Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern NC Now

According to the polls, the American people from the beginning knew that Trump could not get a fair trial in Manhattan, given the heavily Democrat jury pool and the Soros-tainted DA. Throw is a judge who is a Joe Biden political contributor who has a daughter who is a political consultant for Biden's running mate Kamala Harris, and all the incredients were there for the kangaroo court that developed.

In the decades where I practiced law as a criminal defense attorney, I encountered a few judges who were ex-prosecutors and were still mentally prosecutors. Defense attorneys considered we faced two prosecutors, one behind the prosecution table and the other on the bench holding a gavel. Those judges were fortunately rare but they did exist. But Judge Juan Merchan went way beyond that. Most such judges did their rulings for the prosecution within grey areas where they did not think they would get overturned on appeal. Judges with integrity were always concerned about being reversed on appeal, even if they took every opportunity they thought they could get away with to side with the prosecution. With Merchan, on the other hand, it was one blatantly reversible error after another. He did not seem to care if the case got tossed on appeal, as he was hell bent on getting a conviction on these bogus charges in the short term whatever that took.

There is an old saying that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich if the DA asked it to, but in this case, the trial jury was one that would convict a ham sandwich, if its name was Donald Trump. That was clear to me from the time the jury was picked. If you look at their "sources of news" only one mentioned the center-right New York Post, the third largest circulation newspaper in the United States and with most of that circulation local to New York City, but almost all mentioned the ultra-liberal New York Times. One even said he listened to Michael Cohen's podcasts but he remained on the jury. A defense attorney has a limited number of preemptory challenges to jurors which allow removing a juror for any reason, and sometimes with an adverse jury pool, as this one was, decline to exercise challenges for fear of running out of them and being stuck with jurors that are even worse.

One thing stuck out immediately about the jury from the beginning, the fact that there were two lawyers on it. Most attorneys on either side of a case take lawyers off of juries because they tend to have an inordinant influence on their fellow jurors. I have never seen a case, civil or criminal, when I was actively practicing law where one lawyer was allowed to stay on a jury, much less two. The only exception would be if you know enough about the attorney that his attitudes on matters connected with the case would be favorable to your side. The fact that the DA, who had first crack at the jury, let them stay on the jury was a sign that they knew something about them, perhaps political. I was surprised that Trump's team did not challenge both of them.

This is a sad day for the rule of law and for democracy. Clearly, the rule of law does not exist in Manhatten any more than it does in North Korea. Democracy is being seriously challenged in the United States.

Commented: Thursday, May 30th, 2024 @ 8:29 pm By: Steven P. Rader

There are two parts to presidential immunity. The first is that a president cannot be prosecuted while in office. That is very well established and, for now, protects Biden from his corruption history even though much of that happened before he was president. Biden, however, may be open for prosecution of matters prior to his presidency after he leaves office.

The second, which is less well established and is now before the Supreme Court is permanent presidential immunity for actions taken while president. Most legal scholars beleive that such immunity exists at least to some degree but the issue is whether it covers all actions or just particular types of actions, and that is what the SCOTUS must now decide.

Commented: Wednesday, May 29th, 2024 @ 8:50 am By: Steven P. Rader

Agreed, Alan. Joe Biden's Afghanistan fiasco set the stage for lots of bad actors to start aggressions. The attack on Israel is one, and Putin's attack on Ukraine is another. If Trump were still in office, none of that would have happened.

Commented: Tuesday, May 28th, 2024 @ 1:13 pm By: Steven P. Rader

There are other creative state boundary changes that could be constructive. For example, Arllington was originally supposed to be part of the District of Columbia. It completes what would be a square, but Virginia took it back. If Virginia reversed course and gave it back to the District of Columbia, then that would make Virginia as a state much more competitive for Republicans. Arlington has more in common with DC than the rest of Virginia anyway.

Commented: Saturday, May 25th, 2024 @ 9:35 pm By: Steven P. Rader

If government punishes people for the content of their political speech, then free speech does not exist where that is done. Our courts in the US have consistently ruled that political speech is the most protected of all speech. Bob, you have a totalitarian mindset and that is very obvious.

Commented: Thursday, May 23rd, 2024 @ 9:57 am By: Steven P. Rader

I have seen some of Dershowitz' writings and heard him on the radio today. He described this Manhattan court as well as the International Criminal Court as "out of control" and a threat to democracy and the rule of law. Indeed, he called Merchan's court the most "Sovietized" court he has ever seen. I guess that is perfect for this Stalin Show Trial that is being orchestrated. Dershowitz also described how Merchan himself was personally out of control.

Dershowitz said that America already had six bananas on his banana republic scale, with ten being full banana republic, and could still add anohter banana or two depending on further developments in this trial. He also got into how the Biden DOJ raid on Mar-a-Lago was badly mishandled.

Commented: Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024 @ 1:08 pm By: Steven P. Rader

There have been academic studies showing the partisan bias of the alphabet networks going back at least fifty years. As long as that is who is relied upon for moderators, there will be bias in the debates. Trump is just the most recent GOP nominee to run into this problem.

Commented: Sunday, May 19th, 2024 @ 4:45 pm By: Steven P. Rader

That Turley column says it all. I share the concern about getting a fair ruling out of Judge Merchan given his background. When I had a case in eastern North Carolina where the prosecution's case was as weak as this one, I would often use a strategy of offering no evidence in the case. That did two things. One, it gave the defense instead of the prosecution, the last argument to the jury which is very beneficial. The second is that the pattern jury instructions that the judge must read to the jury in such cases set out that a defendant does not have to offer evidence but can rely on the weakness of the state's case. Jurors can often take those instructions as a sign that the judge himself thinks that particular case is weak. While I would use such a strategy with a Beaufort County jury or a Hyde County jury or a Washington County jury, it might not come accross as well with a jury in Trump-hating Manhattan. Failure to get a change of venue to a more neutral jurisdiction (like more mainstram Statten Island) or a special venire (jurors brought in from a more neutral venue) has also signalled to me that the deck was stacked against Trump in this courtroom.

