President-elect Donald Trump's lawyers will file a multifaceted appeal following the sentence of unconditional discharge by Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan for Trump's felony conviction of falsifying business records, senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano told Newsmax on Monday.
Appearing on "Wake Up America," Napolitano said that Trump's lawyers will challenge many aspects of the case, including "the constitutionality of the statute [and] the application of the statute to him because it's a privately-owned, family-owned corporation in which the government should have no concern whatsoever about how books are kept."
Napolitano said that, in addition, Trump's lawyers will challenge "the fairness of the process … [and] the decisions that the judge made in the courtroom."
He explained that "all of these will now be the subject of an appeal in the appellate court" and that if Trump wins there, "they could throw the whole thing out," or — less likely — they could decide that there will be another trial.
Napolitano said that if there are a series of appeals of the case until the U.S. Supreme Court hears it, the final resolution will have to wait a long time, as there are other older appeals that are ahead of this one that will take years to be heard, estimating that it would not be finished until Trump concludes his upcoming term as president.
He added that "in terms of the sentence itself, it was really the only thing the judge could do. He can't interfere with the presidency. He decided not to throw the case out."
Napolitano said, "I thought [Judge Merchan] was rather articulate and respectful of the president and the presidency in the manner in which he imposed the unconditional discharge."
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Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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