The Trump Docket: 'Tyrant' judge may note ex-president calling him 'devil' before sentencing (2025)

This week, the nation’s 45th president Donald Trump was found guilty by a jury of his peers of 34 felonies and when he sidled up to a microphone at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Friday to speak to press and his supporters, amid his claims that defense witnesses “were literally crucified,” and that the presiding judge “who looks like an angel but is really a devil” was a “tyrant,” he predictably vowed: “We’re going to be appealing this scam.”

Those remarks come as the clock to appeal has begun ticking down already.

Under New York law, Trump has 30 days to file a notice of appeal and then six months to formally enter that appeal with the court, but even if he started in earnest this weekend, the likelihood that any result would come before the November election is next to nil. And there also exists the distinct possibility that Trump could appeal and see whatever sentence is handed down to him in two months by Justice Juan Merchan stayed as he fights his conviction. Trump’s onetime adviser Steve Bannon, for example, has been free on appeal for more than a year following his convictions in Washington, D.C., for contempt of Congress, and it was only this week that a district judge set a hearing for June 6 to determine if Bannon will finally be remanded to prison.

For now, however, the former president and newly-convicted felon has forecast what the argument of his appeal will almost certainly be.

“We wanted a change of venue where we could have a fair trial, we wanted a judge change. We didn’t get it. We wanted a judge who wasn’t conflicted and obviously he didn’t do that,” Trump said, defending his hush-money payments as a “legal expense paid by a lawyer.”

“They wouldn’t allow us to have witnesses, to talk, to do anything. The judge was a tyrant,” he said on Friday, just 41 days until he is sentenced.

Law&Crime takes a look at developments in the New Yorkcase and other key developments inFlorida,Georgia, andWashington, D.C.

NEW YORK

CRIMINAL

After jurors received instructions and were sent away to deliberate Donald Trump’s fate in the hush-money and election interference case, it took them just a few days to reach a guilty verdict across all 34 counts, making Trump the first former U.S. president to find himself in this position.

He will be sentenced July 11.

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Jurors heard from more than 20 witnesses, reviewed hundreds of pieces of evidence and heard from prosecutors about how Trump’s alleged scheme to influence the election in 2016 began when Michael Cohen took out a loan to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels so she would not talk to the press about Trump’s affair with her just a month before that year’s presidential ballots would be cast.

At closing arguments, defense attorney Todd Blanche told the jury Cohen, the state’s star witness, could not be trusted.

“He’s literally like the MVP of liars,” Blanche said, adding that they “cannot send somebody to prison … based on the words of Michael Cohen.”

This caused Justice Juan Merchan to upbraid Blanche and instruct jurors later to ignore the comment; Blanche had been told already in an order that he was precluded from making claims or arguments about potential punishment or other consequences.

In their close, prosecutors argued that jurors did not need to rely on Cohen to connect the dots of Trump’s guilt, but, they said, “as the ultimate insider, he can help you do just that.”

Apparently, the jurors agreed and the defense’s approach with Michael Cohen did not work.

CIVIL

E. Jean Carroll‘s attorney did not rule out another lawsuit against Trump — already found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming the writer — after he posted a rambling screed on social media denying he had ever met her while wishing her and other “human scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country” a “Happy Memorial Day.”

OF NOTE: Unrelated to either of his cases in Manhattan, but still worth a mention: an appeals court in New York dealt Trump a win, of sorts, when it upheld a lower court’s denial of his niece Mary Trump’s efforts to dismiss his breach of contract lawsuit against her over her tell-all book.

FLORIDA

CRIMINAL

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted Michael Mukasey, the U.S. attorney general under George W. Bush, his request to join an existing amici brief from legal minds Edwin Meese, the former U.S. attorney general under Reagan, as well as Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi and Boston University School of Law professor Gary Lawson. All claim special counsel Jack Smith should never have been appointed to prosecute the Espionage Act case.

Smith has responded curtly to these claims before, saying neither Trump’s challenge nor the theories in the briefs were “novel or meritorious; to the contrary, every court that has considered them has rejected them — including authoritative decisions by the Supreme Court.”

Cannon this week sharply scolded Smith after he asked for a gag on Trump. Trump lashed out online and Trump’s lawyers then demanded Cannon sanction Smith for that request where the counsel argued Trump’s public commentary and subsequent lies about the raid at Mar-a-Lago could put law enforcement in “foreseeable danger.” She denied both motions but wagged her finger at Smith.

Meanwhile, recently unsealed grand jury testimony revealed a particularly testy exchange between prosecutors and defense lawyers over attorney-client privilege.

If you missed it: attorneys for Trump’s co-defendant and valet Waltine “Walt” Nauta filed a motion this week asking to modify his motion to dismiss his indictment as he argued the government cannot criminalize “literally-true” statements — even if those statements misled the FBI.

Looking ahead, legal experts offered game theory on how Trump could and likely would appeal any conviction and stressed that no matter what happens, Trump is almost certainly not going to jail anytime soon.

GEORGIA

CRIMINAL

Trump’s co-defendant in the RICO case, Rudy Giuliani, is coming under even more scrutiny from bankruptcy lawyers as they are now asking questions about the origins of his nascent coffee-selling venture. Lawyers grew particularly irked this week as well, accusing the former president’s co-defendant of “dishonesty” and “gross mismanagement” of his Chapter 11 proceedings.

OF NOTE: A felony guilty plea from Jenna Ellis, Trump’s ‘elite strike force’ alum in the fake electors plot, has led to her law license being suspended.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

SUPREME COURT

A month has passed since arguments were heard on Trump’s quest for immunity. About five weeks have come and gone without an answer from the high court on Fischer v. United States, a Jan. 6 case that has potential to upend hundreds of convictions and may even affect the case against the president over the Capitol attack.

OF NOTE: Justice Samuel Alito, appointed to the bench by former President George W. Bush, cited his wife’s “right” to make “her own decisions” while he refused to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases after the upside-down flag scandal at his home. Watchdogs called for an investigation. Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday shut down a request from Senate Democrats to meet and discuss the controversy.

CRIMINAL

Nothing to report in the election subversion case. All eyes are on the Supreme Court.

OF NOTE: In an appellate ruling with major implications that directly refute Trump’s claims that a fair trial in the nation’s capital is an impossibility: judges unanimously rejected claims of juror bias in the case of one particularly violent Jan. 6 defendant, former U.S. Marine and NYPD officer Thomas Webster.Meanwhile, a former police officer who defended the Capitol, Michael Fanone, reported that his 78-year-old mother’s house was swatted this week.

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