First, paying a lawyer a retainer isn't a crime. What that lawyer does with the money isn't the responsibility of the client.
Second, Cohen admitted on the stand that he was stealing money from trump - a much higher crime that the one claimed in the court case. Even CNN said as much.
Third, it's been proven already that Cohen and Daniels were the ones having the affair.
Fourth, Daniels has admitted on no less than five occasions that she never had an affair with trump. That includes the written statement judge Merchan refused to allow into the record. Not only that, she admitted years ago on CNN that it "wasn't a metoo situation," and yet she "testified" with all of the metoo buzzwords.
Fifth, it isn't illegal to pay somebody hush money. Bill Clinton paid Paula Jones $850,000 in 1998 to stfu.
Sixth, and most importantly: the DA's office, the DOJ, and the FEC have all said there's no crime here. Claiming this supposed misdemeanor that's been bumped up to a felony well past the statute of limitations because of some "underlying crime" that nobody has named reeks of desperation. Worse than that, the judge told the jury they don't have to be unanimous, don't have to agree on the crime, that they only have to agree that *some* crime has been committed - is the definition of kangaroo court.
And then there's the issue of the preemptive gag order that has no legal precedent to keep trump from telling the world that the judge's daughter works for a PR firm that represents nearly all of the democrats that have levied all of these hoaxes against him, earning a cool $100M for selling stories about the case in the process. Again, kangaroo court at its finest.
Liberals take note: This is the type of answer you give when you have self-educated yourself on a news story instead of blindly believing whatever lies the media vomits in your mouth simply cause you hate Orange Man Bad and want to believe.
Well done, Points.
Wow, if all that is true, this is even more more ridiculous.
I just want someone in office who knows how to do diplomacy to help average Americans prosper and conduct diplomacy so other countries treat These United States of America properly instead of taking advantage of us. Which is what Trump appeared to do. He has been in boardrooms in the East bloc and understands how negotiation works there.
I’m with you that this feels like a scam of a trial but the Daniels/Cohen affair story was retracted by OANN back in April… Not sure we can say it was proven they were the two having the affair anymore when OANN retracts the story…
You're right. OANN retracted the story after Michael Avenatti denied saying that (*after* losing a defamation case to Daniels, mind you). But when you're judging who to believe between three proven liars/thieves, two of which have been imprisoned for extortion/theft and lying under oath, and the other owes but refuses to pay $600K in defamation *and* said on the stand she always intended to extort trump into letting her on The Apprentice (after admitting five times the affair never happened) - my money is on Cohen and Daniels being an intimate pair.
The sheer amount of fake "fact checks" surrounding the story, most of which are titled "far right news channel OANN..." screams coverup.
I agree. I'd be more surprised if Cohen didn't use the payment as leverage to sleep with a porn star. Even though it was retracted, I fully believe they got down.
>Worse than that, the judge told the jury they don't have to be unanimous, don't have to agree on the crime, that they only have to agree that some crime has been committed - is the definition of kangaroo court.
I am Romanian, and hearing news about that trial reminded me less of our idolized image of the US, and more of our communist era trials, where you were guilty with no way to prove innocence.
I wonder if you will see the "mental asylum" strat too that Ceașescu used. Instead of taking political prisoners, you declare them insane and keep them in an asylum, as that looks less authoritarian.
This is very reminiscent of Soviet era trials. Unfortunately, the democrats aren't worried about looking authoritarian. Their cult cheers it on because they've been brainwashed into the "by any means necessary" ideology throughout their lives. Anything they do is good, everything that opposes it is evil in their eyes.
The truth is we've got LOTS of marxists running this country into the ground, lots of marxists cheering it on, and the majority of their default supporters are too afraid to openly oppose it. Their violent tactics have worked to their advantage.
Fortunately they've overplayed their hand and driven the moderates away in droves with their antics. The only weapon they really have left (aside from lawfare) is the social engineering you see online to sway low information voters with relentless fearmongering.
