Judge Juan Merchan sparked alarm Friday when he sent a letter to lawyers in Donald Trump’s criminal case in New York about a social media post that, if genuine, would have raised concerns about juror misconduct. But given that the post appears to be a joke, there’s no reason to think it will change Trump’s guilty verdict, although the record may need to be cleared up by the time he is sentenced next month.
Merchan’s letter stated that he had just become aware of a Facebook comment on an unrelated post from the state court system prior to Trump’s ruling, in which the commenter claimed to be the cousin of a Trump juror and that the alleged juror said “Trump is convicted.”
If that were true, it would raise the prospect of the defense moving to overrule the verdict prior to sentencing. But the problem, such as it was, was apparently quickly resolved by the poster, who claimed that he was in fact joking.
So Trump’s lawyers are free to try to make an issue of this, but the known facts and applicable law won’t get them very far. Motions to set aside the verdict for juror misconduct must demonstrate the following:
As it stands, there is no reason to believe anything like that happened here. Nevertheless, that should be officially cleared up by the time Trump is convicted on July 11. He will appeal multiple legal issues as he challenges his historic conviction, but given what we know now, we shouldn’t expect this to be one of them – at least not successfully.
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This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
