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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.
I guess I don't really understand. This seems to me like one of the more straightforward cases against Trump, right up there with the classified documents.
1. In 2016 Michael Cohen committed several crimes to which he later pleaded guilty, including making an unlawful corporate contribution to the Trump campaign by paying Stormy Daniels.
2. Trump reimbursed Cohen for that payment to Stormy Daniels (in furtherance of Cohen's crime) from one of his businesses.
3. The payments to Cohen claimed to be pursuant to a retainer agreement that did not exist and pursuant to legal work that never occurred.
4. The reason for the description of the payments was to conceal Cohen's crime. Trump could hardly put "Reimbursement for unlawful campaign contribution" on the checks!
So we have (1) business records that were (2) falsified for the purpose of (3) concealing another crime. The theory of the case seems pretty straightforward? According to the evidence some of the checks were signed by Trump himself. Seems hard to argue he didn't know it was happening or approve of it.
What strikes me in all this is how this all could have been avoided if Trump were less of a cheapskate. According to Cohen's testimony Trump kept trying to put off paying Daniels until after the election (presumably to stiff her) and she kept threatening to call off the agreement and go public. Eventually Trump tells Cohen and Weisselberg to figure it out. Weisselberg claims not to have the money so Cohen goes and gets a HELOC (lying to his bank in the process) to pay Daniels (the unlawful campaign contribution). I'm pretty sure if Trump had just cut Daniels a check everything would have been fine. Candidates are allowed to spend as much money as they want on their own campaigns. Instead Cohen commits several crimes to pay Daniels and then Trump commits several crimes to reimburse Cohen. There was a less criminal way to do this!
Nope. There's no other crime being concealed. That someone somewhere plead guilty to a non-crime as part of a package deal rather than vigorously defend the position that it was a non-crime in the courts (where they would have won) does not actually make it a crime. You still need to show that it's a crime, but that's going to run into serious legal theory problems, not least of which includes the first amendment. This result is remarkably easy to see if you've spent any time reading the Supreme Court's first amendment/campaign finance cases.
This will... eventually... come back on appeal to the courts that actually give a shit about legal theory. It is unlikely to come back before the election, so perhaps the damage to democracy is irrevocably done.
I mean, maybe there's an argument Michael Cohen could have made that his conduct was not criminal, that the statute criminalizing it was unconstitutional. I am skeptical any court is going to get into that matter separately.
But again, whatever happens/happened with Michael Cohen's legal case is completely irrelevant for Donald Trump's legal case. When Donald Trump appeals his conviction, specifically on the grounds that there was no other crime being concealed, the courts will get into that issue. There is nothing "separate" about it.
I guess I'm wondering what this looks like. Is the idea that the NY prosecutor is going to have prove Cohen guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Skeptical that's the actual standard.
No. Donald Trump says, "That's not a crime," and when they check how it is possible for the mostly uncontested facts to comprise a campaign finance crime, they will see that it is, in fact, not a crime. Like, have you ever read an appellate decision? ...have you ever read one where they do this sort of thing? Where it's like, "Yeah, this is what happened, and that is what the law says, but if we're going to read this law in any way that comports with the Constitution, it cannot possibly make this set of facts a crime." This happens regularly, even in the circuit courts. Maybe even just start with Citizens United. It has the campaign finance/first amendment angle, too. The court was definitely all, "Yeah, this is not a crime."
But Citizens United was about whether those particular defendants had committed a crime. The analogy is Cohen appealing his conviction. What's the citation for a case where some person A is appealing their conviction and a court decides some other person B has not committed a crime they pleaded guilty to?
The court doesn't have to decide anything about Person B's case. For the third time, Cohen's case has nothing to do with it. They have to decide whether the underlying facts comprise a crime, for Trump's case. Cohen's plea is literally the least persuasive authority possible for whether it is a crime. It would be slightly more persuasive if he was convicted at trial, but that's still nowhere near binding on the appeals courts. If Cohen had appealed his case on the grounds that it's a non-crime, and the appeals court in question ruled that it was, after all, a crime, that would be significantly more persuasive, but not binding unless it was the same appeals court. And of course, Trump's case could go all the way to SCOTUS, which means that unless Cohen had vigorously protested on his own that it was, indeed, a non-crime all the way to SCOTUS, himself, and then had them tell him that it was actually a crime, they can do the same damn thing they've done in many cases and just say, "Nah, dawg, that ain't a crime."
Cohen's plea has literally nothing to do with it, and no court has to decide anything about Cohen's legal situation.
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But your theory of the case is that Trump conspired to his Cohen’s guilt. That wasn’t what the government argued and honestly itself is not shown by the facts.
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