Fred Crocker wrote:
> It must be at least $29 billion by now.

https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/31/intentional-misfeasance-makes-show-trial-conviction-ripe-for-reversal-legal-experts-say/

Constitutional law expert Hans von Spakovsky says the conviction isn’t
likely to stick, for an array of reasons. Chief among them: Merchan’s
convoluted jury instructions, in which the Biden campaign-donor judge
framed the jury’s deliberations in a way that, according to legal expert
Jonathan Turley, “seemed less like a jury deliberation than a canned
hunt.” Merchan told the jurors they didn’t have to agree on the three
possible “unlawful means” prosecutors vaguely alleged Trump had employed
to “influence” the 2016 election.

“The jurors were told that they could split on what occurred, with four
jurors accepting each of the three possible crimes in a 4-4-4 split. The
court would still consider that a unanimous verdict so long as they
agree that it was in furtherance of some crime,” Turley wrote in the
Hill before the verdict was handed down.

Von Spakovsky said Merchan’s instructions point to reversible error —
“an error in trial proceedings that affects a party’s rights so
significantly that it is grounds for reversal if the affected party
properly objected at trial,” according to the Legal Information Institute.

“This is such a mistake. … If I were the court of appeals, the moment
this case came in, I would overturn the conviction,” the former Federal
Election Commission member and Heritage Foundation fellow told me before
the verdict this week on the Simon Conway Show. “That is one of the
craziest things I have ever heard and it is a complete violation of
President Trump’s substantive due process rights.”

Von Spakovsky said the standard in like cases is that jurors come to a
unanimous agreement on each of the charges they are deliberating. He
said Merchan added an absurd twist to the proceedings after handicapping
Trump’s defense throughout the trial.

Defense attorney Randy Zelin told CNN that Merchan’s jury instructions
contained a “key flaw.”

“Whether you are driving in a Ford or a Ferrari, if someone gives you
bad directions, you’re going to end up lost. And those jury instructions
were just a complete, just take the Constitution, throw it out a window,
burn it, shoot it and hang it,” the attorney said on “CNN Special Report.”