Alvin Bragg, Judge Juan Merchan violated Trump's constitutional and legal rights: House Judiciary report

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as well as New York Judge Juan Merchan violated Donald Trump's Constitutional and legal rights, a report from the House Judiciary Committee has found. The GOP-led committee wrote that the two legal officials "worked together to deprive President Donald J. Trump of his constitutional and legal rights."

The report from the GOP-led House Committee released on Tuesday morning alleged that Bragg and Merchan had made a number of missteps and violated Trump’s rights in order to prosecute and convict Trump in the falsified documents trial in NYC.

An executive summary from the report read that Bragg's prosecution of Trump had "severe legal and procedural defects."

"These infirmities include, but are not limited to: Bragg's unconstitutional and unprecedented Russian-nesting-doll theory of criminal liability, in which the jury never had to reach unanimity beyond a reasonable doubt as to each element of the criminal offenses; Bragg's usurpation of the federal government's exclusive authority to prosecute alleged violations of federal campaign finance laws and the Biden-Harris Administration's refusal to intercede to protect federal interests; and Judge Merchan's egregious legal rulings before and during the trial that all cut against President Trump's rights," the report alleged.

The House Judiciary stated that Judge Merchan's missteps included his "failure to recuse himself for manifest political bias against President Trump; The unconstitutional gag order he imposed on President Trump during the trial; Judge Merchan's admission of plainly inadmissible, irrelevant, and unfairly prejudicial testimony against President Trump; and Judge Merchan's refusal to permit former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith to testify as to the meaning and complexities of the Federal Election Campaign Act."

Merchan had made sure that Smith, who could have potentially exonerated Trump, was not permitted to testify as a witness. In an interview given to Mark Levin in 2018, Smith asserted that the payments made to Stormy Daniels to cover up the alleged affair with Donald Trump were not at all related to Trump's campaign or in any way a campaign contribution. His testimony could have changed the course of the trial.

The report labeled the prosecution of Trump “politically motivated” as well as a “partisan use of lawfare to achieve political ends.” It added that Trump "never had a real shot at a fair trial in Manhattan."