Thursday, July 11 was supposed to be the day Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan sentenced Donald Trump for his felony convictions of falsifying business records, which the former president vehemently denies doing. But in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling related to presidential immunity, the sentencing has been postponed to September 18, if it happens at all.
Trump's lawyers argue that the Supreme Court ruling merits not only delaying the sentencing, but tossing out his conviction, but J. Christian Adams, founder and president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, says anything is possible.
"They're [so] completely consumed by hatred of Donald Trump that it's virtually a religion," he tells AFN. "It's like the devil incarnate going to the White House to these people … and so I'm not sure they'd stop at anything to keep him out of the White House."
With that in mind, Adams says Judge Merchan could sentence Trump to prison.
"He can't imprison a sitting president, but right now, Donald Trump is not a sitting president," the former Justice Department attorney notes. "The rub is he imprisons him beforehand, and he could get away with it. That's going to be the inclination of this guy for the reasons I've said -- that they're completely consumed with hatred, and they think this is their chance to save the country from a Hitler. That's how crazy these people are."
In Wisconsin, one of the swing states that officially went for Joe Biden in 2020 after it approved the use of drop boxes because of COVID, a conservative columnist says the Democrat-controlled state Supreme Court has given a clear indication that they want a repeat of the last presidential election.
Republicans have maintained that drop boxes facilitated cheating that ultimately cost Trump the election.
In July 2022, the state Supreme Court, then under a conservative majority, held that absentee ballot drop boxes were not authorized under state statute and that their use was unlawful. Now, with liberals in control of the court, justices have voted 4-3 to reverse that ruling.
"Republicans in Wisconsin are going to have to work overtime to prevent vote fraud," responds Washington Times columnist Robert Knight. "All the operatives have to do is look and see who's died or who has left the district in which they're supposed to be voting, get ballots for them, fill them out … and go ahead and cast votes that are illegal."
To him, it is clear the Democrats want to cheat.
"Everywhere you look, Democrats have weakened election integrity," Knight observes. "They've lengthened the voting period so it's harder to keep an eye on things; they have same-day voter registration wherever they can get it enacted. What we need is to reestablish Election Day with excuses-only absentee voting and rules about counting the votes by election night. They do that in other countries. Why can't we do that here?"
All three conservative justices dissented Friday, accusing the majority of politically motivated "activism."
"Intense partisan politics saturate our nation, exacerbated by a lack of institutional trust," Justice Rebecca Bradley, who wrote for the minority, said. "The legitimacy of elections continues to be questioned, each side accusing the other of 'election interference' and 'threatening democracy' or even the very foundation of our constitutional republic. The majority's decision in this case will only fuel the fires of suspicion."
Wisconsin again figures to be a crucial swing state this fall.
