that anticipation. So the fundraising is through the roof. People are volunteering, independents are swinging to Trump. One analyst made the point, I think it was a good one.
African Americans were already swinging to Trump in ways that would pretty much guarantee that Biden would lose. But who has sort of more reason for grievance against the justice system than African Americans? At least a lot of them are dealing with crime in their neighborhoods and the justice system not doing its job or various kinds of biases, et cetera. So they actually have a lot of, might have more sympathy for someone wrongfully convicted than even everyday Americans, even though we all, I kind of find this appalling. So Trump’s standing among African Americans, Hispanic Americans, young people who don’t trust the government anyway because of the whole Covid experience and a lot else, and then certainly older Americans who have seen, thought they lived in a country that had a rule of law and have learned the hard way that that’s not true, at least not in Judge McConnell’s courtroom.
So from a fundraising point of view, point of view, demographic point of view, this is all going to help Trump, and he actually will appear a very sympathetic figure. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in my house for the next four months. But if he were by a court order, it wouldn’t be difficult for the surrogates. Larry Trump, Donald Trump junior, whomever he picks for vice president, and lots of others, they’re already out there. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Doug Bergman, Tulsi Gabbard, they’re all out there supporting Trump. So my expectation would be that it was certainly a big deal.
I’m not downplaying it one bit, but I would say it would help Trump in the polls. Massive boost for the fundraising, and Biden still has nothing to offer. I don’t want to turn this into a broad based political discussion, but Trump’s convicted, ok? Does that change inflation? Does that change the war in Ukraine? Does that change the war in Gaza? Does that change the open border? Does that change crime in the streets? Does that change the price of gas at the pump? All the things that Americans actually care about. If you ask Americans none of those things have changed.
They all disfavor Biden, they all favor Trump because people remember the Trump years. We didn’t have any of these problems. There were always issues, but none of the ones I mentioned. So, yeah, I think Trump’s on his way to a landslide victory. Yeah, I think for the Trump faithful and the people that see the swamp and the system and how it works, this is just a rallying cry because they’re like, they know the system is, is unjust and they’re like, this is just a smoking gun for it. Do you think there’s anything that could change in the narrative for, like, the mainstream, like a mainstream american, not left or right, that would make this obvious, that it’s a sham? Like, I know I’m seeing, you know, just in the last couple of hours.
Right. It’s like, oh, well, this is kind of the same as, as Bill Clinton or this is kind of the same as that. Are there, is there something that could easily show this to a middle seat sitting American that’s like, this is a sham? It’s so hard. Yeah, that’s right, man. I think it speaks for itself. Now, look, you can get all opinions across the spectrum, but people who say, oh, this is just like impeaching Bill Clinton, which is not, by the way. I mean, we don’t have to rehash the impeachment debate, but at least there was a crime there.
Bill Clinton was disbarred. He was impeached. So, no, it’s not just like that. This is such an egregious miscarriage of justice, I think. So let’s talk about the independent in the middle of America. There aren’t very many of them left, by the way. So when you hear people say, this is just like, okay, fine, you’re a Biden supporter. You don’t care that he’s well over 80. But it’s not just about being 80. He’s got dementia. He’s mentally defective. He can’t speak. He can’t walk. They won’t let him out. They can’t let him out because every time he does, he starts talking about what his father told him, which his father never told him because all those stories are lies.
How he was appointed to the Navy academy, which he wasn’t, how he was going to play football for Navy, which was not true. How he was a football star at Delaware, which is not true. Halley was top of his law school class. Not true. I mean, the guy’s just, when he has a coherent thought, it’s a lie. And then when he has to deal with policy, can’t have a coherent thought. That doesn’t change. So the Democrats have their hands full of that. But if you like Biden, you like Biden, you’re not going to suddenly swing to Trump because there was a miscarriage of justice.
So those people don’t matter when I say they don’t matter, they’re already locked in. They’re just locked in. So nothing’s going to, they’ll rationalize this. You can just put on MSNBC if you want to hear all the rationalizations, but it’s not going to matter. What does matter are the hardcore Trump supporters and the independents. I think for the average independent, they’re going to say, hey, you know what? If they can do this to Trump, they can do this to me or you or anybody else, that America is not America. The justice system is not just, they can target you.
This is much more like the Soviet Union. But when I say the Soviet Union, I mean the Soviet Union. I mean Stalin. I’m not talking about Russia today. That’s a whole other subject. I was in graduate school and international relations in the 1970s at the absolute height of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was the Soviet Union, and we had to study it. I mean, it was like, yeah, it’s a dictatorship. They put people in Siberia and they shoot people in the head and they do all kinds of things. But they actually had, they had a written constitution, they had a court system, they had rules of civil and criminal procedure.
