Democrats “unleashed a beast” and “created nasty problems” with Thursday’s conviction of former President Donald Trump, former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-New York, said. Breitbart News SaturdayHe noted that Americans who once supported him now support him “more fervently.”
A Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 first-degree counts of falsifying business records in connection with payments made to adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Zeldin said it was a “misdemeanor” that was “elevated to a felony” without Trump even being informed of what he was being charged with.
“I was a prosecutor, and in every case I worked on, I told the defendants up front exactly what they were being charged with,” Zeldin explained. “They knew all of the charges, and they were able to prepare their closing statements, their opening statements, their cross-examinations, their own witnesses — all in order to defend their clients against every element of the charges. And in this case, one of those elements was that they were being charged with a felony because of some mysterious, unidentified underlying charge. It wasn’t until the prosecutors got to their closing argument, after President Trump’s lawyers had made their closing argument, that the jury was instructed that they didn’t even have to agree on any charges. They could pick any charge they wanted, they didn’t even have to all agree. So this is just one of many examples of why this case should be overturned on appeal.”
listen:
“President Trump is absolutely right to want to appeal, and he should. He will surely wake up the next day wanting to fight harder than ever. Tens of millions of Americans who supported him before are now supporting him even more fervently. I’ve seen it on social media. There are a lot of people out there who have never supported President Trump. [but]They saw this tragedy, and then they woke up the next day and decided, yes, for the first time, they were going to support President Trump. And they’re expressing it as if they were willing to walk on broken glass to support President Trump. They went from being independents and undecided supporters to being strong, passionate, loyal supporters. [Democrats] “Yes, they have unleashed a beast. This is a troubling issue and it is up to all of us to make a final decision on November 5th,” Zeldin continued.
When asked whether he believed Judge Juan Merchan made “a lot” of “reversible errors” in overseeing the trial and whether he thought the verdict would be overturned on appeal, Zeldin replied, “Absolutely it should be overturned.”
Judge Juan Marchan (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
“It should be overturned on appeal. I mentioned one of the reversible errors, which is the fact that they didn’t even tell the defendant what the mysterious element was that allowed them to elevate it from a misdemeanor to a felony. So you know very well the statute of limitations was running. They couldn’t sue. And they want to say ‘convicted felon.’ Take a serious case where someone ended up being convicted of a felony. This is a misdemeanor. He was actually charged with a misdemeanor, but they couldn’t sue him for a misdemeanor. One, they wanted fodder for arguments, and two, the statute of limitations was running. And I’ll give you another one, allowing Stormy Daniels in her testimony to go on and on about all kinds of salacious details to prejudice the jury and get headlines. That has absolutely nothing to do with proving the elements of a crime. I mean, they were knowingly prejudicing the case and the jury. And on top of that, while this is happening in the middle of a presidential election, there’s a gag order that President Trump is not even allowed to defend himself.” So, this appeal is procedural and substantive, i.e. [were] “The way the judge ruled early and often on certain aspects of this case, the way the prosecutors handled this case early and often, was wrong,” Zeldin added.
Zeldin said there would be “challenges within the New York Court of Appeals” given how officials have “changed the judiciary over the last few years and appointed left-wing activist judges,” but he said people still expected some intervention “within the federal judiciary and all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump attends his criminal trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on May 29, 2024. (Doug Mills Pool/Getty Images)
“By the way, at the end of the day, they alleged that the underlying charges were federal campaign finance violations. Why would the Manhattan district attorney prosecute that? After the Department of Justice declined to prosecute, after the Federal Election Commission declined to pursue, after Alvin Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, declined to pursue, I don’t know if a New York district attorney has ever prosecuted a federal campaign finance violation. Maybe they did at some point, but I can’t remember. I definitely can’t remember anyone prosecuting a defendant for federal campaign finance violations without telling anyone until the very end of closing arguments that they were charging him with federal campaign finance violations,” Zeldin added.
Breitbart News Saturday airs from 10am-1pm ET on SiriusXM Patriot 125.
