Falsifying business records is the third-order crime in service of the second-order NY state crime of conspiring to promote the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency by first-order unlawful means.
“What exactly those ‘unlawful means’ were in this case was up to the jury to decide. Prosecutors put forth three areas that they could consider: a violation of federal campaign finance laws, falsification of other business records or a violation of tax laws.” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-charges-conviction-guilty-verdict/
That appears to be the actual structure of the case. Where's the problem, in your view? Surely you don't think this was all done ONLY to protect Melania's virgin ears...
My problem is these three allegations ("a violation of federal campaign finance laws, falsification of other business records or a violation of tax laws") would have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I honestly don't think they are and I don't even believe anyone else thins so either. If they were THOSE would have been the charges! You can't just indicate that other crimes have occurred and base a felony prosecution on those hints. Criminal justice simply doesn't work that way.
As I say, I don't encounter many people who really seem invested in the idea that this was a solid and impartial trial. Even most liberal legal analysts that I've read sidestep the question or admit that these charges were extraordinarily strange and weak. I don't think presidents should ever be prosecuted under these circumstances because now ALL will be. If Trump committed terrible crimes in office those crimes should be simple to explain, compelling, and provable beyond a reasonable doubt. All they proved here was that he falsified business records. Probably every businessman in the U.S. in the past 50 years has done that to one extent or another, inadvertently. This was not a strong case.
'conspiring to promote the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency by first-order unlawful means.' is not a NY State Crime. It SOUNDS criminal because it includes 'conspiring' and 'unlawful' but both of those beg the question. Replace 'planning' and remove unlawful and you're left without an act that's even remotely criminal. Lying to people is not illegal. falsifying business records is not a felony... UNLESS it's done in service of another crime. The fact that neither you nor anyone else can reasonably articulate what that crime is in a short paragraph leads me to believe that many of those jurors couldn't either. Keep in mind: the INDICTMENT never named the crime in question either. As far as I know such a thing has never happened. I imagine some of them just really disliked Trump (as you clearly do, and as I do) and were deranged by this. It's the oldest handicap of juries known to man and it's been leveraged by racists and liars and manipulative prosecutors for centuries. I further speculate that their friends and families and coworkers knew they were on the jury and this would have exerted some social pressure, as it probably did in the ridiculous show-trials of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.
When you're prosecuting power men you have to make sure your case is watertight and legally solid. When you're prosecuting a former president this applies 10x. This verdict has elated many Trump-haters and angered many Trump supporters and polls indicate it might have dissuaded some swing voters for voting for Trump... but all of the thoughtful and brilliant Trump opponents I know say this has made them MORE llikely to vote for him. It has certainly supercharged his fundraising.
If he's guilty you should want him to be found guilty even if it ensured he WON the election. That's what impartial justice means. I doubt that you or any other poster I've read in the past few weeks feel that way... and that tells me all I need to know.
James, beautifully written and thoughtful as ever. This case MUST go before SCOTUS - whether or not they want to get involved is inconsequential. The charges against Trump still remain undisclosed, or at the very least, baffling. More to the point, Trump was NEVER informed of the charges against him - so if the nine justices don't weigh in, the Constitution, its import and meaning, fly right out the window and it's over - but karma is one BITCH and I say, what goes around.... Make it a GREAT weekend, James and know how much your many admirers hold your character and your capabilites in very high esteem - with yours truly at the very top of the list - Be well and keep in touch! Regards from the war zone AKA NYC - John
Specifically, see the NYT's notes 16–18. If you believe Cohen's campaign-finance convictions were legit—that he was indeed guilty—then surely the possibility of Trump's shared guilt should be comprehensible. The only real question is whether Trump knew what he was reimbursing Cohen for. And of course he did: Donald Trump is the very model of a hands-on executive—he's not the type to write checks without knowing what he's paying for. The Art of the Deal, remember?
Trump’s shared guilt is ABSOLUTELY comprehensible. I find it completely reasonable that Trump falsified business records. I think the evidence supports that. But did he do it intentionally? And as I’ve already said, for a felony conviction to be supported the falsifications must be in service of another crime(s). What are those? The prosecution never even said. Instead they gave a kind of buffer of maybe crimes. This isn’t how criminal justice usually works. In your view, speaking plainly, what crime were these falsifications made to conceal? I think I asked that earlier but perhaps you’re responding to so many people that it fell through the cracks.
Under Texas Penal Code 25.11, a person commits continuous violence against the family, a felony crime, if he or she commits two or more bodily-injury assaults upon one or more family members within a span of 12 months.
If such a case goes to trial, the jury is NOT required to unanimously agree on the exact dates or even the county in which the conduct occurred. More saliently, the jury does NOT need to unanimously agree as to whether each incident alleged would in itself meet the standard for an assault charge or conviction.
