A Yale professor has gone viral for his assessment of the “hush money” case against former President Donald Trump. In response to the guilty verdict, law professor and constitutional scholar and lawyer Jed Rubenfeld launched a YouTube channel called Straight Down The Middle and it is proof that there are still adults in the room.
Professor Rubenfeld makes it clear that there are serious questions of constitutionality around the case. One of the most blaring is that Trump’s legal team was never told what crime he was being charged with. The prosecution said that the payments were a “falsification of business records,” which were then used to conceal a crime. The main problem is that the “crime” was never specified to Trump’s legal team, even when they asked the judge to force the prosecution to name it. This is a serious violation of the president’s 6th Amendment rights.
But wait, there’s more.
The next problem lies in the judge’s conflict of interest. The judge was a donor to the Biden/Harris campaign, which Professor Rubenfeld says is unusual and usually not allowed. The judge’s daughter represents the Biden/Harris campaign in her public relations firm so she stands to gain from the outcome of the trial. This too is possibly a serious conflict and yet it has been allowed to continue. As he says, if you’re going to charge a former president, you’d better bring the goods on him, not play this cagey game with compromised actors.
Professor Rubenfeld points out that Trump is not actually a convicted felon because a jury verdict is not what makes one a convicted felon. The judge has to enter that judgement of guilt and that has yet to happen. Will it? On Friday, the judge notified the parties to the case that a Facebook post may be an indication of a jury violation around a possible juror’s cousin. The post is dubious but here is another read: Is the judge trying to dismiss this case rather than face ethical reviews over it after dragging Trump through the ringer? At this point, it all feels very manipulative.
