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« Last post by wizardofoz on Today at 02:32:14 PM »
New York City Judge Juan Merchan will likely sentence former President Donald Trump to up to three years in prison, but will suspend the sentence, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax Sunday.
Trump's lawyers should push to move the sentencing date up so they can start appealing the case, he added.
"I think the judge will sentence him to a prison term of two or three years but suspend the sentence as to send a message that he deserves to get a prison term," Dershowitz said on Newsmax's "Sunday Report."
Still, Merchan doesn't need 1 1/2 months to decide what the sentence will be because "everybody knows" he's already made up his mind, he added.
"I know there has to be a pre-sentence report, but there are ways of trying to move this," said Dershowitz. "The judge, I'm sure, made up his mind what he was going to sentence him to before the verdict came back, because he knew what the verdict was going to be based on the instructions. The jury had no choice but to convict."
The trial, meanwhile, "wasn't a trial" but a "predetermined, orchestrated result," Dershowitz said.
"As soon as this judge was selected, as soon as this prosecutor was allowed to change the mind of all previous prosecutors and then to select the place where the trial would occur in New York, in Manhattan, where close to 90% of the jury [choices] would hate Donald Trump. This was not a trial."