The Patriot Post® · Of Clown Shows and Closing Arguments

There was a surreal scene yesterday outside the Lower Manhattan courthouse, where Donald Trump’s fate will soon rest in the hands of a jury.

The scene involved a short, elderly, mask-wearing man walking up the middle of the street while surrounded by a group of bodyguards and sycophants. Judging from the clownish mask alone, the old man clearly didn’t mean to be taken seriously. I mean, how could anyone wear a mask outdoors on an 80-degree spring day more than four years after COVID and expect to be taken seriously? But then the old guy removed the mask, and he revealed himself as the Trump-deranged actor from “Meet the Fockers” fame.

Setting aside both the judicial travesty of the nearby Case in Search of a Crime and the jury tampering of a presidential administration staging a presser right outside the Trump courthouse, what happened there on the street yesterday was much-needed comic relief. As journalist Greg Price reports: “Their ‘special guests’ were lunatic actor Robert De Niro … one unhinged capitol police officer who lied about everything that happened to him on J6, and another one best known for hitting on 20 year old girls at DC bars. They spent the whole thing getting drowned out by Trump supporters yelling ‘FJB’ and they had to answer questions such as ‘is Trump a threat to all these wars Biden has gotten us in.’” See for yourself, and note the moment, at 6:45, when a nearby car alarm begins blaring into De Niro’s ear as he’s telling us that Trump “will never leave” if he’s elected president.

Said one movie critic as De Niro was walking away with his entourage, “You’re a little punk! You’re a softy! You’re a nobody! Your movies suck! You’re trash!” To which the classy De Niro replied, “F*** you!”

Inside the courtroom, things were far more serious. After all, the Left’s lawfare project has kept Trump almost entirely off the campaign trail for the past six weeks. The prosecution’s closing argument dragged on for four interminable hours, prompting more than one legal analyst to observe, I’ve heard a good closing argument, and I’ve heard a long closing argument, but I’ve never heard a good long closing argument.

There’s no crime here, and in this country, the Sixth Amendment to our Constitution guarantees that every defendant has the right to know precisely what offense he’s being charged with. That’s why this case is such a stinker. It’s why Alvin Bragg’s predecessor as Manhattan district attorney, Cy Cance, refused to bring the case. And it’s why Joe Biden’s own Department of Justice initially refused to bring the case. Were New York City an honest town, the jury would come back with an acquittal in 30 minutes.

During the prosecution’s closing argument, constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley expressed disbelief at Democrat donor Judge Juan Merchan’s repeated overruling of legitimate objections by Trump’s defense team. Essentially, Merchan was allowing the state to lie to the jury about the facts of the case. As Turley told Fox News’s Sean Hannity last night:

It’s not that I haven’t seen anything like this; I haven’t even read about anything like this. What I saw in that courtroom was really other-worldly. … [Merchan] allowed the prosecutor to repeatedly state that federal election violations by Trump are a fact and that there’s not any dispute to that. And Merchan just sat there. He was as useful as a Ficus plant in that courtroom. I kept on waiting, looking at him for some sign that he was even listening to some of these arguments.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much reversible error in a case as I’ve seen here,” said another legal expert, Harvard Law Professor Emeritus and OJ Simpson attorney Alan Dershowitz, who believes there are 10-15 matters on which a guilty verdict in this case could be reversed. “But they don’t care,” Dershowitz continued, “because they want the conviction down and dirty, before the election, and then if it’s reversed on appeal after the election, nobody cares. As a Democrat, I’m appalled — appalled — at the way the law has been manipulated and distorted in order to get Trump.”

Perhaps the line of the day was delivered by Trump’s attorney: “Michael Cohen is the GLOAT, the greatest liar of all time,” said Todd Blanche. “You cannot send someone to prison based upon the words of Michael Cohen.”

How will the jury rule? Turley has a hunch: “I would currently put a hung jury as the most likely outcome of the three outcomes,” he said.

On the other hand, the groupthink mentality of an overwhelmingly anti-Trump jury can’t be discounted.