The Week: The Trump Trial Nears Its End

• This isn’t the first time the Left has gotten upset about Justice Alito’s enthusiasm for the work of the Founders.

• The first-ever criminal trial of a former president and current de facto presidential nominee continues to be as peculiar as it is historic. Both sides had rested by Tuesday only to have the erratic judge, Juan Merchan, send the jury home for a week to enjoy the holiday weekend while marinating in the intense publicity (which he piously directed them not to consume). Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen, a convicted perjurer, fraudster, and born-again anti-Trump monomaniac, concluded a bruising cross-examination by admitting that he’d bilked the Trump Organization out of $60,000. But although Cohen is the rickety foundation of DA Alvin Bragg’s bizarre indictment, prosecutors have been abetted by Merchan, who keeps letting them remind the jury that Cohen pled guilty to federal campaign-finance crimes—evidence that is not admissible against Trump in a case supposedly about falsifying business records but is being hyped to establish the “other crime” that Bragg must prove to convict Trump of a felony (or, rather, up to 34 felonies). The jury should begin deliberations on Wednesday. It will end them then, too, in the unlikely event that Judge Merchan gives it sound instructions.

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• This isn’t the first time the Left has gotten upset about Justice Alito’s enthusiasm for the work of the Founders.

• The first-ever criminal trial of a former president and current de facto presidential nominee continues to be as peculiar as it is historic. Both sides had rested by Tuesday only to have the erratic judge, Juan Merchan, send the jury home for a week to enjoy the holiday weekend while marinating in the intense publicity (which he piously directed them not to consume). Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen, a convicted perjurer, fraudster, and born-again anti-Trump monomaniac, concluded a bruising cross-examination by admitting that he’d bilked the Trump Organization out of $60,000. But although Cohen is the rickety foundation of DA Alvin Bragg’s bizarre indictment, prosecutors have been abetted by Merchan, who keeps letting them remind the jury that Cohen pled guilty to federal campaign-finance crimes—evidence that is not admissible against Trump in a case supposedly about falsifying business records but is being hyped to establish the “other crime” that Bragg must prove to convict Trump of a felony (or, rather, up to 34 felonies). The jury should begin deliberations on Wednesday. It will end them then, too, in the unlikely event that Judge Merchan gives it sound instructions.