They're really just looking for a pattern of conduct. All the jury needs is a unanimous verdict that, given the facts, at least two incidents occured within 12 months that WOULD have qualified as assault. But they don't have to say WHICH, they don't have to say WHEN, and they don't have to say WHERE!
As far as I can tell, it's a similar concept here. They don't need to convict him of the first-order crimes that the alleged second-order crimes were in service of, because he's not being charged with those crimes. The question before the jury is: “what was the motivation for Trump's conduct?” If the motivation was “furtherance of a first-order crime,” then he committed the second-order crimes. Which he obviously did.
So what is the first-order crime? As far as I can tell the second-order crime is falsifying business records. As I wrote in my piece the prosecution provided 5 different legal theories as to what the first order crime MIGHT be (although tellingly none of them were included in the indictment) but they all have major issues: they’re not crimes, or they’re not NY state crimes, or the statute of limitations have expired, etc. Again I ask: what crimes were these falsifications made to conceal?
I think you’re right that the jury did not need to agree as to which crime it was. Merchan said as much in his instructions. But they were all tasked with deciding that the falsifications were made to conceal another NY State crime (which Trump was obviously never charged with) and that is the real question in my opinion. Falsifications are misdemeanors… unless they’re made to conceal a serious crime. What crime was Trump trying to conceal with these intentional errors? If he was ONLY trying to hide the fact that he slept with a porn star to hide it from his wife, for example, he’s not guilty. He needs to have clear and proven intent to conceal a crime. ????
You would have to come up with an alternative explanation. Hostility towards police could be a factor, but even that doesn’t get you to ‘not guilty’ in my opinion, especially based on the evidence, which is possibly weightier (toward guilt) than any other trial I’ve ever studied.
There’s also the factor that Johnny Cochran and the jury consultants explicitly and intentionally appealed to anti-white & pro-black racism and urged Simpson to change his image to appeal to resentful black jurors. If racism wasn’t a factor then the defense sure thought it was!
Cohen was found guilty… was that legitimate, in your view? Why didn’t Trump pardon him, do you suppose? And what do you make of Trump’s declaration, outside the courtroom after the defense rested its case, that “we called it a legal expense”? Sounded to many like a confession…
Well Cohen pled, so it is absolutely legitimate. I imagine Trump failed to pardon him because he’s a petty and vindictive individual and felt betrayed, but that’s just speculation.
Even if Trump willfully falsified business records and payments that’s not sufficient to prove guilt here. He would have to falsify the records KNOWING it was illegal (which it usually is not-businesses have tremendous leeway in classifying their expenses and that’s usually just an accounting/tax matter). He would have to falsify the records in order to conceal another crime. That’s the real question here, which has remained unanswered. What crimes were the falsifications made in order to conceal? Without that element these are misdemeanors, at BEST, and would NEVER be prosecuted.
Not to mention, plea deals are usually accepted in exchange for more lenient sentencing. the illegal donation charge was tacked on to the tax raps as leverage, no telling if he would have fought the charge if he had the resources.
As to the pardons, Trump only pardoned around 50 people and very few of them were from his administration/campaign. we have no idea what criteria he used to issue pardons. he may have not done it to avoid political blowback, maybe cause he thought poorly of Cohen , who knows.
Certainly. I wasn't suggesting that plea deals are always just or warranted. I think >95% of defendants are found 'guilty' in federal trials so many innocent people plead. However, they're all 'legitimate' in the sense that the represent an agreement between the state and the defendant.
Cohen only received a 3-year sentence and toward the end he was on house arrest, also. He definitely cooperated with investigators before that, so not a great candidate for a pardon in a number of ways.
I understand what you were saying, I believe XxYwise was using "legitimate" as "substantively true" - so she could get you to say that there was an actual campaign finance violation in the factual record, when that's not what you were saying at all.
It's all word games with them, for instance they will keep calling him a "convicted felon" because it invokes thoughts of thieves and murderers instead of someone who was convicted of not reporting a payment that plausibly could be (but not an established) campaign donation.
Yes. I notice she didn't reply to my answers. No opportunities to pounce, judge, sanction, condescend i guess. It IS all word games and, worse, it's status: if they really cared about the things they say they care about (except in kind of an abstract, identitarian sense) they would live much different lives. They all long for and work for wealth and power and privilege, while they claim to want to abolish wealth and power and privilege. I'm no longer talking of my young friend specifically now. I just mean basically every single progressive I've ever met.
Falsifying business records is the third-order crime in service of the second-order NY state crime of conspiring to promote the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency by first-order unlawful means.
