domain:streamable.com
VinoVeritas
35m ago
That is the funniest possible possibility, and had not even occurred to me. So the gal in the onlyfans is like a billboard?
SlowBoy
35m ago
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.
ControlsFreak
35m ago
I find this utterly implausible. For the record, I find it completely plausible that various courts could find some way to rule against Trump, but this one will simply not be there. Higher courts know that there are plenty (not in percentage terms) of people who are in prison for non-crimes, especially as parts of plea deals, that would be found to be non-crimes if contested appropriately. It would be one thing if Donald Trump had plead guilty to the requisite non-crime; I could absolutely see a court viewing that as settling the matter. But I cannot possibly believe that someone else pleading guilty to a non-crime settles the matter in the case in front of them. In fact, I imagine the court records are full of people appealing (some successfully) their convictions for things that are non-crimes, even though they had accomplices who plead guilty to those very same non-crimes. I challenge you to find me one example of a court simply rejecting any possibility of such an appeal based on a third party's plea agreement.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
37m ago
It disproves your claim that the case would not have been brought except against Trump, which is the claim I was contesting.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
38m ago
So does paying a grifter to go away if they sign an NDA with a huge clawback clause.
Tenaz
41m ago
Oh, absolutely. I'm sort of a law anarchist at this point--the text of the law matters very little. Judges and lawyers have proved over and over again their willingness to creatively interpret laws to get whatever outcome they want, without consequences. Why should honest judges voluntarily limit themselves and abide by rules which other judges routinely ignore?
Trump legitimately did commit those crimes as far as I can tell. If he didn't, New York certainly has the power to write new laws which he is guilty of. To what extent must Trump abide by the legitimate rule of law of one state?
So far as I know, there is no law which prevents any state from writing a law intended to jail a presidential candidate. However, everyone recognizes this would be a terrible thing to do, so doubtless the supreme court would step in and fabricate some legal reasoning interpreting such a law as unconstitutional. It's harder to do so when, as in this case, the state does have a pretty good legal pretext to justify its legal decisions, and it's not extremely clear to everyone that the law was meant specifically to target one person.
We ceased to be a country of law a long time ago.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
42m ago
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 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.
zeke5123a
44m ago
Yes we are. My background is in law (though not litigation let alone criminal) so this has interested me greatly. Couple that with time on my hands due to paternity leave…I’ve gotten obsessive.
gattsuru
44m ago
Yep. Before J6, I literally argued that the Red Tribe side at least wouldn't be riots, and that was a mistake, and I'm not gonna make the mistake of arguing that they'll keep managing to avoid killing people if it happens again.
Just because it'll slide into violence doesn't mean the people who have morons going first violent will win, or even that they won't be the ones most of the violence, in the long run, is aimed at.
zeke5123a
46m ago
Brad Smith former FEC chairmen appointed by Clinton explained that campaign expenses are things that a person (not the candidate) would only spend on an election (eg polls, fees directly related to the campaign). It would not include things like a nice suit even if the candidate purchased it solely with campaign in mind.
At best the law here is very convoluted. But we are to believe Trump and Cohen connected this scheme to try to keep Cohen out of hot water that may or may not exist even though Cohen didn’t testify “Trump did it for that reason.” Literally zero evidence on that point meaning per se the prosecution loses. But it doesn’t bother you?
jeroboam
50m ago
Loyal Soviets said the same thing as they sent former commissars to the gallows.
We should never celebrate a kangaroo court, even if they give us the outcome we desire. Surely everyone, even former Presidents, deserves due process. The prosecutor and judge were both vocal political enemies of Trump.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
50m ago
No, they'll consider the issue already decided by Cohen's plea, and not subject to re-litigation by Trump. The legal system is full of sneaky little gotchas like that.
zeke5123a
52m ago
See you use words like “presumably.” There is zero evidence of Trump knowing how or why it was booked a certain way. You are making a leap.
And Trump is saying Cohen worked for years on an oral retainer. No evidence to the contrary to my knowledge.
And again none of that goes to the point that that says zero about Trump’s intent to commit the predicate.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
52m ago
That already happened, on January 6. It turns out the state has the capacity to deal with it without much effort.