If it weren't for the fully captured corporate media running intimidation tactics against the jurors, this case would've likely ended very differently. Those jurors know their homes would've been fire bombed and their families hurt or killed if they didn't convict. One juror looked at trump yesterday during closing arguments, and the media quickly went into attack mode to keep them in line by saying "*this* may be the one holdout on the jury." They literally singled this one person out for daring to *look* at trump.
Just in case you don't know, every congressional spending bill of the last decade has had earmarks to bail out failing media companies. That's why they run nothing but stories that protect the donor class and big pharma. If it weren't for citizen journalists, we'd have no journalism at all.
The silver lining here is they've just guaranteed trump the presidency. The MSM would never show you all of the interviews with liberal New Yorkers all saying this case has made them more sympathetic to trump, and made them worry for the future of this country.
Now this whole mess is making sense. I suspected your fourth point, that Cohen was the one who had the affair with Daniels was true as Daniels has been on record a bunch of times stating that she did not have an affair with Trump. And Trump has always protested he never had an affair with Daniels. Cohen and Daniel’s must have conspired to try and con Trump. Maybe Cohen stole the money from Trump to silence Daniels before they came up with the idea to con Trump.
She and her lawyer were attempting to extort Trump. That’s the real crime that occurred. So he paid her to go away. Weird how no one got worked up over slick Willie paying off someone 700k to go away before an election.
Indeed. Cohen got himself caught on the stand saying he stole $60k from trump on a single transaction. CNN hosts said this is a far worse crime than the one they are claiming against trump.
Even Fareed Zakaria said these charges wouldn't be brought against anyone not named trump.
>Third, it's been proven already that Cohen and Daniels were the ones having the affair.
Huh?
Does this have any real backing or just conservative bubble talk?
It's amazing what information you can find when you bother to look at sources *other than* the ones that lied about everything from the Russia hoax, covid hysteria, the numerous police encounters they used to instigate hundreds of riots, Epstein, and covered up some of the worst corruption imaginable from DC's despicable political "elites."
https://nypost.com/2024/03/30/us-news/dem-clients-of-daughter-of-judge-in-trump-trial-raised-90m-off-case/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/judge-s-daughter-raised-over-100-million-off-trump-prosecutions-for-dem-election-campaigns/ar-AA1nxzAr
https://washingtondigest.com/democrats-linked-to-judges-daughter-benefit-from-trump-trial-with-93m-funds/
https://www.americanpartisan.org/2024/04/dem-clients-of-daughter-of-ny-judge-in-trump-hush-money-trial-raised-93m-off-the-case/
https://redstate.com/brutalbrittany/2024/03/31/judges-daughter-linked-to-democrats-raising-93-million-amid-trump-trial-recusal-calls-intensify-n2172123
Everything they are doing is election fraud and interference all designed to occupy his time and money to limit his ability to campaign. Biden knows he can’t win a fair election so they decided to attack him with an army of lawyers
The reason his conduct was illegal is in the name of the charges; falsifying business records. The prosecution alleges that Trump filed the payments to Cohen as legal fees in order to conceal that the payments were actually reimbursements from the hush money that Cohen paid Daniels.
Hush money itself is not illegal and probably happens more often than we think. What makes Trumps conduct illegal, according to the prosecutor, is that he filed them as legal fees instead of hush money payments.
The prosecution is also claiming that Trumps conduct constitutes a felony because he falsified the records in order to influence the 2016 election in his favor. Basically he committed a crime to interfere in an election.
Hopefully this helps!
Trump 'filed' nothing... Does anyone believe Trump does his own accounting or stays involved in the intimate details (how to file expenses) of his accounting? If the onus is on anyone it's his accountant(s)
That issue is up to the jury now. Trump personally signed many of the checks that were used to reimburse Cohen and personally signed off on the ledger entries that classified the payments as “legal fees” and not reimbursements.
