Turley Misses the Point

I'm a bit late to this, as I clear-out open tabs while I start to write again. "The Trump trial is a target-rich environment for an appeal, with multiple layers of reversible error," in the view of Jonathan Turley. That may well be; I'll defer to Turley (a law professor) on that. I doubt that Bragg or his supporters care, however. In lawfare, the process is the punishment. Even if the conviction is later reversed, Trump has been forced to spend millions on legal fees, been tied-down in a courtroom instead of campaigning, and the Biden team will now seek to gull low-information voters by hammering Trump as a convicted felon. The goals of the prosecution have been achieved, regardless.

It all reminds me of the case of Ted Stevens. A long-serving Senator from Alaska, he was convicted for corruption (accepting free home renovations, as I recall) and eight days later narrowly lost his 2008 re-election campaign, presumably due in part to that conviction. Post-election, in the wake of revelations of gross prosecutorial misconduct (concealing exculpatory evidence foremost among them), the conviction was vacated and the indictment dismissed. I'm sure that was a relief to Stevens, but it didn't restore his seat. There were, as far as I know, no consequences for anyone involved with the prosecution.


 


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