"She’s on tape. The beautiful thing about modern technology is when you say something, you’re screwed if it’s bad.” - Trump

[martybegan]

The daughter is totally irrelevant because, get this, she is a DIFFERENT PERSON.

Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Daddy's little girl is as big a Trump hater as he is.

 

[Marener]

Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Daddy's little girl is as big a Trump hater as he is.

Your metaphor may work on low information twats, but it has no effect on any legal proceeding.

If you want to paint Merchan as biased, you need to explain how he's biased.

 

[martybegan]

Your metaphor may work on low information twats, but it has no effect on any legal proceeding.

If you want to paint Merchan as biased, you need to explain how he's biased.

I have, you just don't agree with my views on this.

The whole process was biased from the Start. a DA saying I will get Trump, a Judge with obvious anti-Trump bias and rulings that mostly went against Trump followed by a jury instruction to a biased jury sealing the deal.

Stalin and Beria would be proud.

 

[Marener]

I have, you just don't agree with my views on this.

The whole process was biased from the Start. a DA saying I will get Trump, a Judge with obvious anti-Trump bias and rulings that mostly went against Trump followed by a jury instruction to a biased jury sealing the deal.

Stalin and Beria would be proud.

Having rulings mostly go against Trump doesn't say anything about bias if Trump's teams made motions that were inappropriate and should have been ruled against. This would not be unexpected given the defense generally throws the spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks.

Calling the jury biased is also unsubstantiated.

The facts were that he did falsify business records.

 

[martybegan]

Having rulings mostly go against Trump doesn't say anything about bias if Trump's teams made motions that were inappropriate and should have been ruled against. This would not be unexpected given the defense generally throws the spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks.

Calling the jury biased is also unsubstantiated.

The facts were that he did falsify business records.

It's NYC jury.

Which should be a bookkeeping error and at most a fine of $50 and a slap on the wrist, instead of the construct made by Bragg to turn it into a felony that could be prosecuted AFTER the statute of limitations ran out.

 

[Marener]

It's NYC jury.

Which should be a bookkeeping error and at most a fine of $50 and a slap on the wrist, instead of the construct made by Bragg to turn it into a felony that could be prosecuted AFTER the statute of limitations ran out.

It wasn't just an error. It was very intentional and deliberate. That's what makes it a crime.

You're proving your bias by trying to lie about the nature of the offense.

 

[martybegan]

It wasn't just an error. It was very intentional and deliberate. That's what makes it a crime.

You're proving your bias by trying to lie about the nature of the offense.

And you continue to base your opinion on nothing but your hatred for Trump.

 

[Marener]

And you continue to base your opinion on nothing but your hatred for Trump.

My opinion is based on facts, many of which you have been kept ignorant of.

The fact is that it was deliberate. We saw that evidence during the trial.

 

[martybegan]

My opinion is based on facts, many of which you have been kept ignorant of.

The fact is that it was deliberate. We saw that evidence during the trial.

No, your opinion is based on your view of some facts.

And your opinion is that was somehow a crime worthy of millions in prosecution costs and fucking over our legal system.

 

[Marener]

No, your opinion is based on your view of some facts.

And your opinion is that was somehow a crime worthy of millions in prosecution costs and fucking over our legal system.

Ah, so now we are walking back the idea that we shouldn't prosecute a crime if it is costly. Yet another way that you want the legal system to treat rich people differently.

If the penalty is a fine, it's only illegal for poor people.

The facts presented at trial clearly indicate that it was intentional. They came up with fake retainer agreements to cover the costs which they "grossed up" because they knew that Cohen would have to pay income taxes on it. The notations are on the paperwork.

 

[martybegan]

Ah, so now we are walking back the idea that we shouldn't prosecute a crime if it is costly. Yet another way that you want the legal system to treat rich people differently.

If the penalty is a fine, it's only illegal for poor people.

The facts presented at trial clearly indicate that it was intentional. They came up with fake retainer agreements to cover the costs which they "grossed up" because they knew that Cohen would have to pay income taxes on it. The notations are on the paperwork.

No, we shouldn't if it's a political "crime" that takes lawfare level constructs to make palatable to even the most deranged anti-Trump lefty.

