Acting State Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan must either dismiss President-elect Donald Trump's business records case conviction or allow it to be appealed rather than hang in limbo during the next four years, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Sunday.
Instead, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has said his office is willing to delay sentencing until Trump is out of office, wants to "hold the sentence over his head," Dershowitz told Newsmax's "Sunday Report."
This way, "every time that President Trump travels abroad, he is the president who has a jury conviction hanging over him," said Dershowitz.
The case can't be appealed unless sentencing is held, he pointed out.
"Bragg's trick is to try to prevent Trump and his lawyers from appealing this because he knows that it will be reversed on appeal," Dershowitz said.
This means that if Merchan agrees to delay the sentencing, Trump's lawyers must file for their right to appeal the case immediately and get it thrown out, he added.
"It cannot be the law that a prosecutor can allow an invalid conviction to hang over the head of the president of the United States," Dershowitz told Newsmax.
Meanwhile, Dershowitz said he expect Merchan to do "whatever he can to hurt Trump in the worst possible way without destroying his own reputation."
"It's all about him and about his personal views of Trump and his personal desire to protect himself," said Dershowitz. "What he ought to do is dismiss the case immediately. But if he's going to sentence him, say, to probation or home confinement in the White House, as soon as the sentence comes down, it will be appealed and it will be reversed."
Bragg, meanwhile, is running for office based on two major cases, that of Trump and the murder trial of Daniel Penny, "who is likely not to be convicted."
"Bragg has to worry and is worried about his own political future," said Dershowitz. "Having a conviction not reversed and hanging over the head of Trump will allow him to campaign on the promise that he promised to get Trump, and he got Trump. So this is all political. This has nothing to do with the rule of law."
The case, meanwhile, was "unethical, immoral, illegal, and unconstitutional," said Dershowitz.
He added that he would like to see Bragg summoned into congressional hearings and asked how he could justify bringing a case against Trump in which the statute of limitations had expired.
"I would be happy to testify," said Dershowitz. "I could get 100 law professors to testify that this is a case that never, ever, ever should have been brought."
Meanwhile, Dershowitz praised former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump's pick for attorney general after former Rep. Matt Gaetz dropped out of contention.
"I worked with her closely on the first impeachment," he said. "We were co-counsels, and she's become a friend, and she's wonderful. She's brilliant, hard-working, the nicest person you'll ever want to have."
Attorneys general are loyal to their presidents, he added, but must also be independent prosecutors who do not allow politics to enter into decisions.
"She has to balance those two roles," said Dershowitz. "I can't imagine anyone better that's on the table today for managing and balancing than Pam Bondi. I think she's going to be a great attorney general."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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