And believe it or not, I had a textbook on the soviet legal system. It sounds like an oxymoron, but there was a soviet legal system. I studied it. Now, the whole thing was a sham in the sense that, yeah, we have lawyers, courts and judges, but it’s all rigged. And if we identify you as an enemy of the state, we’re going to come up with some charges, we’re going to convict you, send you to Siberia. It has the appearance of a judicial process, but it was actually political persecution. That’s what the US has become. We have courts, we have appellate procedures, all the things we talked about in this call.
But when you target somebody, it’s no longer about a guy pulls out a gun and shoots some people and you arrest them and you’re on trial for murder or assault or whatever. This is targeting trumped up charges, no pun intended, breaking every rule in the book, violating the Constitution. That’s what the soviet legal system is like, and that’s what we have today. And this is where I think even independent on the fence, Americans will see it for what it is and swing in Trump’s direction. As far as the Trump supporters, if you’re a Trump supporter, you’re a Trump supporter.
There’s nothing that happened that’s going to make you more of a Trump supporter. You’re already outraged, and now maybe you’re a little more outraged. But where it will have an effect is turnout. Trump’s leading in every poll. We talked about that. Okay? But polls have their own margin of errors, inaccuracy, etcetera. And what could go wrong or put differently, what happens to surprise pollsters where they have. Here’s what we think is going to happen. It turns out different. The answer is turnout. Turnout, if it’s different than the estimates, can be a huge victory for somebody or a surprise loss.
In this case, I would expect turn out to be much higher than projected because people are like, yeah, yeah, I support Trump, I like Trump, et cetera. This was a miscarriage, miscarriage of justice. You can say all those things, but if you don’t quit, voting early is the thing now. But if, metaphorically, you wake up on election day, you’re like, eh, I want to watch a baseball game and have a cold beer, okay, you’re not helping the cause. And I do think that people say, no, I got to get off my butt and go down and vote because this has gone too far.
This is too dangerous. So I do think Trump will be aided by the turnout, even among people who today are his supporters. Yeah, it’s a scary situation for Americans. And I do agree. I think it’s emotionally charging that you can see the justice system this horrible and up close and personal. So I think that’ll get some butts off the seats. Jim, just sort of last words here. Anything else we should be looking forward to in between now and the election? We got, I mean, here at paradigm press, we’re going to be covering this for the next five months.
Heavy duty. This is just week over week stuff. Anything else everyone needs to know at home, whether it’s related to the Trump verdict or not? Speaker one? Yeah, I mean, we’re, again, we pride ourselves in staying over the, ahead of the curve. I made the point that everything that happened yesterday or in recent days, we told you about eight months ago, we said this was going to happen now. So our job is to just kind of keep leaning forward. So a couple of things. There’s a case pending in the United States Supreme Court right now. It’s already been briefed and argued we’re just waiting for a decision.
The decision will come out the last week of June. I don’t know the exact day, but maybe June 22 or 23rd. So not that far away. This is the immunity case, and this comes out of the January 6 prosecution. Remember, we just concluded this New York trial. Trump has three more criminal cases pending, one in Washington, DC on the January 6 so called insurrection, one in Palm Beach, Florida on the classified documents case, and one in Fulton County, Georgia, with this Fonny Willis, which has turned into a complete farce. But we don’t have time to kind of go into all those cases.
But one of the defenses raised in the January 6 case, which is the special prosecutor Jack Smith, it’s a federal case in DC, which is very unfriendly in terms of jury selection, is that presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. And Trump was president on January 6, 2021. Biden wasn’t sworn in until January 20, 2021. So Trump was actually president on January 6. And so whatever he did and is highly debatable has been misportrayed. He actually said, we want everyone to be peaceful. When I told people to leave the capitol, but that seems to get lost in the shuffle.
But whatever he did, those were official acts of Trump is arguing that presidents should have immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. The remedy is impeachment. If you don’t like what the president did, you think the president broke the law? All right, start impeachment and try to get a conviction assent. But you can’t tie a president’s hands and tie it down. The White House decision making process, with all these claims from Judge McConnell or Alvin Bragg or Bonnie Willis or whoever, coming from every highly biased district attorney in the country. Well, that was debatable. By the way, what I just said, this presidential muni issue, this goes all the way back to Watergate and Judge Sirica and the Supreme Court and Richard Nixon’s litigation surrounding Watergate.
