"Perhaps Judge Juan Merchan has been sobered by the defense mistrial motion he prompted last week."

"The judge foolishly allowed Manhattan prosecutors to elicit graphic testimony from porn star Stormy Daniels about a 2006 sexual encounter she claims to have had with Donald Trump. That testimony was irrelevant to the sole question in the trial, which is whether Trump fraudulently falsified his financial records in 2017. On that matter, Daniels has no knowledge; thus, her testimony was offered solely to inflame the jury against the defendant. Whatever the reason, the latest ploy by District Attorney Alvin Bragg was too much, even for the complaisant Merchan...."

Writes Andrew C. McCarthy in "Alvin Bragg again tries an underhanded tactic against Trump" (NY Post).

IN THE COMMENTS: Wince writes: "I still think Merchan is apt to surprise everyone by granting a directed verdict that extricates himself and the state from this unethical debacle, while avoiding an increasingly likely hung jury or outright defense verdict in Trump’s favor."

I've been wondering, which of the following 2 options is better for Trump and his supporters, going forward: Merchan grants a directed verdict, or the jury acquits. Again, consider only those 2 option and not others, and now tell me which is preferable for Trump opponents.

I'm not suggesting those are the 2 most likely options. I'm just asking who benefits politically from a directed verdict for Trump. Of course, at the point of deciding whether to grant a directed verdict, the judge doesn't know what the jury will do, and the judge should not take into account who will benefit politically (or whether he will be accused of doing so). 

Will people feel more confident in the judicial system if the judge grants a directed verdict or if the case goes to the jury? 

AND: Also in the comments: Mr Wibble answers my question: "His opponents benefit more from a directed verdict than from an acquittal. The former allows them to continue to claim that he's guilty but was only let go because of technical errors, with Bragg taking the brunt of the blame, whereas the latter would be seen as a repudiation by the public."

"Most people dislike believing they and their factions are the ones in power. They want power, while claiming the victim mantle."

With an open mind, I hope people will read this scathing indictment of Alvin Bragg's indictment against Trump by @AndrewCMcCarthy, a conservative who has often been contemptuous of Trump:https://t.co/N5gJ1ldjkr

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 5, 2023

From McCarthy's essay:

"The Justice Department is not ready to charge Trump for the [Capitol] riot. It lacks proof that he is criminally culpable for the violence."

"As for the non-violent potential crimes it is investigating — obstruction of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the government — these are based on disputed theories that Trump and his apologists could persuasively frame as a partisan weaponization of the Justice Department against the likely 2024 GOP nominee. Consequently, the DOJ does not want to suggest that Trump is the subject of a criminal investigation related to the Capitol riot. Nor does it want to be perceived as having told a court it has probable cause tying Trump to Capitol riot crimes."

Writes Andrew McCarthy in "The FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid: It’s about the Capitol Riot, Not the Mishandling of Classified Information" (National Review).

"For all its posturing as a rule-of-law pillar, the Biden Justice Department, like the Biden administration broadly, is cowed by the Democrats’ hard-left base..."

"... the same radicals who snapped their fingers and had Attorney General Merrick Garland ordering the FBI to investigate parents who dared protest against woke-progressivism in America’s schools. The Democratic base’s most cherished desire is the prosecution of Donald Trump and those who collaborated in his quest to retain power. Most of the country isn’t watching the slick made-for-TV docudrama being presented by the Jan. 6 committee (whose 'hearings' have no cross-examination or perspectives that vary from anti-Trump obsession), but the Democratic base is watching intently.... Obviously, the riot was a disgrace. Unfortunately, it has also become DOJ’s prism for evaluating both forcible attacks and nonviolent legal brainstorming. Garland must know the two must be separated.... Garland knows that prosecuting Trump and such underlings as Eastman and Clark on flimsy grounds would rip the country apart. He’s also worried, however, that Biden’s left flank is poised for mutiny if there is no indictment."

Writes Andrew C. McCarthy in "Democrats are pressuring Merrick Garland to make an anti-Trump case he doesn’t have" (NY Post).

"There are strong philosophical arguments for opposing Judge Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court. And she may in fact be too solicitous of criminals. But..."

"... the implication that she has a soft spot for 'sex offenders' who 'prey on children' because she argued against a severe mandatory-minimum prison sentence for the receipt and distribution of pornographic images is a smear."

