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Notes -
Breaking news. It looks like the jury convicted Donald Trump in the "hush money" case.
This verdict will likely galvanize voters come November – leading to record turnout among Republicans. I might even vote for the old rascal myself as I view this lawfare as both morally wrong and deeply destabilizing.
To make a prediction closer to home, we're now certain to cross 1000 posts on the weekly thread.
There was some absolute fuckery involved in the jury instructions in my opinion. I'm curious for some of the lawyers who post here to weigh in. As I understand it:
In order for there to be a felony conviction in NY, there has to be a modifier to the "falsifying business records" charge. So you have to falsify business records in pursuit of another crime.
There were three possible modifiers here for Trump to go from a misdemeanor charge to a felony.
The slimy part (from my understanding) is that the judge said that they didn't actually have to agree on which of these modifiers he committed. You just had to get 12 people to agree that he had done something. So you could do 4, 4, and 4 all voting on each of the 3 options, with a majority disagreeing that he was actually guilty of the modifier.
Wild stuff.
AP seems to keep updating this page, which is very annoying, but it does explain the jury instructions: https://apnews.com/live/trump-trial-jury-deliberations-updates#0000018f-c551-d5ca-abff-d5fda72d0000
Interestingly, they say this is "fact check: false", and then go on to explain exactly what it is true, lol.
I don’t think there was much evidence proffered to suggest there was any intent to falsify any other document or tax fraud.
I think that rationale there was so when Trump argues on appeal that such other crime can’t be federal election law the government could argue “guilty might not be because of election law.”
Regardless I expect overturned provided the defense didn’t waive too many arguments.
Who can Trump appeal it to who might overturn it?
Appeal to Heaven
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Ultimately some of the issues could get to SCOTUS
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He would probably have to make a 14th Amendment deprivation of due process claim to get it into federal court.
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