One of former President Donald Trump’s lead lawyers worries that jurors in the New York hush money trial are likely to suffer from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” during their Memorial Day outing.
Alina Habba said she was confident in the work done by Trump’s defense but said jurors should have been sequestered from the general public over the holiday weekend ahead of closing arguments this week.
“The jury is dealing, in my opinion, with something completely unprecedented,” Hubba said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“I’m worried that they’re going to go back to their friends who have ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ forget all sense of reality, come back and sit in that box and say we’ve got to get one for the Democratic National Convention,” he said. [Democratic National Committee]. “
Sequestration means jurors will be sequestered in a hotel and monitored by court officials to prevent jurors from watching news media or talking to others about the trial.
The aim is to ensure that jurors are not influenced by information outside the courtroom.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Marchan declined to sequester jurors in the case, which has been ongoing for more than a month.
Hubba, who represented Trump in a civil fraud case (now on appeal) that ultimately resulted in Trump being ordered to pay $455 million plus interest, asserted that the facts of the case were in Trump’s favor.
“There are no facts to support this crime,” she argued. “We don’t even know what the crime is, so this is a books and records issue.”
Trump, 77, is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal the payment of hush money to support his election campaign.
The former president has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him, as well as three other criminal indictments.
Haba, who sat in on Trump’s hush money trial, underscored his frustration with Marchan and described the jury instructions as his biggest concern about Trump’s prospects in the trial.
“It’s always been that way. There’s been no lawsuits,” she argued.
“The prosecutor’s last resort will be to allow this politically motivated judge to dictate how he decides the fate of a former president and future president of the United States.”
She also slammed Marchan’s “unconstitutional” gag order, issued in March, that restricted the Republican presidential candidate’s right to comment on the families of witnesses, jurors, prosecutors and judges.
Marchant found that Trump violated the order nearly 10 times.
While trying not to violate the gag order, Haba Marchant’s Political History And his daughter’s.
“This is a matter that deserves appeal because the judge has refused to recuse himself, but there is no doubt that this is politically motivated,” she said.
President Biden has remained largely silent throughout the trial, only occasionally commenting on Trump’s court-centered schedule.
However, Biden plans to speak publicly about the issue once the ruling is made, Politico reported.
Meanwhile, Trump’s allies and surrogates are backing him wholeheartedly in the media.
“Well, I think he’ll be found not guilty because it wasn’t a crime,” Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) predicted on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
“Only the prosecutor can be found guilty in court. [Alvin] Bragg was found guilty of corrupting the justice system, dereliction of duty and attempting to frame an innocent man.
If the jury finds him guilty, it would be the first time in U.S. history that a former president has been convicted of a serious crime.
