Send Trump to Bedlam, Not Rikers

JUNE 7, 2024

BY MATTHEW STEVENSON

Unless on July 11 Judge Juan Merchan sends Donald Trump up the river for four years of hard labor (poetic justice for having purloined a presidential term), it’s not worth playing the MAGA mug’s game of sentencing the former president to community service (he’d just steal from the youth basketball cash box) or probation (good luck trying to find a paying job for an adjudicated sex offender).

Nor will anything good come from allowing Trump’s release on his own recognizance pending an appeal, as that convoluted process might well take two years, in which time Trump can strut his stuff and withhold repaying his debt to society for the 34 felonies—in the same way he has yet to pay E. Jean Carroll her owed amount of $91.6 million or the state of New York its due $450 million.

Trump may be a master criminal, but he’s also a master of spending other people’s campaign contributions to slow walk every court case in his life, so that in the meantime he can run for president and extract billions from his latest Wall Street swindle (Trump Media).

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Instead Judge Merchan should do the American community a real service and at the July 11 hearing remand Trump for 30 days to a New York state hospital for a full mental evaluation.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/07/send-trump-to-bedlam-not-rikers/