Judge Merchan just got Donald Trump’s sentencing wrong
Judge Juan Merchan proved himself to be fair and impartial throughout Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial. In a surprise move, Merchan announced today that he’s delaying Trump’s sentencing hearing until November, shortly after the election. Merchan said that this should prove to everyone that he’s not trying to interfere with the election. I strongly disagree. I believe Merchan is unduly influencing the election by not holding Trump’s sentencing hearing when it was supposed to happen.
That said, so be it. I’m not going to berate an otherwise solid judge simply because he made one false move that he honestly believes is correct, even if I think he got it very wrong. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that this probably means Merchan has decided to sentence Trump to prison, and he’s waiting until after the election for that reason. In other words, once we finish beating Trump, he really is going to prison – in this criminal trial and multiple others.
So now we get back to work. We have an election to win. The good news is we are winning, we just have to keep putting in the work (phone banking, door knocking, postcards, voter registration drives, donations) to make sure that our current lead translates to a win. And now we have the added motivation of knowing that if we finish Trump off in this election, he really is going to prison. So let’s get to it.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report