JOHN LUCAS: Judge Merchan’s Potemkin sentencing hearing: A continuation of the judicial warfare against Donald Trump and American voters. “Judge Juan Merchan’s sentencing hearing for President Trump on Thursday confirmed the political nature of the judicial warfare in which he and hundreds of others have collaborated in an effort to bring down Donald Trump. Both Merchan and the prosecutor treated the sentencing hearing as if its purpose was to make a rational and fair determination of what sentence the court should impose. That was a fraud and deception. The hearing’s purpose was not to make a rational and fair decision about anything. Merchan had already decided and announced the “sentence” he intended to hand down. The purpose of the phony hearing was to give the prosecutor a soapbox from which he could pontificate and continue their joint efforts to weaken President Trump, just eleven days before his inauguration.”

Well, yes.