Just because a judge says it doesn't make it law; just because a jury says it doesn't make it truth; just because a cop or prosecutor says it doesn't make it fact. --Robert Barnes
14:30. Will there be any jail time?
14:35. I think that the even if this lunatic corrupt judge whose family is enriching themselves off of this case, something else we've never seen before at this scale in America, the normal sentence is probation under these circumstances, for this kind of first time offense, this category, this defendant, this situation, etc. But if this is the same New York that's busy releasing murderers and rapists and child abusers and everything else on a routine and regular basis, if they decide to use this case to try to set a precedent of an extraordinary incarceration at Rikers Island of Donald Trump, I believe that even the Appellate Court of New York, and if necessary the Supreme Court of the United States, would step in and stay the case pending appeal, or what sometimes is called within the state system bail pending. So I don't think Trump will ever serve anytime at Rikers or anywhere else on this case. I think ultimately it will be vacated. There is only any risk because you've got a trial court judge that's made clear his bias and prejudice against President Trump.
26:30. They can make up a charge. They can drum up a charge, and you can be the former president future president billionaire, and we can still railroad you. And that's the point. They are showing their raw power but what you also realize is when they start asserting their raw power, when they get to roll out the tank and threaten the guy standing in front of it, then the system knows that it's losing credibility. It's losing the capacity to control the populace that they are having to resort to these extreme remedies for someone who's just mostly a nuisance to them, not someone who has actually tried to take them out or destroy them but someone who just says "You know, well I'm not going to do everything you tell me to do just because you tell me to do it," and they are so outraged, so enraged by that that they demand that he be made an example of to terrify everyone else. The same reason why they are obsessing over Julian Assange after they've tortured him for a decade anyway by the number of years that he's been stuck in isolation: because they want to set . . . they don't want anyone else to think "Hey, I would like to be Julian Assange." Same with Edward Snowden. Why you can maintain this after everything that Snowden said proved true about the corruption of the system, such that he couldn't blow the whistle internally without ending up Hillary Clinton someplace. And they are really shoving it in our face by the people who are involved in it are often criminals themselves. They're often doing to Trump, accusing Trump, punishing Trump for their crimes that they've projected onto Trump. It's like what Solzhenitsyn said, "You know they're lying. We know they're lying. They know we know they're lying, and that's the point," and there's a part of that that's definitely true. But I think their problem is at the fifth pillar of power is the perception of power and they are unmasking themselves so badly like something out of V for Vendetta that they are risking a massive political and public backlash that could destroy their institutional credibility and power forever.
28:39. Do you think at this point in the short run we are going to start seeing states trying to disqualify him from appearing on the ballot?
28:46. No. Because of the Supreme Court's decision earlier this year. The Supreme Court's decision was so broad that it will be pretty much impossible to do so; merely being convicted has no impact on the ballot. The presidential qualifications for the ballot are controlled by the US Constitution; states can't add to that. Supreme Court said they don't get to interpret the 14th Amendment to keep Trump off the ballot. To give people an example, Eugene V Debs, while convicted for sedition no less, ran for president in 1920 from his prison cell. So even if they locked up Trump, Trump can be elected president from his jail cell, like Eugene V Debs could have. So they won't have any success on being able to strike him from the ballot. They're hoping just to damage him enough in the court of public opinion that he doesn't win the most votes.
29:45. After this New York thing he is out of the headlines, is he facing anything else, is anything else pending against him?
29:50. Probably not because the Supreme Court's . . . the quickest case could be the DC case, but the Supreme Court is likely to rule the DC Court was wrong about how it interpreted presidential immunity under Article 2 in the impeachment clause, and either require dismissal of that case or require the case the court to go through and analyze what's okay in the indictment, what's not, what could be evidence, what's not. And that makes it highly unlikely that that case reaches trial before election day. The Florida case is going nowhere at all, the documents case; same with the Georgia case. So it is highly unlikely Trump faces anymore trials between now and election day.
30:31. So are you telling me there is a possibility that yes obviously he's suffered financial and reputational damage that I don't want to overlook but he could nevertheless somehow come through this?
30:47. Yeah, indeed he may be the ultimate Teflon Don, like the old joke years ago, "I could shoot somebody in the middle of the street and still be fine." Here they had to make up crimes to try to get him, exposing the criminal justice and Civil Justice systems in the process, especially in New York but across the country. And I think at the end of the day, Trump will never serve any time in jail. All of these cases will end up being dismissed or vacated, and he will end up back in the White House in January 2025 where the people around him and hopefully he himself motivated to realize we need real institutional reform. As he said at libertarian party convention, "I wasn't always a libertarian, but then they indicted me 91 times." So let's hope that unleashes the libertarian side of President Trump because once he gets back into the White House where I think he'll be in about 6 months' time.
Appeal grounds for #TrumpVerdict:
— Robert Barnes (@barnes_law) May 31, 2024
1/ #1stA violations in selective prosecution;
2/ #5thA due process violations in conflicted prosecutor, compromised judge & prejudicial jury;
3/ #5thA due process violations in conviction on an unidentified crime, without unanimity or beyond…