“What exactly those ‘unlawful means’ were in this case was up to the jury to decide. Prosecutors put forth three areas that they could consider: a violation of federal campaign finance laws, falsification of other business records or a violation of tax laws.” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-charges-conviction-guilty-verdict/
That appears to be the actual structure of the case. Where's the problem, in your view? Surely you don't think this was all done ONLY to protect Melania's virgin ears...
My problem is these three allegations ("a violation of federal campaign finance laws, falsification of other business records or a violation of tax laws") would have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I honestly don't think they are and I don't even believe anyone else thins so either. If they were THOSE would have been the charges! You can't just indicate that other crimes have occurred and base a felony prosecution on those hints. Criminal justice simply doesn't work that way.
As I say, I don't encounter many people who really seem invested in the idea that this was a solid and impartial trial. Even most liberal legal analysts that I've read sidestep the question or admit that these charges were extraordinarily strange and weak. I don't think presidents should ever be prosecuted under these circumstances because now ALL will be. If Trump committed terrible crimes in office those crimes should be simple to explain, compelling, and provable beyond a reasonable doubt. All they proved here was that he falsified business records. Probably every businessman in the U.S. in the past 50 years has done that to one extent or another, inadvertently. This was not a strong case.
'conspiring to promote the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency by first-order unlawful means.' is not a NY State Crime. It SOUNDS criminal because it includes 'conspiring' and 'unlawful' but both of those beg the question. Replace 'planning' and remove unlawful and you're left without an act that's even remotely criminal. Lying to people is not illegal. falsifying business records is not a felony... UNLESS it's done in service of another crime. The fact that neither you nor anyone else can reasonably articulate what that crime is in a short paragraph leads me to believe that many of those jurors couldn't either. Keep in mind: the INDICTMENT never named the crime in question either. As far as I know such a thing has never happened. I imagine some of them just really disliked Trump (as you clearly do, and as I do) and were deranged by this. It's the oldest handicap of juries known to man and it's been leveraged by racists and liars and manipulative prosecutors for centuries. I further speculate that their friends and families and coworkers knew they were on the jury and this would have exerted some social pressure, as it probably did in the ridiculous show-trials of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.
When you're prosecuting power men you have to make sure your case is watertight and legally solid. When you're prosecuting a former president this applies 10x. This verdict has elated many Trump-haters and angered many Trump supporters and polls indicate it might have dissuaded some swing voters for voting for Trump... but all of the thoughtful and brilliant Trump opponents I know say this has made them MORE llikely to vote for him. It has certainly supercharged his fundraising.
If he's guilty you should want him to be found guilty even if it ensured he WON the election. That's what impartial justice means. I doubt that you or any other poster I've read in the past few weeks feel that way... and that tells me all I need to know.
One of those smart Trump-haters I mentioned:
https://open.substack.com/pub/hollymathnerd/p/how-to-think-about-trump?r=1neg52&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
James, beautifully written and thoughtful as ever. This case MUST go before SCOTUS - whether or not they want to get involved is inconsequential. The charges against Trump still remain undisclosed, or at the very least, baffling. More to the point, Trump was NEVER informed of the charges against him - so if the nine justices don't weigh in, the Constitution, its import and meaning, fly right out the window and it's over - but karma is one BITCH and I say, what goes around.... Make it a GREAT weekend, James and know how much your many admirers hold your character and your capabilites in very high esteem - with yours truly at the very top of the list - Be well and keep in touch! Regards from the war zone AKA NYC - John
Oh, have some patience; I had to slaughter troons on Reddit.
This is where the legitimacy of Cohen's conviction comes into play: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/04/nyregion/trump-indictment-annotated.html#:~:text=appear%20in%20court.-,9,-.
Specifically, see the NYT's notes 16–18. If you believe Cohen's campaign-finance convictions were legit—that he was indeed guilty—then surely the possibility of Trump's shared guilt should be comprehensible. The only real question is whether Trump knew what he was reimbursing Cohen for. And of course he did: Donald Trump is the very model of a hands-on executive—he's not the type to write checks without knowing what he's paying for. The Art of the Deal, remember?
Trump’s shared guilt is ABSOLUTELY comprehensible. I find it completely reasonable that Trump falsified business records. I think the evidence supports that. But did he do it intentionally? And as I’ve already said, for a felony conviction to be supported the falsifications must be in service of another crime(s). What are those? The prosecution never even said. Instead they gave a kind of buffer of maybe crimes. This isn’t how criminal justice usually works. In your view, speaking plainly, what crime were these falsifications made to conceal? I think I asked that earlier but perhaps you’re responding to so many people that it fell through the cracks.
Under Texas Penal Code 25.11, a person commits continuous violence against the family, a felony crime, if he or she commits two or more bodily-injury assaults upon one or more family members within a span of 12 months.
