Judge Judy recently weighed in on the controversial hush money trial against former President Donald Trump. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was found guilty on all 34 felony charges related to the falsification of business documents in hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The TV judge, whose real name is Judy Sheindlin, claims that Trump should never have been tried in the case, suggesting that it was difficult to legitimately ascertain what crime the former president committed in the first place.
“You gotta twist yourself into a pretzel to figure out what the crime was. [Bragg] doesn’t like him — New York City didn’t like him for a while,” Sheindlin said during a recent appearance on “Who’s Talking to Christ Wallace?” as reported by OK!.
The judge slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case against Trump, suggesting it was a misallocation of resources in crime-ridden New York City, where many residents don’t feel safe traversing through the Big Apple.
“I would be happier, as someone who owns property in Manhattan, if the district attorney of New York County would take care of criminals who were making it impossible for citizens to walk in the streets and use the subway, to use his efforts to keep those people off the street, than to spend $5 million or $10 million of taxpayers’ money trying Donald Trump on this nonsense,” she added.
Sheindlin further blasted Bragg for misusing taxpayer funds to prosecute Trump for his own political ambitions. “I, as a taxpayer in this country, resent using the system for your own personal self-aggrandizement,” she said about the Manhattan DA.
CNN host Chris Wallace then asked the television personality her opinion of Trump, to which she complimented his business acumen. “I think he was a good businessman, a real estate guy. And he was certainly terrific on The Apprentice,” she responded to Wallace.
Moreover, Wallace inquired about her opinion toward Trump serving as president, where she expressed disapproval. “I don’t think that Donald ever should have been president and I don’t think that even Donald thought he was going to be president.”
Sheindlin threw her support behind the failed Republican challenger Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the GOP primary earlier this year. “I have carefully stayed away from politics for 50 years, except to vote. But times have changed in our country, and I believe the moment has come for me to step out from behind the curtain. I want to speak honestly and from the heart — regardless of the consequences,” Sheindlin said about Haley.
In the aftermath of the conviction in the hush money trial, Donald Trump has maintained his innocence while slamming the trial as rigged. In post-court comments, he maintained that he will not back down, explaining that he is fighting for the country and the constitution.
“This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt. It’s a rigged trial, a disgrace. They wouldn’t give us a venue change. We were at 5% or 6% in this district, in this area, this was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be November 5, by the people,” Trump told the press after his conviction.
Featured image credit: David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Judge_Judy_Sheindlin_VF_2012_Shankbone.JPG
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