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I just honestly cannot fathom this.
It isn’t clear that the retainer / legal expense description was inaccurate. The prosecution never explained why Trump would pay more money to Cohen.
It isn’t clear that Trump even knew how the expenses were recorded / supposed to be recorded. The evidence for this is Cohen’s testimony (with no corroborating evidence ). Cohen is a serial perjurer. How could you accept his testimony beyond reasonable doubt?
There is literally zero evidence in the record that Trump was doing this because he was worried at all about campaign finance law. The prosecution was basically able to argue incorrectly the payment violated FECA and therefore the scheme was to hide this allegation. But there was zero evidence that anyone had even thought about campaign finance laws meaning per se the burden of proof was not met.
The judge’s actions were beyond awful including allowing cohen to basically state what FEcA law is but not a literal former head of FEC.
It is in fact clear that the payment to Cohen was to reimburse him for paying off Stormy Daniels. Trump confessed on twitter.
This is why every lawyer advises their client to shut the hell up.
The payment to Stormy was for about 135k. Trump paid Cohen around 420k. So no it wasn’t solely reimbursement.
Fortunately, there were handwritten notes explicitly laying out what the money was all for. Exhibit 35 has you covered.
It was $130k reimbursement for Stormy Daniels, $50k reimbursement for Red Finch, that 180k total got doubled to make Cohen whole for the income tax he would need to pay, and then they gave Cohen an extra $60k as his profit for doing this.
Yes my point. It wasn’t solely reimbursement. Instead it easily could be described as legal expenses under a retainer.
Okay, so what? The prosecution did not claim it was solely reimbursement.
If I pay you $100 for a stick of chocolate and some cocaine, the fact that it's legal to buy and sell chocolate does not mean that I can't be prosecuted for purchasing the cocaine.
The big difference is that reimbursement is not illegal (unlike cocaine). Paying for legal services and reimbursing your lawyer for payments he is making on your behalf is perfectly encapsulated as a legal expense. Could they have broken it down further (ie legal expense for service and for reimbursement)? Sure. But that doesn’t make the overall category (ie legal expense) fraudulent.
Again, that would have been an interesting argument for Trump to make, but he did not make it. His position was that Cohen was lying by claiming to have been reimbursed.
It's very easy for a jury to conclude that "legal fees" do not encapsulate reimbursement in a case where the defendant is continuing to maintain that they do not.
I agree that Trump’s lawyers weren’t great but it isn’t clear exactly what Blanche argued.
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