Writes Andrew McCarthy in "Senator Hawley’s Disingenuous Attack against Judge Jackson’s Record on Child Pornography" (National Review).

"What does 'worse than Watergate' mean?"

Asks Andrew C. McCarthy in "Did Durham find something worse than Watergate? Not so far" (The Hill). 

Let’s say a presidential administration puts the government’s law enforcement and intelligence apparatus in the service of its party’s presidential candidate by trying to portray the opposition party’s candidate as a clandestine agent of a hostile government.

"The danger in presenting a defense case, especially in a prosecution that is so video-dependent, is that it allows the prosecutor..."

"... through leading questions on cross-examination, to walk witnesses through the video, explaining to the jury moment-by-moment exactly what the prosecution’s theory of the case is. If he does this skillfully, the prosecutor turns his 'questioning' into the equivalent of a summation.... In addition to stressing Chauvin’s patent awareness that Floyd was in pain, the prosecutor had the witness concede that the defendant had been told by his fellow officers that Floyd had lost consciousness, ought to be rolled over on his side (to facilitate breathing), and had no pulse. While defense attorney Eric Nelson had made much of the crowd presence and the possibility that it could pose a threat to the police, Schleicher had Brodd conceding that the crowd was small and posed no threat to the police.... The foundation of Chauvin’s defense is that he had reason to fear that Floyd would regain consciousness and begin resisting arrest again. Schleicher elicited from Brodd the explanation that there is a difference between a threat and a risk: Police may use force to counter a threat they perceive based on some affirmative act by a detainee; but they may not use force based on a mere risk that a detainee might pose a threat at some future point."

From "Chauvin Defense Expert Destroyed on the Stand" by Andrew McCarthy (at National Review). 

FROM THE EMAIL: Omaha1 writes:

"The state isn’t exactly scrupulous in the evidence it musters. It contends that Biden had less than a one in a quadrillion chance..."

"... of winning any one of these battleground states after Trump established a lead on election night. The chance of winning all four, per the suit, was less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power. But the calculation assumed that every batch of ballots would have roughly the same partisan breakdown, despite there never having been any real-world expectation of this. It was predicted that Trump would establish an early lead in states that counted in-person ballots first, and then Biden would gain as the states began to count mail-in ballots, which were heavily Democratic. The last-counted ballots were universally understood to be the Democrats’ turn at bat, given who they were and where they came from...."

From "Texas Unleashes an Absurd Kraken" by the Editors of The National Review.

Also in The National Review, "Texas’s Frivolous Lawsuit Seeks to Overturn Election in Four Other States" by Andrew McCarthy. Excerpt:

Journotlism.

What a time to be in journalism: Between Bobulinski and the Biden corruption scandal, rioting in our cities, a new Supreme Court justice’s first full day, and peace breaking out in the Middle East, has there ever been so much to *not* cover!?!

— Andy McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) October 28, 2020

This seems pretty newsworthy. Maybe they could, at the very least, answer some questions about it and that recording he has. https://t.co/i8FtMaBt9Y

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) October 28, 2020

"When the FBI arrests a mafia don on RICO charges, when DEA arrests a drug kingpin on narcotics charges, when ATF arrests an unlicensed gun dealer for illegally shipping firearms..."

"... they do not need a green light from the state. And consider for a moment the concept of a 'sanctuary city.' That is a municipality that obstructs the federal government’s enforcement of the immigration laws. The concept would make no sense if the feds needed the state’s permission – the state would simply refrain from asking the immigration authorities to conduct arrests and deportations. Cities purport to become 'sanctuaries' only because the local authorities realize that the federal government has an independent obligation to enforce federal law; they can’t prevent the feds from coming in, so they try to impede federal action.... Federal officers in Portland are not a military force. They are deputized law enforcement agents of the Department of Homeland Security and other federal police agencies. They are not, as Senator Paul misleadingly suggests, 'rounding up people at will.' They are making arrests based on probable cause that laws enacted by Congress have been violated. To my knowledge, Senator Paul has not proposed any legislation to repeal federal penal statutes that prohibit, for example, mutilating federal property, arson, and conspiring to oppose government authority by force...."

