Hush-Money Judge Unleashes on Trump Lawyer Over His Closing Arguments

Judge Juan Merchan ripped into Donald Trump attorney Todd Blanche over his closing arguments during the former president’s hush-money trial Tuesday.

Blanche told the jurors that Trump could be sent to prison if convicted, drawing the ire of the prosecution, as well as Merchan. Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass called Blanche’s comment a “blatant” and “inappropriate move” by the defense, and Merchan concurred.

“I think that comment was outrageous, Mr. Blanche. You know as someone who has been a prosecutor that it’s simply not allowed, period. It’s hard to see how that was an accident,” Merchan said, once the jurors had been dismissed for lunch. Upon Steinglass’s request, Merchan agreed to give a curative instruction to the jury when they returned.

Merchan told the jury that Blanche’s comment was “improper, and you must disregard it.”

“If there is a verdict of guilty, it will be up to me to impose a sentence,” Merchan said, adding that a “prison sentence is not required in the event of a guilty verdict.”

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman said this was embarrassing for Blanche.

It’s no secret that Trump faces jail time in this trial, but mentioning a potential sentence to a jury is considered a bad idea in criminal law. It’s not the first misstep for Blanche in this case, though. He’s been admonished by Merchan before when trying to come up with excuses for Trump to evade his gag order. He also had to be corrected by witness Michael Cohen during a cross-examination, and embarrassed himself reading insults in court. These missteps, as Merchan noted, should not be coming from someone who is a former federal prosecutor.

Trump is on trial for trying to cover up an affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election by paying her off with Cohen’s help. The Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime, and has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Right-wing pundits and MAGA loyalists are losing their minds over something they made up, falsely claiming the Secret Service is knee-deep in preparations to ship their beloved Trump off to jail.

Reality is far less electrifying: CBS reported Tuesday that there’s little clarity on what would happen if Trump is found guilty in criminal court ahead of jury deliberations for his hush-money trial. Within that news item, CBS referred to an unnamed Department of Corrections source  who said that, as part of exploring the full scope of possibilities ahead of a verdict in Trump’s hush-money trial, Secret Service met with “local jail officials”—in this case, likely officials at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island.

It’s not even clear where Trump would be imprisoned, if he is at all. Trump’s 34 felony charges could entail sentences of up to four years in prison—per charge. In New York City, felony convictions with sentences over a year are typically sent to state prisons, not carried out at Rikers Island, which is technically only supposed to hold people whose sentences are around one year, as well as people held pretrial. A freshly convicted Trump could potentially be held temporarily at Rikers before being transferred to a state penitentiary, but this all rests on whether Judge Juan Merchan pursues hard time for Trump at all.

The process is unusual—most convicts don’t come with their own lifetime Secret Service detail—but is altogether routine for the matter at hand and by no means indicates Trump will be sent to the pokey: As CBS notes, Merchan may favor sentencing Trump to house arrest. Merchan previously described jailing Trump as “truly a last resort for me” when Trump repeatedly violated his gag order, taking into consideration the difficulties for Secret Service and jail staff to ensure Trump’s safety behind bars.

Jury deliberations in Trump’s hush-money trial are expected to begin Wednesday. Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has pleaded not guilty.

Former Trump White House attorney Ty Cobb believes that Donald Trump can expect a guilty verdict in his New York hush money-trial.

“I expect a ‘GUILTY’ verdict, but only because the jury instructions as urged by the DA and adopted by the judge, over strenuous and well founded defense objections, virtually require conviction,” Cobb told Semafor Tuesday.

In order to find Trump guilty of felony-level falsification of business documents, the jurors must unanimously agree that he did so in order to further an underlying or separate crime. But last week, against the best efforts of Trump’s legal team, Judge Juan Merchan ruled that the jury will not necessarily need to agree on what those separate or underlying crimes are.

“I reach this legal conclusion because of my long experience as a federal prosecutor and white collar defense lawyer, my reverence for the rule of law, and despite my view that Trump remains the greatest threat to Democracy in our nation’s history,” Cobb said.

The former White House attorney also expects the jury to deliver its verdict by the end of the week—assuming the deliberations follow an old rule of thumb.

“Jury deliberations are always difficult to predict, of course, but one marginally useful rule of thumb is ‘assume one day for each week of trial,’” Cobb explained. “Here even though there were five weeks of evidence, they were short weeks due to the Court not sitting on Wednesdays and to other days or partial days off. So think of it as 4 weeks of evidence. If the jury begins deliberations Tuesday afternoon, expect a verdict no later than Friday afternoon.”

Trump is accused of using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Donald Trump lobbed a hefty snub to far-right lawmaker Bob Good on Tuesday morning, declaring he’s “BAD FOR VIRGINIA, AND BAD FOR THE USA.” Trump went on to endorse Good’s primary opponent, John McGuire, a former Navy SEAL turned Capitol insurrectionist.

Good has been down bad trying to curry favor with Trump, including traveling all the way to New York to kiss the ring outside Manhattan Criminal Court for Trump’s hush-money trial. During that visit, Good admitted that he and other Republican lawmakers were trying to help Trump evade his gag order.

“That’s why we went up there,” Good said on Fox Business during his visit. “So that we could say the things that this corrupt judge is not allowing him to say.”

Trump’s vengeful dismissal of Good—who chairs the far-right and disturbingly powerful House Freedom Caucus—appear to stem from Good’s early support of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s short-lived campaign for president. According to unnamed sources who spoke with CNN in December, Good’s endorsement of DeSantis came because he wanted a candidate who could be president for the next eight consecutive years—but Good still planned to support Trump if he became the nominee, calling him “the best president of my lifetime.”

Bob, the best president of your lifetime hates your guts.

Nikki Haley, former presidential candidate turned Trump endorser, spent Memorial Day not commemorating fallen American servicemembers but visiting Israel as it conducts a brutal massacre in Gaza.

On Monday, Haley posted pictures from a visit to southern Israel, where she met with survivors from Hamas’s attack on October 7. Haley told reporters that the United States “needs to do whatever Israel needs and stop telling them how to fight this war.”

She also traveled to Israel’s northern border with a member of the Israeli Knesset, Danny Dannon, who posted pictures to his own X account on Tuesday with the text “Finish them!” The post also included a picture of Haley signing Israeli artillery shells with the message: “Finish them! America loves Israel!”

Dannon’s post also included, in Hebrew, a message alluding to military strikes against southern Lebanon, referencing two Lebanese cities, according to Google Translate.

“This is what my friend, the former ambassador, Nikki Haley wrote today about a shell during a visit to an artillery post on the northern border,” Dannon wrote.

“The time has come to change the equation—the residents of Tyre and Sidon will evacuate, the residents of the north will return.

“The IDF can win!”

One post from an Israeli peace activist suggested that Haley visited West Bank settlements, which are considered illegal under international law.

Leaving aside the optics of signing bombs when Israel is facing judgment from the International Criminal Court for possible war crimes in Gaza, appearing to endorse military strikes against another country flies in the face of America’s efforts to avoid a wider war in the Middle East. On Monday, an Israeli strike targeting a motorcycle in southern Lebanon landed outside of a hospital, killing the motorcycle driver and a hospital security guard. But more explicitly, Haley is endorsing Israel’s war in Gaza, which has officially killed at least 36,096 people, including 15,000 children, figures that probably don’t include Israel’s latest assault on Rafah.