TL;DR, the AG asked for a bench trial, Trump’s defense team didn’t respond, and so Trump gets a bench trial. It’s possible that a jury trial would have been disallowed in this particular case under New York law, but the defense didn’t even bother to ask.
Whelp, that’s on your people, Donald. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
This is just so he can claim, later down the line, that it wasn’t fair because it was just one judge and not a jury blah blah
Like a jury would prevent him from claiming bias… He already has ranted against juries and grand juries.
“The Best People.”
How deeply satisfying
It seems pretty obvious to me that Trump is deliberately trying to generate controversies like this to play into his whole “witch hunt” narrative.
The fact that his not having a jury is his own fault won’t matter to his voters, because trump will just frame it as further evidence of his persecution. They’re not going to care about the details, so when it inevitably goes against him, he can just invalidate the results to his base
I’m kinda impressed that Trump’s spokesperson managed to say “statute” instead of “statue.”
