Expert doubts 'bomb' dropped onto Trump's verdict will derail sentencing

Donald Trump's attorneys will almost certainly try to delay sentencing due to a comment about the case left on the court's Facebook page, but a legal expert cast doubt on their chances of halting the process.

New York Justice Juan Merchan brought the comment, in which a social media user claimed their cousin was a juror and thanked them for their hard work, to the attention of Trump's lawyers and prosecutors but did not ask either party to take any action, and MSNBC's Lisa Rubin told "Morning Joe" the post would not likely pause sentencing.

"If it were real, there are provisions where you can move to set aside the verdict under New York law," Rubin said. "The only remedy for that where conduct or juror misconduct is concerned is to have a new trial. What you have to show is that the juror misconduct or communications would have had a substantial impact or could have had a substantial impact on the outcome of the trial. But let's move backward from there to what we actually know about this situation. There's no question in my mind that Judge Merchan made this information publicly available because he knew that once he notified the parties, if he didn't control that public access, somebody else was going to."

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"Based on screenshots that were taken of this poster's comments – and I should note, they made this comment more than once – it seems dubious that this person is related to a juror, much less that the person is really having any information related to the jury at all," Rubin continued. "In fact, the person's bio says they are professional [sh*tposter], they take a lot of joy in trying to mix things up online, so to speak. That hasn't stopped the Trump campaign from shouting mistrial, as former President Trump did on one of his Truth Social posts. Do I expect they'll try to delay proceedings by demanding an investigation into who this person is and whether any of the jurors had conduct with this person? Absolutely. Do I expect that it will succeed? Absolutely not."

"That's why I said on Friday, when this information became available, if this person actually knows a juror, this is unbelievably bad," she added. "If this person is creating mischief, it is even worse. They will have succeeded in derailing some of the proceedings without knowing anything at all, without having any legitimate impact on the process, and just trying to throw a bomb, metaphorically, into the process that has to continue and play out."

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