Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) was left speechless after CNN's Laura Coates recounted the jury's instructions that led to former President Donald Trump's hush money trial conviction.
The Florida Republican, who is being considered as a prospect to join Trump's 2024 ticket as vice president, suggested that Trump had every right to raise hell at Thursday's presidential debate in Atlanta over his criminal conviction, calling it a "travesty that happened in Lower Manhattan".
Donalds saw fit to suggest that it was all but assured that the unanimous guilty verdict handed down by a New York City jury will be overturned once the 45th president's appeal is considered.
"Of course he talks about what happens in Lower Manhattan because at the end of the day his constitutional rights were violated in that courtroom in Manhattan," Donalds said. "And every legal commentator, virtually every legal scholar all agree that that case is going to be overturned at the appellate level because he didn't even know what he was defending himself against."
Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal the a scheme to buy the silence of an adult film star.
ALSO READ: ‘Fight of crazy against crazy’: Wounded Rep. Bob Good confronts ‘forces of evil’
Trump continued to assert his innocence and denied the adultery claims.
“They have no case,” Trump said outside court. “There’s no crime.”
In his explanation to jurors, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said prosecutors don't have to prove secondary crimes, and jurors themselves could disagree on the specific ways Trump allegedly broke the law.
But they had to reach unanimous verdict on each of the 34 counts.
While Trump is slated to be sentenced on July 11, he has vowed to file an appeal.
Donalds questioned those instructions and expects they will be the centerpiece to Trump's appeal.
"The Supreme Court just came out the other day and said that if you're going to try to convict somebody that that the jury has to be consistent about the actual crime," he said. "That did not occur in Lower Manhattan."
Donalds is likely referring to the case Erlinger v. United States, where the Court ruled in the felon's unlawful possession of a firearm that "the Fifth and Sixth Amendments require a unanimous jury to make the determination beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant's past offenses were committed on separate occasions."
That's where Coates, a former federal prosecutor, pounced, telling Donalds and viewers about the "nuance of the New York jury instruction where they did not have to agree on the underlying predicate crime that would elevate it from a misdemeanor to a felony but they had to be unanimous in their overall decision. I'll be very curious to see how that plays out at the appellate level."
Donalds went mum.
