Judge in Trump New York Trial Under Fire for Instructions to Jury

Judge Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the Donald Trump “hush money case,” issued some instructions to the jury yesterday that raised eyebrows, leading many to question whether or not we were living in America or Venezuela

As the Daily Caller reported:

Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy on Wednesday said Judge Juan Merchan’s instructions to former President Donald Trump’s jury are rare.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley on Wednesday posted on X that Merchan instructed the jury that it is not necessary for them to be on the same page about what “other crime” Trump committed, instead getting a choice of three separate crimes they can select from. McCarthy on “America’s Newsroom” said it is not normal for a judge to view a verdict as unanimous despite jurors not agreeing on what crime was committed

“I would say, we just heard from Jonathan Turley … this is anything but standard. It’s the antithesis of standard,” McCarthy said. “The idea that they do not have to agree on what the other crime is. We spent six weeks wondering what is the other crime and at the end the thud we all get hit with, there’s three or four of ’em and you could pick one or the other and they don’t have to agree on it.”

...Merchan just delivered the coup de grace instruction. He said that there is no need to agree on what occurred. They can disagree on what the crime was among the three choices. Thus, this means that they could split 4-4-4 and he will still treat them as unanimous...

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 29, 2024

Judge Merchan donated to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, while his daughter has worked as a Democrat consultant. Merchan’s partial gag order on Trump was expanded to cover his daughter after this was pointed out. 

Of course, the so-called fact checkers are all over this.

In the Associated Press’ “fact check” of these claims, they basically just confirm them while pretending otherwise. As the AP’s Melissa Goldin reports, while claiming that right-wing media is distorting Merchan’s instructions:

Merchan gave the jurors three possible “unlawful means” they can apply to Trump’s charges: falsifying other business records, breaking the Federal Election Campaign Act or submitting false information on a tax return. For a conviction, each juror would have to find that at least one of those three things happened, but they don’t have to agree unanimously on which it was.

So how can the AP possibly say Merchan’s instructions are being misconstrued? By setting up a strawman and knocking it down; saying it’s false reporting because Merchan said the jury will have to find Trump guilty unanimously on each of the 34 felony counts. But nobody was saying that in the first place.