From "Portland riots – it is Trump's constitutional duty to enforce federal law and he should/The Constitution says it's the presidents job to enforce the law" by Andrew McCarthy (Fox News).

ADDED: I've encountered SO many law professors who were outraged that the Supreme Court took the position that the federal government couldn't FORCE local government officials to participate in the enforcement of federal law. I've written law review articles on this subject and participated in symposia, so I know what I'm talking about. The key case is Printz v. United States, which was about a federal law (the Brady Bill) that required local law enforcement officials to do background checks on gun buyers. The Court, in an opinion written by Justice Scalia, said that the federal government could not commandeer local government to do its law enforcement work. If it wanted background checks, the feds had to do it themselves (or get local government do it voluntarily). The dissenters — Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer — all said the federal government could force state and local government to enforce federal law even if they adamantly opposed the policy. It seemed that every law professor I ran into thought the dissenters were right (and Scalia was awful). If you think the feds can force local government to enforce federal law, how could you possibly think the feds can't enforce federal law unless the locals request it?

"New documents suggest that Flynn ‘was set up by corrupt agents’ who threatened Flynn’s son and made a secret deal with Flynn’s attorneys."

Writes Andrew McCarthy at National Review.

[L]ast Friday night, the DOJ provided some so-called Brady material — i.e., exculpatory information that prosecutors are required by law to reveal to defendants they have charged with crimes.... The information is still not public... But we can glean its outlines from a motion [Flynn's lawyer Sidney] Powell filed... [arguing that Flynn was] "deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents."...

There was no good-faith basis for an investigation of General Flynn. Under federal law, a false statement made to investigators is not actionable unless it is material. That means it must be pertinent to a matter that is properly under investigation. If the FBI did not have a legitimate investigative basis to interview Flynn, then that fact should have been disclosed as exculpatory information. It would have enabled his counsel to argue that any inaccurate statements he made were immaterial....

"Why not indict McCabe on felony false-statements charges? That is the question being pressed by incensed Trump supporters."

"After all, the constitutional guarantee of equal justice under the law is supposed to mean that McCabe gets the same quality of justice afforded to the sad sacks pursued with unseemly zeal by McCabe’s FBI and Robert Mueller’s prosecutors. George Papadopoulos was convicted of making a trivial false statement about the date of a meeting. Roger Stone was convicted of obstruction long after the special counsel knew there was no Trump–Russia conspiracy, even though his meanderings did not impede the investigation in any meaningful way. And in the case of Michael Flynn’s false-statements conviction, as McCabe himself acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee, even the agents who interviewed him did not believe he intentionally misled them.... "

From "Why Wasn’t Andrew McCabe Charged?" by Andrew McCarthy (National Review).

"In [Roger] Stone’s case, the guidelines worked a severe result. In tampering cases, a guidelines enhancement calls for a drastic increase in the sentence..."

"... if the defendant threatened the witness with physical injury. This drove Stone’s 'offense level' from 21 to 29 on the guidelines grid, so even though he is a first offender... his recommended sentence zoomed to 90 to 108 months — instead of 37 to 46 months....  [T]he prosecutors’ submission was an accurate (if extreme and unyielding) rendition of federal sentencing law....[T]he president went bonkers on Twitter upon learning of the recommendation... [but] the DOJ and the White House have had no communications about the case.... Late Tuesday, the DOJ filed a revised sentencing memo, which does not recommend a specific sentence but strongly suggests that a term calculated without the eight-point enhancement — i.e., between 37 and 46 months’ imprisonment — would be just. The new memo concedes that the prosecutors’ calculation in the original memo was 'arguably' correct, but contends that it would be unreasonable under the circumstances... But for his connection to Trump, Stone would never have been pursued in a collusion fever dream that Mueller’s prosecutors knew was bogus when they charged him. Yet his crimes, while exaggerated, were real. He was convicted by a jury... though he could be spared by the judge....  If President Trump is afraid, in an election year, to take the political hit that a pardon for Stone would entail... he should bite his tongue.... The Justice Department’s job is to process cases, including Mueller cases, pursuant to law. If the president wants to make those cases disappear, he has to do it himself and be accountable."

Clear analysis from Andrew C. McCarthy in "The Roger Stone Sentencing Fiasco." (National Review).

"Dems hold Trump to double standard – What was OK for Obama isn’t OK for Trump."