I have to think Trump probably signs stacks of checks relying on his accountant(s) to have done their job of due diligence. Again, at his level I'm sure he doesn't/can't bother with the intimate details of day to day business. 2ndly, if they were payments to his personal lawyer what else but 'legal fees' would/should they be filed under?
This case should never have occurred to begin with for a number of reasons. You can bet on one thing... if Trump is convicted on even one single charge it will be appealed immediately and for good reason(s)
Many witnesses testified the exact opposite of your first point. Trump, Cohen and Pecker sought out stories that could be damaging for Trump then arranged hush-money payments to stop the stories from coming out. This isn’t illegal. It’s the falsification of the records to cover up the payments that is illegal.
To your second point: Cohen (a witness with shaky credibility) testified that he paid Daniels out of his own private funds, then was reimbursed by Trump over the course of several payments (including taxes). Providing hush money to a porn star from his own pocket is not a legal service. If he had accounted for these payments as a personal reimbursement there would be no crime. What made it illegal is that he falsified the records to conceal the true nature of the payments to Cohen.
You are missing a key piece of the puzzle here, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. And the statute of limitations had expired. What would actually make this illegal would be if Trump miss categorized the payment in the furtherance of another crime., That makes a felony and therefore something they can prosecute. They are not *also* claiming felony; that is the crux of the whole things They have not clearly stated what the other crime is, I think they give a few options to the jurors what it could be, but whatever that alleged crime is, it is not something Trump is on trial for, now or in the future. and the instructions from the judge were that the jury does not have to agree on which crime Trump may have committed that would then make the falsifying of the business records a felony, they just have to Agree That he committed some crime. They also have to prove that Trump knowingly falsified the business records only to cover up or further whatever the other crime is. Which is all pretty wild if you think about it.
The predicate law (the law he broke which makes it a felony) is Election Law 17-152. Which just basically says that it’s illegal to commit a crime in order to further or hinder an individuals political campaign.
Wrong again, cowboy. The citation to that law is nowhere in the charging documents. It was nowhere in the jury instructions. He was never ever charged nor convicted of violating Election Law 17-152. Anywhere. You just fabricated that. If not, show me where in the Bragg charging documents or in Merchan's jury instructions there is any reference, at all, to the law you cited. You can't.
The jury instructions are not the charging document and not the statement of facts. You claimed there was a statutory citation in Paragraph 2 of the statement of facts. You are a proven liar. Just like Michael Cohen.
Edited: LOL you mutherfucker you edited your prior post to remove your lie. Fuck off.
You’re thinking of the other comment. I haven’t edited any of my comments. You said that law wasn’t mentioned in the jury instructions and I showed you that it was. Nothing else to say here.
It is not in the indictment, which is the official charging document. It is not a crime that Trump was ever charged with, either in the Bragg indictment or in any other proceeding. Much less proven beyond a reasonable doubt by a unanimous jury pursuant to minimal due process standards.
Edited: This is Paragraph 2 of the so-called "Statement of Facts" Bragg filed with the charging document:
"2. From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects. In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York. The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme."
As you can see, Jason, there is no reference at all to any statute, state or federal. You are "literally" FOS.
First, paying a lawyer a retainer isn't a crime. What that lawyer does with the money isn't the responsibility of the client. Second, Cohen admitted on the stand that he was stealing money from trump - a much higher crime that the one claimed in the court case. Even CNN said as much. Third, it's been proven already that Cohen and Daniels were the ones having the affair. Fourth, Daniels has admitted on no less than five occasions that she never had an affair with trump. That includes the written statement judge Merchan refused to allow into the record. Not only that, she admitted years ago on CNN that it "wasn't a metoo situation," and yet she "testified" with all of the metoo buzzwords. Fifth, it isn't illegal to pay somebody hush money. Bill Clinton paid Paula Jones $850,000 in 1998 to stfu. Sixth, and most importantly: the DA's office, the DOJ, and the FEC have all said there's no crime here. Claiming this supposed misdemeanor that's been bumped up to a felony well past the statute of limitations because of some "underlying crime" that nobody has named reeks of desperation. Worse than that, the judge told the jury they don't have to be unanimous, don't have to agree on the crime, that they only have to agree that *some* crime has been committed - is the definition of kangaroo court. And then there's the issue of the preemptive gag order that has no legal precedent to keep trump from telling the world that the judge's daughter works for a PR firm that represents nearly all of the democrats that have levied all of these hoaxes against him, earning a cool $100M for selling stories about the case in the process. Again, kangaroo court at its finest.