VinoVeritas
53m ago
You bet, that is not unsurprising, and was kind of my point
You stated blandly that 'convicting governors' was your 'home state's official pastime'
Okay? Even in America which is the best country ever, most things have still kind of sucked most of the time. Governors are corrupt. Elections get stolen. Stuff happens
But there's a difference between those 'normal' things and taking the president to Rikers Island in chains to be strip searched. At some point, sometimes, someone does go too far and break the norms. And even though things have always kind of sucked most of the time, that destruction of norms can sometimes introduce profound change to an otherwise stable environment. And you get something like the Spanish Civil War
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
54m ago
Many in the Democratic Party legal establishment were baffled by Breuer’s decision to green light the case, particularly because of suspicions that partisan politics played a role in the aggressive pursuit of Edwards by federal prosecutors in North Carolina.
...
That unit came under protracted public criticism in recent years over what the Justice Department found was prosecutorial misconduct in the pursuit of then-Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on charges he filed false ethics reports by omitting the value of gifts and renovations to his home.
...
As a result of failures in the Stevens case, which was brought during the Bush administration, Holder changed much of the Public Integrity Section’s leadership and ordered new training for prosecutors across the department in their responsibilities. Two prosecutors were also ordered briefly suspended after an internal probe.
...
Jurors also got an up-close look at the prosecution’s star witness, Andrew Young, the aide who falsely claimed paternity of Edwards’s and Hunter’s child. Records showed Young diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars from Edwards donors to pay for his own expenses and a pricey new home he was building in North Carolina.
...
The Justice Department said in 2009 that it would pursue criminal campaign finance cases only where there was “no doubt” that the FEC agreed the “underlying conduct” was illegal. No such finding appears to have ever been made in Edwards’s case, and at least one current commissioner said publicly that he doubted Edwards’s alleged actions were illegal.
...
U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles excluded most evidence about the FEC’s views of Edwards’s case. However, jurors did hear the Edwards campaign’s compliance officer testify that she saw no requirement to report the payments related to his mistress and never heard from the FEC that they needed to be reported. The jury also heard a former FEC chairman say he’d never heard any discussion of whether payments to or for a mistress could be considered donations.
And this insane "history rhymes" banger:
Another problem that may have tripped up prosecutors: proving that Edwards knew his alleged actions were illegal, something the government must show to get a conviction in a campaign finance case.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
55m ago
His motivation doesn't have to be solely the campaign for it to be a campaign contribution. If Cohen made a campaign expenditure on behalf of or in coordination with a campaign, then it was a campaign contribution.
SSCReader
55m ago
Well, usually a politician would have quit in disgrace before getting to this point. So kind of.
As in, a politician with grab her by her pussy, AND a few other stories would have given a speech about how he was stepping back from politics for the good of his family etc.
Now of course that is all part of Trumps brand, that he is different from a normal politician such that you can't just brief against him, you have to follow through. But arguably he is breaking the norm of not stepping down after a scandal. Warning shots don't work on him. If you think that norm exists to select out unsuitable candidates with minimal fuss thats bad, if you think its used by the deep state to filter out "unsuitable" candidates that is good.
I'd note Hillary did the same, though I think for different reasons, and mostly through the time honoured tradition of lying through her teeth. So you know, she kept to that norm.
Mewis
55m ago
If you are in favour of a peace deal, why the constant bringing up of appeasement, Hitler, 1938, and so on? Are you just bringing them up cynically to win this argument, or do you genuinely believe that this situation is like 1938? And if it is, why do you now say you support a peace deal?
FiveHourMarathon
You can get anything here except red ink
58m ago
No, at 9pm ideally I've gotten into bed to read a book or news magazine. Occasionally radio broadcast of a baseball game or similar.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
58m ago
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.
ControlsFreak
58m ago
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.
TitaniumButterfly
58m ago
My thoughts exactly. Defection may be about to get a lot more popular. I think it did after 2020, too.
John Edwards was accused of the opposite, using campaign funds for his personal needs. That happens sometimes and politicians do occasionally get convicted for it. That's what makes the Trump case so egregious.
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