Writes Andrew McCarthy (Fox News).

"A must read, Andy McCarthy’s column today, 'Dirty dealings of dirt devils who concocted Trump-Russia probe.' The greatest Scam in political history."

"If the Mainstream Media were honest, which they are not, this story would be bigger and more important than Watergate. Someday!"

Tweets Trump this morning.

He doesn't give a link, and googling "Dirty dealings of dirt devils who concocted Trump-Russia probe" only gets me back to Trump. It is a screwy headline. Dirt devils?!

I think the article in question — the column by McCarthy that went up last night in the NY Post — is "Behind the Obama administration’s shady plan to spy on the Trump campaign." A more dignified headline, no?!

There is no doubt that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign. As Barr made clear, the real question is: What predicated the spying? Was there a valid reason for it, strong enough to overcome our norm against political spying? Or was it done rashly? Was a politically motivated decision made to use highly intrusive investigative tactics when a more measured response would have sufficed, such as a “defensive briefing” that would have warned the Trump campaign of possible Russian infiltration?...

A defensive briefing! Yes. Why didn't the Obama administration help the Trump campaign guard against infiltration?

Much more at the link. I gave up trying to choose excerpts. Read the whole thing.

"Unlike my colleagues, I’ve been a bemused spectator during this week’s Syria follies."

Writes Andrew C. McCarthy at The National Review.

When ISIS arose and gobbled up territory, beheading some inhabitants and enslaving the rest, Obama began sending in small increments of troops to help our “moderate” allies fend them off. But the moderates are mostly impotent; they need the jihadists, whether they are fighting rival jihadists or Assad. Syria remains a multi-front conflict in which one “axis” of America’s enemies, Assad-Iran-Russia, is pitted against another cabal of America’s enemies, the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda factions; both sides flit between fighting against and attempting to co-opt ISIS, another U.S. enemy. The fighting may go on for years; the prize the winner gets is . . . Syria (if it’s the Russians, they’ll wish they were back in Afghanistan)....

If we stayed out of the way, America’s enemies would continue killing each other. That’s fine by me. I am not indifferent to collateral human suffering, but it is a staple of sharia-supremacist societies.... We should hit terrorist sanctuaries wherever we find them, but it is not necessary to have thousands of American troops on the ground everyplace such sanctuaries might take root....

When we look a little deeper, though, we see why Americans will no longer support Washington’s incoherent Middle East adventurism. When we made our arrangements with the Kurds, we knew the backbone of their fighting forces was the PKK, which the U.S. government has designated a terrorist organization....

I hold no brief for Trump on Syria... But I find it remarkable that... congressional critics never paused, ever so slightly, over the fact that the troops they want the president to keep in Syria were never authorized by Congress to be in Syria....  Obama did not seek congressional authorization for combat operations in Syria because Congress would have refused. And Congress does not want any president to ask for authorization because members do not want to be accountable — they want to go on cable TV and whine that whoever is president has been heedless, whether for going in or for pulling out....

ADDED: Here's "Good Riddance to America’s Syria Policy/As usual, Donald Trump has done the right thing in the wrong way" by Harvard international relations professor Stephen M. Walt (in Foreign Policy).

Instead of obsessing about who is supposedly “winning” and who is supposedly “losing,” the United States should start by identifying its core strategic interests....

What if the remnants of the Islamic State manage to reconstitute themselves, regain some territory, and sponsor new terrorist attacks abroad? Such a development is obviously undesirable, but the danger does not justify keeping U.S. troops in Syria for another one, two, or five years. The ideology of a group like the Islamic State is not eradicated by bombs, drones, artillery shells, or bullets, and the idea of violent resistance can live on even if every member alive today is killed or captured. The ultimate protection against such groups is not an open-ended American commitment but rather the creation of effective local governments and institutions. Legitimate and effective local authority is not something the United States can provide, however; its presence in such places may even be counterproductive. After all, the Islamic State’s ideological message rests in part on opposition to foreign interference, and it has long used the U.S. presence in the region as a recruiting tool. Getting out of Syria won’t neutralize that message right away, but it could make the group less persuasive over time.

Moreover, despite its fearsome image and the hype its brutal tactics have received, the Islamic State was never an existential threat to the United States....

