Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andy McCarthy said Friday that he would have liked to see President-elect Donald Trump testify in his New York trial following his sentencing hearing.
Trump appeared virtually at the hearing, during which Merchan sentenced him to an unconditional discharge, imposing no fine, jail or probation time. McCarthy, on “America’s Newsroom,” noted that Trump effectively defended his actions during the hearing and expressed curiosity about how Trump might have performed as a witness in a courtroom setting.
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“I always wondered how Trump would have done as a witness. You know, we see him as a larger than life political figure, which is very different from communicating in a setting where there’s a judge, so there’s a referee,” McCarthy said. “You can’t get away with doing soliloquies, right? You have to actually answer the questions. But I thought that he’s his own best advocate in this setting. And I always thought that in a jury trial, he would have been effective, looking at the jurors in the eye the way he looks the voters in the eye and making his point.”
“Cause I think as [Fox News legal editor] Kerri [Kupec Urbahn] just pointed out, a lot of the things that he said today are absolutely true,” he continued. “When he talks about that that was an expense where he paid a lawyer. The testimony was the guy had a dropdown menu and it was a legal expense ’cause he was paying a lawyer. There wasn’t any idea of concealment attached to it.”
A Manhattan jury convicted Trump in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records pertaining to a $130,000 non-disclosure payment to former porn actress Stormy Daniels, who alleged that the two had an affair in 2006.
Trump repeatedly characterized the payment as a “legal expense” during the hearing, saying he did not falsify business records. The president-elect professed his innocence, asserting he “was treated very, very unfairly.”
After the sentencing, Trump posted on Truth Social that he will appeal the case.
“The real Jury, the American People, have spoken, by Re-Electing me with an overwhelming MANDATE in one of the most consequential Elections in History. As the American People have seen, this ‘case’ had no crime, no damages, no proof, no facts, no Law, only a highly conflicted Judge, a star witness who is a disbarred, disgraced, serial perjurer, and criminal Election Interference,” he wrote. “Today’s event was a despicable charade, and now that it is over, we will appeal this Hoax, which has no merit, and restore the trust of Americans in our once great System of Justice. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
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