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Notes -
Nope.
An inaccurate business record recorded with innocent intent (eg as a joke or by mistake) is not a crime.
An inaccurate business record recorded with intent to defraud is a misdemeanor.
An inaccurate business record recorded with intent to defraud in the furtherance of another crime is a felony.
You are not a felon because you put a joke on a venmo.
Who did he defraud?
Ok so I am a felon too like Trump. I’ve sent mislabeled Venmo’s because I did not want Venmo to know what I’m doing.
So, how does New York State law define the “intent to defraud” for the criminal offense of falsifying business records? A long line of New York state court cases supports an expansive conception with respect to § 175.00 crimes – namely, that intent can be established when a defendant acts “for the purpose of frustrating the State’s power” to “faithfully carry out its own law.” People v. Kase, 76 A.D.2d 532, 537–538, 431 N.Y.S.2d 531, 534 (N.Y. App. Div., 1st Dept. 1980), aff’d, 53 N.Y.2d 989, 441 N.Y.S.2d 671, 424 N.E.2d 558 (1981).
Trump acted with intent to defraud the state of New York by frustrating its power to faithfully carry out its own law.
You did not mislabel your Venmos (as far as I know) with the intent of preventing the state of New York from executing its law, so you are not guilty of falsification of business records (assuming your Venmos are even business transactions).
This is nonsense -- you could argue that any mislabeled record was mislabeled with "intent to defraud the state". That's what makes this egregious: the crime Trump is charged with isn't a crime unless you investigate it as though it is a crime!
You can argue anything. Proving intent beyond a reasonable doubt is however a fairly high bar to clear.
Not when the jury and judge are stacked against you!
The jury went through voir dire, and Trump's lawyers participated in that process. Potential jurors who would not be impartial were struck. This is standard practice.
What a bullshit argument. If you stack a jury group where it is 90-10 against the defendant couple with limited strikes and an adverse judge you won’t get a fair jury.
My question to you is do you think Trump would’ve been found guilty in WV with the same exact facts?
TBH I'm not sure that a second New York jury would get to the same verdict. I think the verdict is correct, but it's clearly the weakest of the cases against him and I was not confident he would be convicted.
But regardless, I think it's disingenuous to describe Manhattan as being 90-10 against Trump in this context. That's true of the voting population, but something like 40% of the people there didn't vote in 2020 (can't be arsed to look up the exact figures). I do not believe that it is particularly challenging to find 12 impartial jurors among a population where somewhere between a third and a half of them voted neither for nor against Trump. Believe it or not, there's a LOT of people who sincerely find politics tremendously uninteresting and are not at all invested in the success of one side or the other.
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