New York City Judge Juan Merchan will likely sentence former President Donald Trump to up to three years in prison, but will suspend the sentence, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Sunday.
Trump's lawyers should push to move the sentencing date up so they can start appealing the case, he added.
"I think the judge will sentence him to a prison term of two or three years but suspend the sentence as to send a message that he deserves to get a prison term," Dershowitz said on Newsmax's "Sunday Report."
Still, Merchan doesn't need 1 1/2 months to decide what the sentence will be because "everybody knows" he's already made up his mind, he added.
"I know there has to be a pre-sentence report, but there are ways of trying to move this," said Dershowitz. "The judge, I'm sure, made up his mind what he was going to sentence him to before the verdict came back, because he knew what the verdict was going to be based on the instructions. The jury had no choice but to convict."
The trial, meanwhile, "wasn't a trial" but a "predetermined, orchestrated result," Dershowitz said.
"As soon as this judge was selected, as soon as this prosecutor was allowed to change the mind of all previous prosecutors and then to select the place where the trial would occur in New York, in Manhattan, where close to 90% of the jury [choices] would hate Donald Trump. This was not a trial."
Further, "nobody could have won" the case, as it "didn't matter" what the facts or the lawyers were," said Dershowitz.
"All that mattered is that the person on trial was Donald Trump," He said. "There are dozens of appealable issues. I'm probably the most experienced private appellate lawyer in criminal cases in the country, and I can tell you that for a trial that lasted as long as this one did, I've never seen so many reversible errors."
But even though "any first-year law student" could win the appeal, that wouldn't necessarily happen in New York because the appellate judges are elected by the same people "who were on the jury and that hate Donald Trump, so this has to get outside of New York City in order for there to be any kind of justice," said Dershowitz.
Meanwhile, the Trump legal team will need to be enhanced, he said.
"You should never have the same people who lost the trial do the appeal because they're unconsciously always going to be trying to defend their own actions," said Dershowitz. "You need outsiders who are prepared to criticize some of the actions taken by the trial lawyers."
The appeal will likely be focused on the fact that a defense witness was excluded who could have testified that there was nothing illegal about anything that can be a campaign contribution, said Dershowitz.
Further, the testimony from Stormy Daniels could be appealed as there was "no reason to put her on the stand and to have her testify about the details of their alleged sexual encounter," said Dershowitz.
"It didn't matter whether there was sex or not," he said. "The only thing that mattered is that she was trying to extort [him]."
Further, "the whole case was made up" by imagining that Trump was trying to cheat on his taxes or hide a campaign contribution, said Dershowitz.
"[Alvin Bragg] searched up and down to find the crime," he added. "He couldn't find one. So he made one up. He just made one up out of whole cloth. And I think any reasonable appellate court would find so many errors in this that they would reverse the conviction, not remand it for a new trial, but reverse it, dismiss it, and condemn the prosecutors for bringing it."
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