"When Politics Blind Justice"

A closer look at the Trump hush money appeal; and what it reveals about power, prosecution, and testimony.

There are moments when silence becomes complicity. When letting the record stand without context feels less like restraint and more like consent. This is one of those moments.

A federal appeals court has just revived President Donald Trump’s effort to undo his New York hush money conviction, ordering a lower court to reconsider whether the case belongs in state court or should be moved to federal court. As expected, the reaction was immediate and predictable. Some called it accountability under siege. Others labeled it proof of partisan lawfare run amok. What was missing, again, was any serious discussion of how these cases are actually built, who they rely on, and what happens behind closed doors long before a jury ever hears a word.

I am not writing this to defend Donald Trump, nor to relitigate his conduct. That ground has been plowed endlessly, often loudly, and rarely thoughtfully. I am writing because I have seen this system from the inside, not as an observer or analyst, but as a central subpoenaed participant. When courts now revisit questions of jurisdiction, immunity, and evidentiary boundaries, they are not engaging in sterile procedural debates. They are exposing how justice is pursued, how power is applied, and how outcomes are shaped well before verdicts are rendered.

My perspective is not theoretical. It is lived. In 2023 and 2024, I testified in two trials in which President Donald J. Trump was the defendant.

The first trial was a civil action brought by the New York State Attorney General’s Office alleging that President Trump fraudulently inflated his assets to obtain favorable loan terms. The court found President Trump liable and ordered that he and other defendants pay a staggering $454 million penalty, which was later overturned on appeal. The second trial was a criminal action brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office alleging that President Trump falsified business records in connection with hush money payments made to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 presidential election. In that case, the jury found President Trump guilty. In both trials, government lawyers made me the key witness.

From the time I first began meeting with lawyers from the Manhattan DA’s Office and the New York Attorney General’s Office in connection with their investigations of President Trump, and through the trials themselves, I felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump.

My first meeting with prosecutors from the Manhattan DA’s Office was in August 2019, when I was a little over three months into serving a three-year prison sentence following my guilty plea to committing federal crimes. As later came out during President Trump’s criminal trial, one of the very first questions I asked those prosecutors was how I would benefit from cooperating. The reason was simple: I wanted to do whatever I could to obtain my Rule 35(b) motion, return home to my family and resume my fractured life.

About thirteen months later, in September 2020, due to good behavior and the COVID-19 pandemic, I was released from federal prison and permitted to serve the remainder of my term; which ended in November 2021, in home confinement. After my release, I continued to meet with prosecutors and hoped that, in exchange for my cooperation, my home confinement and later my supervised release sentence would be shortened.

During my time with prosecutors, both in preparation for and during the trials, it was clear they were interested only in testimony from me that would enable them to convict President Trump. When my testimony was insufficient for a point the prosecution sought to make, prosecutors frequently asked inappropriate leading questions to elicit answers that supported their narrative.

I experienced a similar dynamic in the Attorney General’s civil case. Letitia James made it publicly known during her 2018 campaign for attorney general that, if elected, she would go after President Trump. Her office made clear that the testimony they wanted from me was testimony that would help them do just that. Again, I felt compelled and coerced to deliver what they were seeking.

Letitia James and Alvin Bragg may not share the same office or political calendar, but they share the same playbook. Both used their platforms to elevate their profiles, to claim the mantle of the officials who “took down Trump.” In doing so, they blurred the line between justice and politics; and in that blur, the credibility of both suffered.

That context matters now more than ever.

In November 2025, a three-judge panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reopened the door to President Trump’s effort to erase his New York hush-money conviction. The panel directed U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein to revisit his earlier ruling that kept the case in state court, instead of allowing it to be removed to federal court; an arena Trump has long viewed as more favorable, particularly as it would allow him to argue that presidential immunity shields him from criminal accountability.

The appeals court did not rule in Trump’s favor outright. In fact, the judges were careful to say they “express no view” on how Hellerstein should ultimately rule. What they did say, however, was that Hellerstein failed to adequately consider “important issues” relevant to Trump’s request; particularly whether evidence admitted at trial related to official acts taken while Trump was president.

Hellerstein, who twice denied Trump’s attempts to move the case, previously concluded that the falsification of business records involved Trump’s personal life, not his official duties. But the appeals court found that his ruling did not sufficiently examine whether certain evidence; such as testimony from former White House staffers or Trump’s tweets while in office, implicated acts that could be considered immune under the Supreme Court’s July 2024 presidential immunity decision.

If Hellerstein now finds that the prosecution relied on evidence of official acts, the appeals court instructed him to consider whether those actions were part of Trump’s White House responsibilities, whether Trump diligently sought removal to federal court, and whether such a move is even possible now that Trump has been convicted and sentenced.

That sentence, handed down January 10, 2025, by state Judge Juan Merchan, amounted to an unconditional discharge; leaving Trump’s conviction intact while imposing no punishment. Trump continues to appeal the conviction in state court as well.

Trump’s legal team, unsurprisingly, framed the ruling as another victory against what they describe as partisan prosecution. What is clear is that the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling has reshaped the legal landscape, limiting not only prosecutions for official acts, but also the use of official acts as evidence to prove alleged private misconduct.

This is where the law becomes less about Trump and more about the system itself.

The appeals court’s ruling is not an exoneration, nor is it an endorsement. It is a signal; a reminder that procedure matters, that evidentiary boundaries matter, and that the rush to secure a conviction can come at a cost to institutional credibility. I have seen how that rush manifests, how witnesses are leaned on, and how narratives are constructed to fit outcomes rather than the other way around.

You may reasonably ask why I am speaking out now. The answer is simple. I have witnessed firsthand the damage done when prosecutors pick their target first and then seek evidence to fit a predetermined narrative. I have lived inside that process. I have suffered from that process. My family has suffered from that process. And as courts now reconsider where the Bragg and James cases belong, how they were brought and how they were tried; that experience is relevant. More today than ever before.

Whatever the outcome of Judge Hellerstein’s reconsideration, the larger lesson should not be lost. Justice must be more than effective; it must be credible. When politics and prosecution become indistinguishable, public trust erodes; not just in individual cases, like mine and Trump’s, but in the system itself. That erosion serves no one, regardless of party, personality, or power.

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