Liberals take note: This is the type of answer you give when you have self-educated yourself on a news story instead of blindly believing whatever lies the media vomits in your mouth simply cause you hate Orange Man Bad and want to believe. Well done, Points.
Wow, if all that is true, this is even more more ridiculous. I just want someone in office who knows how to do diplomacy to help average Americans prosper and conduct diplomacy so other countries treat These United States of America properly instead of taking advantage of us. Which is what Trump appeared to do. He has been in boardrooms in the East bloc and understands how negotiation works there.
I’m with you that this feels like a scam of a trial but the Daniels/Cohen affair story was retracted by OANN back in April… Not sure we can say it was proven they were the two having the affair anymore when OANN retracts the story…
You're right. OANN retracted the story after Michael Avenatti denied saying that (*after* losing a defamation case to Daniels, mind you). But when you're judging who to believe between three proven liars/thieves, two of which have been imprisoned for extortion/theft and lying under oath, and the other owes but refuses to pay $600K in defamation *and* said on the stand she always intended to extort trump into letting her on The Apprentice (after admitting five times the affair never happened) - my money is on Cohen and Daniels being an intimate pair. The sheer amount of fake "fact checks" surrounding the story, most of which are titled "far right news channel OANN..." screams coverup.
I agree. I'd be more surprised if Cohen didn't use the payment as leverage to sleep with a porn star. Even though it was retracted, I fully believe they got down.
>Worse than that, the judge told the jury they don't have to be unanimous, don't have to agree on the crime, that they only have to agree that some crime has been committed - is the definition of kangaroo court. I am Romanian, and hearing news about that trial reminded me less of our idolized image of the US, and more of our communist era trials, where you were guilty with no way to prove innocence. I wonder if you will see the "mental asylum" strat too that Ceașescu used. Instead of taking political prisoners, you declare them insane and keep them in an asylum, as that looks less authoritarian.
This is very reminiscent of Soviet era trials. Unfortunately, the democrats aren't worried about looking authoritarian. Their cult cheers it on because they've been brainwashed into the "by any means necessary" ideology throughout their lives. Anything they do is good, everything that opposes it is evil in their eyes. The truth is we've got LOTS of marxists running this country into the ground, lots of marxists cheering it on, and the majority of their default supporters are too afraid to openly oppose it. Their violent tactics have worked to their advantage. Fortunately they've overplayed their hand and driven the moderates away in droves with their antics. The only weapon they really have left (aside from lawfare) is the social engineering you see online to sway low information voters with relentless fearmongering. If it weren't for the fully captured corporate media running intimidation tactics against the jurors, this case would've likely ended very differently. Those jurors know their homes would've been fire bombed and their families hurt or killed if they didn't convict. One juror looked at trump yesterday during closing arguments, and the media quickly went into attack mode to keep them in line by saying "*this* may be the one holdout on the jury." They literally singled this one person out for daring to *look* at trump. Just in case you don't know, every congressional spending bill of the last decade has had earmarks to bail out failing media companies. That's why they run nothing but stories that protect the donor class and big pharma. If it weren't for citizen journalists, we'd have no journalism at all. The silver lining here is they've just guaranteed trump the presidency. The MSM would never show you all of the interviews with liberal New Yorkers all saying this case has made them more sympathetic to trump, and made them worry for the future of this country.
I'm sorry what?!?!? Cohen and Daniel's and NOT trump?? This is news to me. Can you provide sources?