"As a prosecutor, you build a case by having your cooperating accomplice witnesses plead guilty to the big scheme you are trying to pin on the main culprit."

"After all, what makes these witnesses accomplices, literally, is that they were participants in the main culprit’s crime. That’s the scheme you’re trying to prove. So, on guilty-plea day, the cooperator comes into court and admits guilt to the same conspiracy on which you are trying to nail the lead defendant. That gets you 90 percent of the way home.... This kind of guilty plea signals to the world, including to all the other suspects, that the accomplice is ready to testify that the criminal scheme existed — it is not a figment of the prosecutor’s fevered imagination.... With respect to the president and 'collusion,' Mueller does not have a crime he is investigating. He is investigating in hopes of finding a crime, which is a day-and-night different thing. The lack of a crime means the 'accomplices' are not really accomplices....  [I]f you turn a prosecutor loose to investigate political campaign activities — you are apt to find unsavory conduct that is not criminal but that some people will lie about.... But the convictions [Mueller] has amassed, even if they are only for false statements or are otherwise unrelated to the Trump-Russia rationale for the investigation, prove that many people Trump brought into his campaign were corruptible and of low character...."

Writes Andrew McCarthy (National Review).

"What is the point of arguing with Peter Strzok for ten hours about whether he was biased against Donald Trump?"

"The texts speak for themselves, illustrating beyond cavil that he was biased. In fact, his absurd caviling to the contrary suggests he’d be an easy witness to demolish if a competent examiner had the documentary ammunition. Bias is a dumb thing for Strzok to get uppity about. In 20 years of investigating people, I can’t tell you how many of them I developed a healthy bias against. Bias is a natural human condition. It is something we tend to feel about people who do bad things. There is, and there could be, no requirement that an investigator be impartial about the people he reasonably suspects of crimes. Am I supposed to be impartial about a terrorist? An anti-American spy? A corrupt politician? Seriously? The question is not whether the investigator is biased, but whether bias leads the investigator to do illegal or abusive things. In the case of Strzok and his colleagues, the questions are whether they applied different standards of justice to the two candidates they were investigating; whether, with respect to Trump in particular, they pursued a counterintelligence probe in the stretch-run of an election, premised on the belief that he was a traitor, based on information that was flimsy and unverified. These questions cannot be answered without the documents that explain the origin of the investigation. If the committees are not willing or able to hold government officials in contempt for stonewalling, and President Trump is not willing to order that his subordinates cooperate, it would be better to shut the investigations down than to further abide a farce."

Writes Andrew McCarthy (National Review).

"If so, this is bigger than Watergate!"

Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI “SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN EMBEDDED INFORMANT.” Andrew McCarthy says, “There’s probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign.” If so, this is bigger than Watergate!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2018

ADDED: Here's the Andrew McCarthy article, "Did the FBI Have a Spy in the Trump Campaign?" — published 5 days ago.

"Is There an Obstruction Case against President Trump?"

If anyone can analyze the hell out of that question, it's Andrew McCarthy. Let me express my awe and thanks.

And let me point also to this column of his from a couple days ago, "What Did Comey Tell President Trump about the Steele Dossier?," which he links to in the new column with this mind-bending summary:

In a column on Thursday, I argued that the Obama administration saw the Russia probe as an opportunity to paralyze President Trump. As I noted in the column, the motivation for this could have been sinister or public-spirited — how you see it probably depends on what you think of Obama and Trump. President Trump’s political opponents would have seen the Russia probe as a chance to strangle his capacity to govern and pursue his agenda; some investigators who suspected that the disturbing allegations in the Steele dossier were true, even if they had not and probably could not be proved, may have harbored good-faith concern that Trump could be blackmailed by Russia.

Regardless of the motivation, the scheme to sustain the Russia investigation even after Obama left office and Trump was in a position to end it had three parts: (1) important information about the investigation needed to be withheld from the new president; (2) Trump had to be led to believe he was not under investigation (even though he was central to the investigation) so that he would not feel threatened by the investigation; and (3) Trump had to be admonished about respecting the independence of law-enforcement, to instill the fear that if he invoked his constitutional authority to shut down the investigation, he would be accused of obstruction.

This audacious strategy worked for four months, but it was done in by its core contradiction: It called for informing the president that he was not a suspect when he clearly was....

Keep reading.