Attorney Alan Dershowitz said Wednesday that the United States could become a “banana republic” if New York Judge Juan Marchan sentences former President Donald Trump before the 2024 election.
Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records and is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 18. Dershowitz said Merchan risks using his “invalidated ruling” to influence the election and drew parallels to what is happening in Venezuela, where dictator Nicolas Maduro is trying to jail political opponents following disputed election results. (RELATED: CNN expert says Supreme Court immunity decision could impact evidence used in Alvin Bragg case)
“Judge Marchan should postpone the ruling until after the election, so that the ruling will be made and the court will overturn the conviction, but it won't affect the election,” Dershowitz said on “The Dershow” podcast. “But if the ruling is made before the election and it affects the election and then the conviction is overturned, we'll have a banana republic situation, which is what's happening in Venezuela right now.”
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Dershowitz began the show by calling the jury verdict a “null and void” and claiming “there is nothing in this case. There is zero.”
“I know, I've been handling these cases since the 1960s,” Dershowitz said. “There's no case here. There's no case here. So Judge Marchan shouldn't sentence him before the election. He should wait until after the election. There's a good chance the conviction will be overturned. If it's not overturned in New York state court, there's a good chance it will be overturned in the Supreme Court. But the last thing we want is for it to be overturned because it influences the election.”
Some legal experts have suggested Marchan could delay his sentencing date. Trump has tried to move the case to federal court, but Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected that on Tuesday.
“Imagine if the election was close and Trump lost. Again, I'm not encouraging you to vote for Trump, I don't know who I would vote for, but let's just assume the election was close and Trump lost. Polls show that one of the reasons Trump lost is because he was convicted and sentenced by Judge Marchan. And he lost. And then six months later, the conviction was overturned and the court ruled there was no basis for him to be convicted at all,” Dershowitz said. “So what happens to America? How many bananas do we have?”
“You know, we've gone up to six bananas, and I think with this ruling we'll go up to one banana or maybe more, but the idea that an election can be influenced by an invalid criminal prosecution, an invalid jury verdict, an invalid conviction, an invalid sentence, is a frightening idea. For that reason alone, that's enough,” he said.
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