If such a case goes to trial, the jury is NOT required to unanimously agree on the exact dates or even the county in which the conduct occurred. More saliently, the jury does NOT need to unanimously agree as to whether each incident alleged would in itself meet the standard for an assault charge or conviction.
They're really just looking for a pattern of conduct. All the jury needs is a unanimous verdict that, given the facts, at least two incidents occured within 12 months that WOULD have qualified as assault. But they don't have to say WHICH, they don't have to say WHEN, and they don't have to say WHERE!
As far as I can tell, it's a similar concept here. They don't need to convict him of the first-order crimes that the alleged second-order crimes were in service of, because he's not being charged with those crimes. The question before the jury is: “what was the motivation for Trump's conduct?” If the motivation was “furtherance of a first-order crime,” then he committed the second-order crimes. Which he obviously did.
So what is the first-order crime? As far as I can tell the second-order crime is falsifying business records. As I wrote in my piece the prosecution provided 5 different legal theories as to what the first order crime MIGHT be (although tellingly none of them were included in the indictment) but they all have major issues: they’re not crimes, or they’re not NY state crimes, or the statute of limitations have expired, etc. Again I ask: what crimes were these falsifications made to conceal?
I think you’re right that the jury did not need to agree as to which crime it was. Merchan said as much in his instructions. But they were all tasked with deciding that the falsifications were made to conceal another NY State crime (which Trump was obviously never charged with) and that is the real question in my opinion. Falsifications are misdemeanors… unless they’re made to conceal a serious crime. What crime was Trump trying to conceal with these intentional errors? If he was ONLY trying to hide the fact that he slept with a porn star to hide it from his wife, for example, he’s not guilty. He needs to have clear and proven intent to conceal a crime. ????
This fuckin' interface. I responded... Down there 👇
Thanks for your response. I responded to that
The OJ jury was clearly racist which many people refuse to accept.
You would have to come up with an alternative explanation. Hostility towards police could be a factor, but even that doesn’t get you to ‘not guilty’ in my opinion, especially based on the evidence, which is possibly weightier (toward guilt) than any other trial I’ve ever studied.
There’s also the factor that Johnny Cochran and the jury consultants explicitly and intentionally appealed to anti-white & pro-black racism and urged Simpson to change his image to appeal to resentful black jurors. If racism wasn’t a factor then the defense sure thought it was!
Cohen was found guilty… was that legitimate, in your view? Why didn’t Trump pardon him, do you suppose? And what do you make of Trump’s declaration, outside the courtroom after the defense rested its case, that “we called it a legal expense”? Sounded to many like a confession…
Well Cohen pled, so it is absolutely legitimate. I imagine Trump failed to pardon him because he’s a petty and vindictive individual and felt betrayed, but that’s just speculation.
Even if Trump willfully falsified business records and payments that’s not sufficient to prove guilt here. He would have to falsify the records KNOWING it was illegal (which it usually is not-businesses have tremendous leeway in classifying their expenses and that’s usually just an accounting/tax matter). He would have to falsify the records in order to conceal another crime. That’s the real question here, which has remained unanswered. What crimes were the falsifications made in order to conceal? Without that element these are misdemeanors, at BEST, and would NEVER be prosecuted.
Not to mention, plea deals are usually accepted in exchange for more lenient sentencing. the illegal donation charge was tacked on to the tax raps as leverage, no telling if he would have fought the charge if he had the resources.
As to the pardons, Trump only pardoned around 50 people and very few of them were from his administration/campaign. we have no idea what criteria he used to issue pardons. he may have not done it to avoid political blowback, maybe cause he thought poorly of Cohen , who knows.
Certainly. I wasn't suggesting that plea deals are always just or warranted. I think >95% of defendants are found 'guilty' in federal trials so many innocent people plead. However, they're all 'legitimate' in the sense that the represent an agreement between the state and the defendant.
Cohen only received a 3-year sentence and toward the end he was on house arrest, also. He definitely cooperated with investigators before that, so not a great candidate for a pardon in a number of ways.
I understand what you were saying, I believe XxYwise was using "legitimate" as "substantively true" - so she could get you to say that there was an actual campaign finance violation in the factual record, when that's not what you were saying at all.
It's all word games with them, for instance they will keep calling him a "convicted felon" because it invokes thoughts of thieves and murderers instead of someone who was convicted of not reporting a payment that plausibly could be (but not an established) campaign donation.
slimy stuff.
Yes. I notice she didn't reply to my answers. No opportunities to pounce, judge, sanction, condescend i guess. It IS all word games and, worse, it's status: if they really cared about the things they say they care about (except in kind of an abstract, identitarian sense) they would live much different lives. They all long for and work for wealth and power and privilege, while they claim to want to abolish wealth and power and privilege. I'm no longer talking of my young friend specifically now. I just mean basically every single progressive I've ever met.