I would also note that I have seen judges recuse themselves on their own motion, without being asked, for conflicts much less than the conflicts of interest that the judge in the Trump case has. That speaks volumes about what to expect from this judge.

Commented: Wednesday, May 15th, 2024 @ 7:36 pm By: Steven P. Rader

We should not forget that DEI has raised its ugly head at Beaufort County Community College, where its number two administration was sent off to a workshop on it, and they have reassigned a staff position as a full time DEI cooridnator. DEI is all about dividing society insread of uniting it, and it is totally against Dr. Martin Luther King's admonisition that people "should be judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin."

Commented: Tuesday, May 14th, 2024 @ 4:35 pm By: Steven P. Rader

No, my position is that while perjury happens all too often in courtrooms, and indeed in Congressional hearings, it is very rarely charged. People know that, so the possibility of being charged with perjury is not a very effective deterrant to lying in the courtroom, or before Congress. Since a prosecutor is likely to be involved in any prosecution of perjury that does happen, lying by taking a position favorable to the prosecutor is extremely low risk to a witness.

One prominent figure who has clearly committee perjury before Congress is Fauci, but the odds of him being prosecutred for that are almost non-existant.

Commented: Monday, May 13th, 2024 @ 7:52 pm By: Steven P. Rader

In decades of practicing law, I have never seen anyone actually charged with perjury although there were a number of cases I witnessed where almost certainly there were lies told under oath. Even when officials lie to Congress, it never seems to be prosecuted. People are not afraid of the penalty for perjury because it is allmost never imposed.

In Bragg's case his star witness Michael Cohen has admitted to perjury in the past, so not one should assume he would tell the truth this time.

Prior inconsistent statements are a standard way that opposing counsel impeaches a witness, as it destroys their credibility when they are shown to have told different stories about the same event. If there were an objective jury, Stormy Daniels credibility would be shot full of holes.

Commented: Monday, May 13th, 2024 @ 2:25 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Having handled DSS child protective services cases over several decades of practicing law, I have observed quite a few cases in local counties where DSS got involved that it probably should not have. I have also observed the reluctance of many judges to rule against DSS in these cases. The late Judge Hallett Ward explained it to me after he ruled for DSS on a very weak case, that if he ruled against DSS on one of those cases and something happened to the child, then he as judge would be blamed in the media. While I was waiting for one of my DSS cases, I also heard a DSS attorney cut off another defense attorney who was trying to negotiate one of these case, snaping "Just agree to what we want, you know that is what the judge will do anyway."

Under the current procedures on DSS child custody cases, the deck is stacked against the parents. That is why I would like to see parents in these cases get a right to trial by jury. That would make the whole process a lot fairer.

Commented: Thursday, May 9th, 2024 @ 1:47 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Poor people got their right to a court appointed taxpayer paid lawyer in Gideon vs. Wainright decades ago, so Bob's argument has been bogus for a long time. It is part of the "rights" read to criminal defendants when they are arrested. Indeed, with the Soros DA's out there, it appears that poor defendants are better off than rich ones in the way those prosecutors handle cases. Alvin Bragg is s Soros DA and so is Fani Willis.

Commented: Monday, May 6th, 2024 @ 3:07 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The backgrounds of some of the judges who have failed to recuse themselves from some of these cases really should raise peoples eyebrows. One of the ethics standards in law is to "avoid even the appearance of impropriety". There has been a lot of well targeted comment about the judges in the New York cases, but the judge in the Georgia case was a political contributor to Fani Willis' political campaign, as was the judges wife. While that might be a borderline conflict of interest on his hearing the overall case, I was appalled that he heard the motion to remove her from the case, where it was a much more blatant conflict of interes. Of course, he ruled in her favor on that one. Willis is currently facing a primary challenge, and it weems to me a judge from outside the district should have been called in to hear that motion, not have it go it front of one of her campaign contributors wearing a black robe.

Commented: Wednesday, May 1st, 2024 @ 9:04 am By: Steven P. Rader

The danger is that if the Democrats ever get their people in control of our Supreme Court, they are likely to "discover" some major limititations on free speech written in invisible ink or something in the First Amendment, that nobody, including its drafters ever knew was there. Our liberties are only safe as long as we have a common sense majority on the Supreme Court. That is one of the many reasons we desperately need to get Biden GONE.

Commented: Sunday, April 21st, 2024 @ 11:47 am By: Steven P. Rader

This is absolutely outrageous. I hope the boy's parents, having gotten nowhere with a woke imbecile of an assistant principal, will follow this on up to the principal, the school superintendant, the school board, and if that does not work, then to the courts. It is likely a conservative legal group would be willing to take up the case. If the school boards turns them down, then they need to recruit some opponents to run against those school board members.

Commented: Wednesday, April 17th, 2024 @ 5:30 pm By: Steven P. Rader

One of the problems in North Carolina is the pitiful state of our election records. The federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires boards of elections to place the last four digits of the social security number or drivers license on the voting record. One of the reasons for this is so that boards of one county can check other counties against duplicate registrations. In North Carolina, over 224,000 voting records lack this data that is required by federal law. As a result, there are thousands of likely duplicate registrations on the books, and state election officials are doing nothing to clean up that problem.

Commented: Sunday, April 14th, 2024 @ 6:50 pm By: Steven P. Rader