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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37948 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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Trump Indicted: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/30/donald-trump-indicted-in-hush-money-payment-case.html

This is a major enough story that I think it goes beyond needing more than just a link.

NYT article.

The prosecution’s star witness is Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who paid the $130,000 to keep Ms. Daniels quiet. Mr. Cohen has said that Mr. Trump directed him to buy Ms. Daniels’s silence, and that Mr. Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization, helped cover the whole thing up. The company’s internal records falsely identified the reimbursements as legal expenses, which helped conceal the purpose of the payments.

Although the specific charges remain unknown, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors have zeroed in on that hush money payment and the false records created by Mr. Trump’s company. A conviction is not a sure thing: An attempt to combine a charge relating to the false records with an election violation relating to the payment to Ms. Daniels would be based on a legal theory that has yet to be evaluated by judges, raising the possibility that a court could throw out or limit the charges.

Really looking forward to more detail, because this sounds pretty contrived.

Ms. Daniels would be based on a legal theory that has yet to be evaluated by judges, raising the possibility that a court could throw out or limit the charges

The NYT is being overly dramatic. The law in question is falsifying business records, specifically that Trump recorded payments to Cohen as legal fees when they were actually reimbursements to Cohen for hush money paid to Daniels. That crime is a felony if done with the "intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” The supposedly new legal theory is that that applies to other federal crimes, not just state crimes. Courts have apparently not previously ruled on that particular question, but it is hardly a stretch, given the plain text of the law. But perhaps there are reasons to rule otherwise.

but it is hardly a stretch,

The untouchable has been made touchable. People aren't freaking out because the law is being stretched, but who it is being stretched to cover. Presidents as Kings has taken a grave blow.

There is no reason to believe that these standards will be applied to Blue-Tribe approved presidents, no matter how much like a king they behave.

John Edwards was prosecuted for almost exactly the same thing (the Feds went after him on the underlying campaign finance charges, rather than a State prosecuting the cover-up) and although he wasn't an ex-President, he was a Democratic Senator and Vice Presidential candidate, which I think counts as Blue Tribe approval.

The case went to trial, and there was a hung jury on most of the counts, and the prosecution didn't seek a re-trial. That is a normal level of prosecutorial effort for a real crime that isn't a cause celebre. The decision to prosecute came from the Public Integrity Section of the DOJ, which is staffed by career government lawyers and looks like it is part of the Deep State. For whatever reason, the US Deep State seems unusually willing to prosecute process crimes relating to large sums of money in a way that they are not willing to prosecute other crimes committed by insiders.

Article on John Edwards at the time and indictment.

John Edwards' case was a vastly better case for the purpose of campaign finance law. He took someone else's money and gave it to his mistress. The indictment describes the purpose as:

In order to restrict the influence that any one person could have on the outcome of the 2008 primary election for President of the United States, the Election Act established that the most an individual could contribute to any candidate for that primary election was $2,300.

Citizens United limited the purpose of these laws to quid pro quo. Consider Steven's dissent in Citizens United, trying to set a wider outer bound of what type of corruption these campaign finance laws can get at (beyond quid pro quo), saying things like:

Congress may “legitimately conclude that the avoidance of the appearance of improper influence is also critical . . . if confidence in the system of representative Government is not to be eroded to a disastrous extent.” A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold

and

Proving that a specific vote was exchanged for a specific expenditure has always been next to impossible: Elected officials have diverse motivations, and no one will acknowledge that he sold a vote. Yet, even if “[i]ngratiation and access . . . are not corruption” themselves, they are necessary prerequisites to it; they can create both the opportunity for, and the appearance of, quid pro quo arrangements. [Emphasis added]

For Edwards, this could make sense. He took a million dollars from two specific blokes and gave it to his mistress. Those two specific blokes very likely had "ingratiation" and "access" on account of that money. I could at least see someone making a reasonable argument that they think such an arrangement means that laws were being bought and sold. They didn't prove quid pro quo, but it at least could point in that direction.

In this case, Trump it makes no sense to claim that Donald Trump was trying to enter a quid pro quo with Donald Trump; it makes no sense to claim that Donald Trump was trying to gain ingratiation, access, or undue influence over Donald Trump. At best, one could try to claim that the Enquirer was trying to gain something in return (like influence) even though money never actually changed hands between them, but Trump could say the same thing that he would say to everyone else who he has bought or attempted to buy something from: “That’s what the money (I offered you) is for.".

In fact I think it's already quite clear that Presidents as Kings is an even more untouchable standard, so long as you weren't elected against the wishes of the entrenched elite. But god help you if you were.

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