Judge Shakes Up Judiciary With Trump Sentencing

Order a copy of Mike Papantonio's new book at

Subscribe to stay connected to our stories

Support us by becoming a member on YouTube

Or Support us on Patreon

Buy Ring of Fire merch

Find us on social media!

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Hi, I'm Mike Papantonio and this is America's Lawyer where we dig behind the headlines to give you the details and information that corporate media won't give you. As always, I've got Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins with me to talk about the big news of the week. Let's jump right in. First thing, well, there's so much to this, Trump sentencing. Okay. What is your take? What's the judge up to? To me, it looks like, when I look at what this judge has done, I followed this case pretty well. I followed the evidentiary rulings he made, I followed the procedural rulings he made. I think he's a dope, I think he's a total utter dope. And so I'm not sure what he's up to other than to say, maybe I want to get a felony conviction before Trump becomes president. Even though the appellate court, it's going to go away immediately. The whole thing is DOA in my mind. What's your take?

Well, Judge Merchan has already basically said, in the ruling of come back Friday for the sentencing, he also said, I'm not inclined to actually issue a punishment. So, it is a kind of a, I'm glad he's sticking with it because he had the chance he could have just thrown them out and I thought for sure that's what would happen. But he might be trying to send a message. That's the only thing I can conclude here is I'm going to send a message either that, hey, nobody's above the law, which I'd like to think that was the message. I don't think that's the message. I think it is, I'm going to stick it to you because you've me off so much. That seems to be the prevailing theory and personally, look, I'm okay with it. I'm fine with that if that is the way you want to do it. But there's not going to be any punishment because I've seen a lot of folks on social media really celebrating like, oh my God, they're messaging me, like, does this mean he could be in jail for the whole four? No.

I know.

Maybe a fine is probably the worst that's gonna happen. So it will have no impact on Trump's life at all.

Yeah. My take is a little bit different. Okay. My take is I look at it like a lawyer. I look at it like, if this were any other judge, I would say he's a dope. I really would. His evidentiary rulings were ridiculous. Things should have been admissible. Things that should have been kept out. He without question, time after time, made rulings that other judges would look at and say, really? So that's one appellate issue. The other appellate issue that I think is clear to me is he should have recused himself. There's a term in the law, Farron, it's called the appearance of impropriety. Okay. It isn't that you did anything wrong. It is that there's an appearance that you might have done something wrong. And this issue, whether it goes anywhere or not, with Schiff giving $12 million to his daughter's PR firm, started off with four. By the time it was over, it was 12. With that happening, that alone should have triggered something and you say, look, there's nothing wrong here. That's okay.

But the appearance of impropriety was there. I think he should have reacted to that. He went in with a Supreme Court ruling where the Supreme Court gave him enough direction to say, not only is there an immunity question, which I don't really think there's an immunity question, but I think there's an immunity question, a full immunity question. I think there's a question as to what was admissible? What type of documents did he allow this prosecutor to put in that should not have been put in? I think that's another reason this case is gone. This idea of trying to create, and he seemed to promote it, taking what should have been a misdemeanor and doing these metaphysical gymnastics to say, no, it's a felony because you were really trying to cover up in the 2016 election. You were trying to manipulate the 2016 election, and that's how it became the felony. I think this guy's an embarrassment. I really do. I think he's an embarrassment to the judiciary. I think the case is DOA. I don't care what he does Friday, frankly, it doesn't make any difference. Before the ink dries this thing's going to be reversed.