Ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s highly anticipated inauguration on January 20, Judge Juan Merchan sentenced him to an “unconditional discharge” last week in the New York hush money case related to the falsification of business documents. Subsequently, conservative users on social media have called for Merchan to be investigated as to how his “family profited” from the alleged lawfare against the incoming president.
As background, Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in the hush money case, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, last May. The sentencing was allowed to move forward after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against a challenge by Trump’s lawyers to have the sentencing dropped. However, the sentence handed to the president-elect by Merchan comes without a penalty. However, Trump’s supporters have urged incoming Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the circumstances.
The influential MAGA X user Chicago Ray shared a clip of Fox News coverage surrounding the news, writing, “Unconstitutional Discharge… Did all of you liberals bookmark my post when I told you that Trump won’t see a minute of jail time. Raise your hand ✋ if you want Pam Bondi to investigate how Judge Merchan’s family profited by this fake prosecution of Trump.”
Similarly, the popular conservative X account Johnny Midnight wrote, “Raise your hand ✋ if you want Pam Bondi to investigate how Judge Merchan’s family profited by this fake prosecution of Trump.” ANother person commented, “Do you all realize this sets the stage if a president can be charged criminally with criminal charges no one is protected, no past president, VP, congress, senate, Governor, mayor, government agents, they all can be charged with criminal crimes now, another brilliant chess move.”
Another comment implied that Merchan was politically biased, stating, “Merchan wants a trophy.. He has satisfied a long term democrat ambition..now he is marked as a man who wasn’t fit to adjudicate a parking ticket. He essentially marked NYC as a place where victims are on trial. The Tax loss in NYC is irreparably damaged.”
Another, fed up with the legal resistance to President-elect Trump over the past few years, read, “I’m ready to go after the law-fare tooth and nail. They could have let this go by dismissing the case, but they had to drive just one more nail. So ✋🏻 investigate and prosecute, follow it to the White House, the DNC, to Soros, wherever it leads.”
Trump reacted to the sentence outside the New York City courtroom, stating the outcome inflicted substantial damage on the integrity of the state’s judicial system, mirroring concerns of other legal scholars. “This has been a very terrible experience,” he said. “I think it’s been a tremendous setback for New York and the New York court system.”
“This is a case that Alvin Bragg did not want to bring. He thought it was, from what I read and from what I hear, inappropriately handled before he got there. And a gentleman from a law firm came in and acted as a district attorney,” Trump continued. “And that gentleman, from what I heard, was a criminal or almost criminal in what he did. It was very inappropriate. It was somebody involved with my political opponent.”
“It’s been a political witch hunt,” the president-elect added. “It was done to damage my reputation so that I’d lose the election. And obviously, that didn’t work. And the people of our country got to see this firsthand because they watched the case in your courtroom. They got to see this firsthand. And then they voted, and I won.”
Watch legal expert Alan Dershowitz explain how the Merchan’s move to sentence Trump is “Stalinism”:
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