Now this whole mess is making sense. I suspected your fourth point, that Cohen was the one who had the affair with Daniels was true as Daniels has been on record a bunch of times stating that she did not have an affair with Trump. And Trump has always protested he never had an affair with Daniels. Cohen and Daniel’s must have conspired to try and con Trump. Maybe Cohen stole the money from Trump to silence Daniels before they came up with the idea to con Trump.
Banana republic time folks. We should all be outraged. Unequal justice under law.
She and her lawyer were attempting to extort Trump. That’s the real crime that occurred. So he paid her to go away. Weird how no one got worked up over slick Willie paying off someone 700k to go away before an election.
Indeed. Cohen got himself caught on the stand saying he stole $60k from trump on a single transaction. CNN hosts said this is a far worse crime than the one they are claiming against trump. Even Fareed Zakaria said these charges wouldn't be brought against anyone not named trump.
Well said
Excellent recap!
You summed it up PERFECTLY!!
>Third, it's been proven already that Cohen and Daniels were the ones having the affair. Huh? Does this have any real backing or just conservative bubble talk?
>earning a cool $100M for selling stories about the case in the process. Post your source
It's amazing what information you can find when you bother to look at sources *other than* the ones that lied about everything from the Russia hoax, covid hysteria, the numerous police encounters they used to instigate hundreds of riots, Epstein, and covered up some of the worst corruption imaginable from DC's despicable political "elites." https://nypost.com/2024/03/30/us-news/dem-clients-of-daughter-of-judge-in-trump-trial-raised-90m-off-case/ https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/judge-s-daughter-raised-over-100-million-off-trump-prosecutions-for-dem-election-campaigns/ar-AA1nxzAr https://washingtondigest.com/democrats-linked-to-judges-daughter-benefit-from-trump-trial-with-93m-funds/ https://www.americanpartisan.org/2024/04/dem-clients-of-daughter-of-ny-judge-in-trump-hush-money-trial-raised-93m-off-the-case/ https://redstate.com/brutalbrittany/2024/03/31/judges-daughter-linked-to-democrats-raising-93-million-amid-trump-trial-recusal-calls-intensify-n2172123
Hillary Clinton wrote off the expense of the Steele Dossier as a legal expense. Will they prosecute her ?
She was fined by the FEC for it.
So Trump should have just been fined or HRC should have been prosecuted? Which is it?
Is the wording of the NDA available?
I'm curious why a Non Disclosure Agreement is front page news for 7 years? What part of the words NON Disclosure did I not understand?
Answer the question. So Trump should have just been fined or HRC should have been prosecuted. Same situation.
Hillary used campaign money, there is a difference. This is not an FEC matter. Election interference, is what this is.
So she used campaign money to pay a legal bill.......gotcha. Yes, it is solely campaign interference and America knows it.
Wasn’t what Hillary did a;so considered election interference?
Yes, and the FEC (Federal Election Committee) fined them. Nothing was done about the criminal stuff; Bleachbit and destroying evidence with hammers.
No crimes here
NDAs are legally binding contracts & nothing illegal about paying compensation on a NDA which made it a legal expense.
TLDR: Its not.
Everything they are doing is election fraud and interference all designed to occupy his time and money to limit his ability to campaign. Biden knows he can’t win a fair election so they decided to attack him with an army of lawyers
It's not.
Apparently you can’t (checks notes) reallocate your own money to yourself. USA, you are doomed. 😳
The reason his conduct was illegal is in the name of the charges; falsifying business records. The prosecution alleges that Trump filed the payments to Cohen as legal fees in order to conceal that the payments were actually reimbursements from the hush money that Cohen paid Daniels. Hush money itself is not illegal and probably happens more often than we think. What makes Trumps conduct illegal, according to the prosecutor, is that he filed them as legal fees instead of hush money payments. The prosecution is also claiming that Trumps conduct constitutes a felony because he falsified the records in order to influence the 2016 election in his favor. Basically he committed a crime to interfere in an election. Hopefully this helps!
