(New York Post) Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg pushed Tuesday to create a new constitutional creature: the layaway president.
It was once common for stores to hold expensive items that you really wanted but could not make the payment.
So they were tagged and kept on the shelf until you were ready to redeem your item.
For Bragg, that leaves Donald Trump tagged until 2029.
In a filing before Manhattan Justice Juan Merchan, Bragg suggested that the court should stay the pending criminal case and defer any sentencing “until after the end of defendant’s upcoming presidential term.”
That would allow a city prosecutor to put a leash on a sitting president for four years.
Trump would govern by the grace of this local judge and district attorney.
In the meantime, pundits and politicians could portray the president as free on a type of work release program.
The suggestion is appalling to most of the people in the country, including the majority of voters who voted for Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats ran on this and other cases in the election.
The result was arguably the largest jury decision in history.
That being said, I do not believe that the mere election of a president negates jury verdicts on 34 criminal counts.
But ample reasons exist to overturn those verdicts or to dismiss this case.
For example, after the verdict, the Supreme Court rendered its immunity decision barring the use of certain evidence against a president.
Some of the evidence used in the Manhattan case likely fell within one of the protected categories.
The prosecutors not only elicited testimony from Trump aides in the White House but then doubled down on the significance of that evidence in their closing arguments.
Merchan could declare that the court cannot rule out the impact of such testimony on the final verdict.
Even if Merchan, as expected, does not dismiss the case on the basis for the immunity decision, the trial was rife with reversible error.