Nixon was not impeached. He was probably going to be impeached, but he resigned before impeachment was voted on. He was never accused of a crime or so he never indicted. I should say he was accused of a lot of things, but he was never indicted, never convicted, never impeached. But these things were litigated to the Supreme Court during Watergate. We were just there. And now theyre back. Its very likely that the result of the trial in New York, the stormy Daniels Judge McConnell case, will have an impact on the Supreme Court because it tends to support Trumps view, which is forget about me forget about whos the president of the day.
You cant have a president in the executive branch bogged down by all these petty criminal allegations that come out of the woodwork, which this one did. So I think the Supreme Court may rule in favor of Trump on that immunity issue, and that may make the whole January 6 case go away. We’ll see. But that’s kind of at the end of this month. So that’s a big one to watch out for. The other one is, you asked earlier, have the Democrats exhausted their bag of tricks? Well, the answer is no. They never exhaust the bag of tricks.
If it gets empty, they come up with a few new ones. But they’re going to do something even more shocking than what we just saw, which is let’s look ahead to January 6, 2025. So let’s say Trump wins the election, which I do expect. So Trump wins the election. On November 5, December 8, 2024, the electors of each state gather in their state capitals and they cast their electoral votes for whoever won that state. New York will go for Biden and Alabama will go for Trump, and Florida will go for, et cetera. Pardon me, Florida will go for Trump.
So they cast of us then. By the way, this is all devised in 1787 when you had to get a horse and carriage and go to Washington. Actually, Washington didnt exist then. I think the capital was Philadelphia, briefly, New York. But you had to go to the Capitol to actually cast these votes. If it seems like, why does this take two months to do? Well, the answer is you used to have to do it on horseback. But January 6, 2025, is the date when the electoral votes are counted by the Congress in the United States. Now, when I say the Congress, it’s the new Congress.
The Congress that gets elected on November 5 is the Congress that will be counting electoral votes on January 6. They get sworn in before the president. The president doesn’t get sworn in until January 20, but the Congress gets sworn in January 3 or fourth, I think. I believe the fourth. So you talk about the new Congress. Who’s going to be, we don’t know yet. We won’t find out until November 5. But if the Democrats take the House of Representatives, which is possible, I’m not forecasting that, but it’s certainly possible. It’s down to one vote, one seat right now.
And they’ve already said they’re going to do this. Jamie Raskin is going to introduce a measure to be passed by the house of representatives saying that Trump is an insurrectionist because of January 6, 2020. If you have a democratic house, and they vote that resolution, and Trump is branded an insurrectionist. You can’t vote for Trump for president. As an electoral, put differently, you can’t count the electoral votes for Trump under section three of Article 14. Article, sorry, under section three of the 14th Amendment. So 14th Amendment section three says an insurrectionist can have federal office. That’s what it says.
It had to do with the Civil War and Robert E. Lee not running for Senate or whatever, but it’s on the books. And the Supreme Court said the states can’t do that. So when Colorado and Maine were trying to kick Trump off the state ballot, which they did for a short period of time, the Supreme Court said, no, the states cannot do that. So that was the end of that little insurrectionist movement. But the Supreme Court also said this case was just a few months ago. The Supreme Court said, but the Congress could, that it was not a state power, but it was a federal power.
So if the Democrats take the House and they pass the resolution saying Trump’s an insurrectionist, even if Trump wins the election, his votes would be disqualified under section three of the 14th amendment. And then you say, well, then what happens? Well, the answer is the election’s thrown to the House of Representatives. This happened twice, 18 1826, with John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. So now let’s jump ball. If you can’t vote for Trump, who are you going to vote for? Nikki Haley? Ron DeSantis said Joe Biden would not have. Joe Biden wouldn’t have 270, so he wouldn’t have enough.
But Trump would be disqualified, so you couldn’t vote for him at all. So nobody would get 270. I mean, nobody would get 270 electoral votes in this scenario. So you throw it to the House and there they don’t vote by individual, they vote by state delegations. So there are 50 state delegations that get one vote each. So my little state of New Hampshire is equivalent to California in that scenario. So stay tuned. So my point, Matt, is that. Is this over? No way, because the Democrats will never, never stop trying to defeat Trump. All right, well, like we said, we’ve got some months ahead of the election.
A lot of fireworks here, Jim, I can say it for all the readership, we appreciate your insight, especially on such a timely issue like this. So everyone at Paradigm Press, we appreciate it, and everyone at home watching this right now, we’ll be staying ahead of this. Jim will be keeping you posted through strategic intelligence, his paid newsletter, and also here on the paradigm press channel. So we appreciate it and we will see you next time.
[tr:tra].
See more of Paradigm Press on their Public Channel and the MPN Paradigm Press channel.
Author