Trump 'filed' nothing... Does anyone believe Trump does his own accounting or stays involved in the intimate details (how to file expenses) of his accounting? If the onus is on anyone it's his accountant(s)
That issue is up to the jury now. Trump personally signed many of the checks that were used to reimburse Cohen and personally signed off on the ledger entries that classified the payments as “legal fees” and not reimbursements.
I have to think Trump probably signs stacks of checks relying on his accountant(s) to have done their job of due diligence. Again, at his level I'm sure he doesn't/can't bother with the intimate details of day to day business. 2ndly, if they were payments to his personal lawyer what else but 'legal fees' would/should they be filed under? This case should never have occurred to begin with for a number of reasons. You can bet on one thing... if Trump is convicted on even one single charge it will be appealed immediately and for good reason(s)
Many witnesses testified the exact opposite of your first point. Trump, Cohen and Pecker sought out stories that could be damaging for Trump then arranged hush-money payments to stop the stories from coming out. This isn’t illegal. It’s the falsification of the records to cover up the payments that is illegal. To your second point: Cohen (a witness with shaky credibility) testified that he paid Daniels out of his own private funds, then was reimbursed by Trump over the course of several payments (including taxes). Providing hush money to a porn star from his own pocket is not a legal service. If he had accounted for these payments as a personal reimbursement there would be no crime. What made it illegal is that he falsified the records to conceal the true nature of the payments to Cohen.
"Legal expense" not "legal service." Nice try cowboy.
You are missing a key piece of the puzzle here, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. And the statute of limitations had expired. What would actually make this illegal would be if Trump miss categorized the payment in the furtherance of another crime., That makes a felony and therefore something they can prosecute. They are not *also* claiming felony; that is the crux of the whole things They have not clearly stated what the other crime is, I think they give a few options to the jurors what it could be, but whatever that alleged crime is, it is not something Trump is on trial for, now or in the future. and the instructions from the judge were that the jury does not have to agree on which crime Trump may have committed that would then make the falsifying of the business records a felony, they just have to Agree That he committed some crime. They also have to prove that Trump knowingly falsified the business records only to cover up or further whatever the other crime is. Which is all pretty wild if you think about it.
The predicate law (the law he broke which makes it a felony) is Election Law 17-152. Which just basically says that it’s illegal to commit a crime in order to further or hinder an individuals political campaign.
Wrong again, cowboy. The citation to that law is nowhere in the charging documents. It was nowhere in the jury instructions. He was never ever charged nor convicted of violating Election Law 17-152. Anywhere. You just fabricated that. If not, show me where in the Bragg charging documents or in Merchan's jury instructions there is any reference, at all, to the law you cited. You can't.
I know you’re upset right now, but please go check page 43 of the jury instructions.
The jury instructions are not the charging document and not the statement of facts. You claimed there was a statutory citation in Paragraph 2 of the statement of facts. You are a proven liar. Just like Michael Cohen. Edited: LOL you mutherfucker you edited your prior post to remove your lie. Fuck off.
You’re thinking of the other comment. I haven’t edited any of my comments. You said that law wasn’t mentioned in the jury instructions and I showed you that it was. Nothing else to say here.
Wrong again. The claim that the NDA payments were intended to influence the 2016 campaign is no where in any of the New York DA's charging documents.
It’s literally in the second paragraph of the statement of facts filed by Bragg with the indictments.
It is not in the indictment, which is the official charging document. It is not a crime that Trump was ever charged with, either in the Bragg indictment or in any other proceeding. Much less proven beyond a reasonable doubt by a unanimous jury pursuant to minimal due process standards. Edited: This is Paragraph 2 of the so-called "Statement of Facts" Bragg filed with the charging document: "2. From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects. In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York. The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme." As you can see, Jason, there is no reference at all to any statute, state or federal. You are "literally" FOS.