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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!
Why is paying Stormy Daniels a campaign contribution? Why doed Cohen pleading guilty prove Trump committed a crime too?
Please note that campaign finance violations are the FEC's wheelhouse and they neglected to pursue charges because no crime occurred. Besides, this is circular reasoning: Trump committed a crime because Cohen committed a crime because Trump committed a crime. Under this logic, any politician who has ever paid to bury a story has committed a crime.
That's another thing, Cohen is a perjurer and also admitted to stealing money from Trump on these checks -- apparently, according to Cohen's story, Trump knew intimately the details of the money given to Stormy Daniels, but not that intimately!
Right, that's the thing: this is a totally normal thing that happens to powerful people all the time, only New York blew it up to try to make it a get Trump case. There is no case here.
Because the purpose of the payment was to benefit the campaign. According to the FEC
...
Perhaps I have not followed the trial closely enough but it is not clear to me, from reading the actual NY law at issue, that the crime being covered up has to also have been committed by the person doing the covering up. If A enters false business records to cover up B's crime it seems to me that would be covered. It does not seem to be required that A's false business records cover up A's own crime, but I could be wrong about that.
This is not correct. Cohen committed a crime (an illegal campaign contribution) and then Trump committed a crime (falsifying business records) to cover up Cohen's crime. As I note in my comment if Trump had paid Daniels himself it likely would not have been a crime, because candidates are allowed to spend as much as they want on their own campaigns.
I think that depends on what you mean by "this." I do not think it is that common that powerful people get their lawyers to commit bank fraud and FEC violations to help them get elected, then commit further crimes to try and cover it up. Heck, if Trump had paid Cohen back out of his own pocket (rather than his business) that probably wouldn't have been a crime either! Or at least it wouldn't have been this crime.
You don't think that powerful people cover up crimes all the time? I think this is incredibly naive, in an age when regulatory choke means everyone is breaking technicalities all the time.
Moreover: this is an extremely dubious technicality. Your argument is that Trump definiteky committed a crime which wouldn't have been a crime if he'd made one simple bookkeeping change. This is really your idea of a slam-dunk solid case of crime?
Yes. Lots of things can be a crime if entity A does them but not if entity B does them. If Trump had paid Daniels (and maybe Cohen) out of his own pocket there would have been no crime. The crime is entirely in how he went about it.
This is crazy! Why would Trump go out of his way to do things the illegal way if it were already legal? Apparently, Michael Cohen paying something on Trump's behalf becomes a campaign contribution, which means Trump paying Cohen back becomes cover-up. That's ridiculous!
That's not a serious legal theory, which is why it's never been used on anybody before now. That's the rationalization made up to explain why Trump was guilty. If it weren't that, it would have been something else.
Part of the problem with this whole thing is assigning intent to a guy who seems to wing it on instinct and never really bothers to do due dilligence to make sure he's doing things the proper way -- and who hires shitty, sleazy lawyers who are also incompetent at covering the legal bases. Trump is sloppy. Contrary to the memes, he's barely playing 1-D Chess. He follows the straight line from his desires to his ego. It's entirely possible given his apparent modus operandi that no one thought to check if there were any legal issues with anything related to the FEC or any other set of regulations, and "legal services" was written on the checks because Cohen was a lawyer, making anything he does "legal services."
I don't doubt that Trump is guilty of hundreds (if not more) of compliance violations, because he generally holds all rules and official processes in contempt. Felony convictions for details he likely never bothered to consider or understand seems harsh; but it does make a good case for why political parties should screen their candidates with a more serious sense of purpose.
But that’s the entire point. You needed to do it with an intent to defraud and commit another crime. If he wasn’t thinking at all about that, then that is proof he didn’t commit the crime.
The prosecution has to argue he was thinking about it, there was in fact a legal method, and Trump was like “fuck that, I want the criminal way. Leeeeeeeroy Jenkins.” That just isn’t reasonable.
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