As we keep pace with the events in today’s Trumpmas, Alan Dershowitz reminds us where it eventually will lead. Appearing on Fox News Channel’s Hannity last night, Dershowitz argued that even if the case against Donald Trump somehow manages to make it to trial, that itself will likely be a mockery of justice.

There is “no way” that Trump gets a fair trial in New York, Dershowitz argues, and maybe not a fair hearing on appeals either. “Don’t expect justice in this case,” Dershowitz predicts, and perhaps not unless and until Trump’s legal team files an appeal at the Supreme Court:

Dershowitz has been raising this issue ever since the indictment came down, and for good reason. This falls right into Dersh’s metier anyway as a defense-side constitutional appellate attorney, but this case raises the issue to a sharp point. This entire effort to indict Trump on nonsense charges — Greg Jarrett provides a good deconstruction of its Jengo-esque qualities — has been obviously and overtly political from the beginning.

In fact, Bragg’s office and his team past and present have been almost brazen about their political goals. First, Bragg ran on a promise to get Trump when campaigning for the office. When he initially declined to take this case to the grand jury, two of Bragg’s prosecutors resigned and took the unprecedented step of revealing the case in a book, a move designed to put political pressure on Bragg to change his mind. Despite nothing in terms of the payoffs or documentation changing, Bragg reversed course under political pressure to get the grand jury to issue an indictment.

And that’s not the only way Bragg has politicized the case, according to Dershowitz. He believes that Bragg and/or his team have leaked information and testimony from the grand jury to the media in order to influence the jury pool. That itself is a crime, Dershowitz points out, and he wants Bragg prosecuted for it (via the Conservative Brief):

“It is likely that a serious felony has been committed right under District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s nose and he is not investigating it. Under New York law, it is a felony to leak confidential grand jury information, such as whether the jurors voted to indict. The protection of secrecy is as applicable to President Trump as it is to anyone else,” Dershowitz said in an op-ed for The New York Sun.

“We know that the information was disclosed while the indictment itself remains sealed and before any official announcement was made or charges brought. It is unlikely that the leak came from the Trump team, which seemed genuinely surprised,” Dershowitz said.

“The most likely, though uncertain, scenario is that a person in Mr. Bragg’s office or a grand juror unlawfully leaked the sealed information. That would be a class E felony, subject to imprisonment. It is possible of course that an investigation is underway, but it seems more likely that Mr. Bragg is too busy making up a crime against the man he promised in his campaign to get than investigating a real crime that took place on his watch,” Dershowitz added.

Just how much of the leaks came from Bragg and his office, though? Some of it appeared to come from Trump and his team, at least regarding the timing of the indictment and which witnesses were being called. Some of those ‘sources’ look closer to the prosecution, however, especially of late as the indictment got prepared. Unless someone in the office steps forward as a whistleblower, no one will get prosecuted, but the extensive leaks may help Trump’s team make their case for a venue change, at the very least.

And that’s already in play, too, or at least it seems that way:

TRUMP URGES VENUE CHANGE FOR NEW YORK CASE, SUGGESTS NEARBY STATEN ISLAND

— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) April 4, 2023

This is getting passed around by Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman, but it’s not clear how reliable this information is. It sounds as though this refers to some public statement by Trump himself rather than an actual legal motion. Dersh himself suggested Staten Island last week as an alternative venue, and maybe Trump’s legal team will move for that today to get this into a somewhat less progressive venue. Likely, however, they will first file motions to dismiss under a number of arguments (I wrote about those earlier) before they get to a change-of-venue motion.