OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy on Tuesday identified and explained the “due process violation” Donald Trump and his legal teams are dealing with in the several criminal and civil cases filed against him.
New York Judge Juan Merchan scheduled an April 15 trial date for Trump on 34 felony charges resulting from an indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
These charges stem from a $130,000 payout to porn star Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. McCarthy, speaking on the “Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show,” emphasized that the concern extended beyond just one case but rather the scheduling of all pending cases against Trump, the Daily Caller reported.
“The due process violation is the strategy to throw four trials at him under circumstances where these cases are so complex that in an ordinary defendant’s case, you would get over a year to get prepared for trial, and they’re not only you know lining up four cases, they’re making it impossible for him to prepare adequately for any one because of the quantity that they’ve thrown at him,” McCarthy told the hosts.
Trump is also facing two federal indictments from special counsel Jack Smith related to efforts to contest the 2020 election. Additionally, there’s an indictment from a Fulton County grand jury, dated Aug. 14, charging Trump and other associates, including attorneys Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, and Sidney Powell, as well as former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York City, over the former president’s efforts to contest the 2020 election results.
“I think our tendency is that as we’ve gone through because this is the only way you can go through it sensibly, is to go through each case, but I think sometimes we don’t realize the cumulative effect of this is unbelievable, and it will become unbelievable to people when they realized that in a criminal trial, a defendant has to be present in court every day, every moment of the case,” McCarthy continued.
On March 13, the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York sent over 30,000 pages of documents to Trump’s attorneys, according to Bragg’s filing on March 14.
“You’re talking about taking the Republican nominee off the campaign trail and locking him in a courtroom basically for somewhere between three and nine months, depending on, you know, how efficient they can push these cases through,” McCarthy said.
Trump’s attorney and spokeswoman had some words for New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday after a state appeals court slashed her client’s civil fraud penalty by more than half to $175 million and gave him another ten days to pay it.
“I hope she took a little piece of humble pie today because that’s what was served to her, just a little, but we’ll be serving a lot more of that in the next couple of years,” Alina Habba told Fox News host Jesse Watters Monday evening.
In February, Judge Arthur Engoron issued a ruling that former President Trump and executives at the Trump Organization committed fraud by inflating the value of their assets to obtain more favorable terms from lenders and insurers. The ruling requires Trump to pay a penalty of approximately $454 million, including interest. The lawsuit, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, initially sought $250 million in damages, but later increased the figure to $370 million, plus interest.
The former president sought a bond of $464 million to cover his fines and the disgorgement for his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., who were co-defendants in the case. Newsweek noted that disgorgement mandates that a party who financially benefits from illegal or wrongful acts must surrender any profits they gained as a result of that conduct.
Monday was the deadline for Trump to come up with the money, which he said he had raised. But then the appeals court stepped in and cut the fine by more than half.
