Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy provides legal analysis on former President Trump's New York criminal trial on 'The Story with Martha MacCallum.'

First things first: The most important thing you can read this week, if you are an American concerned with the rule of law, is Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy’s essay, "How Judge Merchan Is Orchestrating Trump’s Conviction."

What McCarthy chronicles is the absolutely shocking attempt by trial judge Juan Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to secure, by any means necessary, a conviction of former President Donald Trump. Only mind-readers can discern the real motives behind Justice Merchan’s incomprehensible abuse of his powers.

(The trial court judges in New York are denominated "justices," so don’t confuse Merchan with the state’s equivalent of one of the nine justices on our federal Surpeme Court. He is not one of the seven highest judges in the Empire State which together comprise the state’s highest court. He is not even an appeals court judge. Merchan is just an ordinary trial court judge who is never going to be confused with a great legal mind, or, in my view, even an average fair-minded criminal court "hanging judge.")

NY VS. TRUMP: A TRIAL IN SEARCH OF AN IMAGINARY CRIME

Merchan seems to me to be a partisan who has gone rogue, but who is still entitled to the respect due anyone wearing a robe in any court. It is necessary to note that Merchan made nominal contributions to the 2020 United States presidential election, donating $15 to Joe Biden's campaign, $10 to the "Progressive Turnout Project," and $10 to "Stop Republicans."

I find these gestures —and they are just that, gestures intended as symbolic acts, of what I do not know— astonishing. In my opinion, they ought to have disqualified him from the jump because they are intended to tell you who he is: a partisan, even if not a particularly deep-pocketed partisan. He wanted it known. He wanted it on the record. So, notice it and ask: Why did he do that save to signal to one and all what he thought of the 2020 election?

This trial is the sowing of the wind. Other political judges and prosecutors will reap the whirlwind. Everyone will lose. It is, for those who profess to love the rule of law, a disaster.

Bragg is, by contrast, just another political prosecutor, a political animal feeding his base voters, and we have grown used to their appearances on the public stage. Perhaps Merchan is suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome." We don’t know and can’t know because questioning him is beyond anyone’s ability, unless somehow Trump down the road can bring a Section 1983 action against both Merchan and Bragg for violation of his constitutional rights under color of state law.

But unless one or more brave souls on that jury see through this fraud of a Soviet-style show trial and hangs the jury, many convictions are coming Trump’s way, and the Merchan/Bragg combo is going down in American legal history along with the names of every other disreputable judge and prosecutor you can recall from American history.

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