A convicted felon / President?

[Toddsterpatriot]

Falsification of business records.
These charges were elevated to felonies because each count (offense) was committed for the purpose of illegally influencing an election, which is a federal felony and a felony under New York State law as well.
Anymore stupid questions that you are incapable of looking up the answers to yourself.

Invoices for legal services​

Guilty on 11 of 11 charges

Checks paid for legal services​

Guilty on 11 of 11 charges

Ledger entries for legal expenses​

Guilty on 12 of 12 charges

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/30/nx-s1-4977352/trump-trial-verdict

was committed for the purpose of illegally influencing an election,

Influencing an election isn't illegal.

 

[MagicMike]

was committed for the purpose of illegally influencing an election,

Influencing an election isn't illegal.

No but illegally influencing an election is.
It all would have been legal if he'd simply recorded his hush money payments to a porn actress for what they were instead of ledgering them as "attorney fees," which they were not.
Of course that wouldn't have looked very good in fall of 2016.....right when he was trying to crawl out from under the "grab em by the pussy" scandal.
So that is the crux of it all.
He committed bookkeeping fraud in order to influence an election....in violation of federal and NY state law.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

No but illegally influencing an election is.
It all would have been legal if he'd simply recorded his hush money payments to a porn actress for what they were instead of ledgering them as "attorney fees," which they were not.
Of course that wouldn't have looked very good in fall of 2016.....right when he was trying to crawl out from under the "grab em by the pussy" scandal.
So that is the crux of it all.
He committed bookkeeping fraud in order to influence an election....in violation of federal and NY state law.

He committed bookkeeping fraud in order to influence an election....

No such thing.

The election-law-conspiracy statute Bragg cites (§17-152), states the following, in pertinent part:

Any two or more persons who conspire to promote . . . the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means . . . shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

A criminal conspiracy is simply an agreement to commit a crime. Yet, Bragg and Merchan misconstrue this statute to mean that the proscribed conspiracy is the agreement “to promote the election of any person.” That is, they’d have us see the promotion of a candidate’s election as the objective — the end result the conspirators were seeking to achieve — even though that objective is not a crime.

What about the statute’s reference to “unlawful means”? Merchan and Bragg interpret that merely to state, literally, the means by which the conspirators seek their objective. The criminal law distinguishes a conspiracy’s end from the means by which conspirators seek to achieve it. It is the end — the objective — on which jurors must unanimously agree; they need not be unanimous as to means (the latter are often not even alleged in a conspiracy indictment). That was Merchan’s rationalization for instructing the jurors that they needn’t be unanimous regarding the “unlawful means.”

Alas, while literalism is usually desirable in interpreting statutory text, here it invites error. To repeat, “to promote the election of any person” cannot be the objective of a criminal conspiracy because it’s not a crime. The reason the jury must be unanimous about the objective of a conspiracy is that the objective is the intended crime. In §17-152, however, there is no intended crime unless what the statute confusingly calls “unlawful means” are factored in. Ergo, the so-called unlawful means are not really means; they are ends. Simply stated, what the statute labels “unlawful means” are the most essential part of the objective — the activities that make the agreement illegal, that make it a criminal conspiracy.

To convict, a jury must unanimously find, beyond a reasonable doubt, the crime that is the objective of the conspiracy. With regard to the state’s allegation that Trump falsified records to conceal a criminal conspiracy, it would be insufficient for prosecutors to establish that Trump, Cohen, and Pecker agreed to promote Trump’s election. Promoting a candidate’s election is legal. It is what political campaigns do. The First Amendment would not abide an attempt by a state legislature to criminalize it (however much such blue states as New York would like to make it a crime to support the election of Donald Trump).

The agreement can only be a criminal conspiracy if it entails an effort to commit a crime. The agreement to commit a crime is what makes a conspiracy, and the concealment of such a conspiracy is what makes falsification of business records a felony, rather than a misdemeanor. Consequently, in Erlinger terms, the objective crime is the fact that exposes the defendant to an enhanced penalty. For a conviction to be valid, then, a jury would have to find, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt, at least one of the three criminal activities (or “unlawful means”) proposed by Bragg — the FECA scheme, the falsification of Cohen’s business records, or the tax crimes. To be clear, the jurors needed only to have found one, not all three; but they had to find at least one — the same one, unanimously.

ANDREW C. MCCARTHY