I want the legal system to be blind as it's supposed to be, not a plaything for TDS Dems to "Get teh Trumpz" which is clearly the case here.

And yet they couldn't use a direct law to prosecute it, they had to construct some bullshit to take a possible federal violation and magnify it into a local felony, 34 of them for the same thing.

It's all bullshit.

 

[Marener]

No, we shouldn't if it's a political "crime" that takes lawfare level constructs to make palatable to even the most deranged anti-Trump lefty.

I want the legal system to be blind as it's supposed to be, not a plaything for TDS Dems to "Get teh Trumpz" which is clearly the case here.

And yet they couldn't use a direct law to prosecute it, they had to construct some bullshit to take a possible federal violation and magnify it into a local felony, 34 of them for the same thing.

It's all bullshit.

If you want the legal system to be blind, except you demand that we ignore crimes committed by Trump because he's a politician.

Your babbling about a "direct law" is meaningless. It was a federal violation, Cohen was prosecuted for it.

 

[martybegan]

If you want the legal system to be blind, except you demand that we ignore crimes committed by Trump because he's a politician.

Your babbling about a "direct law" is meaningless. It was a federal violation, Cohen was prosecuted for it.

These are only prosecuted made up crimes because Trump is Trump.

 

[Marener]

These are only prosecuted made up crimes because Trump is Trump.

Nothing made up about it. The records were false. That was proven in court.

 

[martybegan]

Nothing made up about it. The records were false. That was proven in court.

And that extrapolating to 34 felonies is bullshit.

 

[Marener]

And that extrapolating to 34 felonies is bullshit.

It's a felony if the records were falsified to cover up another crime.

There were FEC violations with the NDA. The ones that Cohen was prosecuted over.

 

[martybegan]

It's a felony if the records were falsified to cover up another crime.

There were FEC violations with the NDA. The ones that Cohen was prosecuted over.

No, it was expanded to a felony in an attempt to get around the statute of limitations and "get Trump"

Why is a State court and prosecutor trying to prosecute a federal violation?

Was Cohen tried in a State Court?

 

[Marener]

No, it was expanded to a felony in an attempt to get around the statute of limitations and "get Trump"

Why is a State court and prosecutor trying to prosecute a federal violation?

Was Cohen tried in a State Court?

He wasn't prosecuting a federal violation, merely recognizing that the federal violation existed.

Which it did. Cohen was proseucted for it.

 

[martybegan]

He wasn't prosecuting a federal violation, merely recognizing that the federal violation existed.

Which it did. Cohen was proseucted for it.

Bullshit. Sorry but why didn't a federal court try Trump then?

Answer the question, was Cohen tried in a Federal or State Court?

 

[Marener]

Bullshit. Sorry but why didn't a federal court try Trump then?

Answer the question, was Cohen tried in a Federal or State Court?

Proving the case that Trump committed the violation would be more difficult and so the SDNY made a decision not to prosecute it. The fact that they prosecuted Cohen for it is sufficient. .

This article explains it better than any other I've read:

Why Did Federal Prosecutors Drop Trump's Hush Money Case?

The answer may shed light on the strength of District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Donald Trump.

www.lawfaremedia.org

Honig points to a number of factors that the office reportedly considered, including the “politically explosive” nature of bringing charges against a former president. Some of the other factors at work, though, might have been more workaday considerations speaking to the underlying strength of the case. Chief among them was the problem of witnesses.

A federal prosecution of Trump on the hush money charges would have relied heavily on Michael Cohen as a star witness—just as Bragg’s prosecution of Trump has done. As prosecutors in the district attorney’s office are grappling with, though, Cohen is not the most reliable witness. He is an admitted liar: At the same time the Southern District announced his plea on the hush money charges, Special Counsel Robert Mueller unveiled a separate plea agreement under which Cohen acknowledged lying to Congress in 2017.

Bragg apparently decided to take the risk of putting Cohen on the stand, but perhaps federal prosecutors reached a different conclusion. This decision may well have been shaped by the Southern District’s unusual approach to dealing with potential cooperating witnesses. Geoffrey Berman, who led the office from 2018 through 2020, describes SDNY’s practice in his memoir on his time in the office: SDNY will offer a cooperating agreement only if a would-be witness agrees to share details about any and all other criminal activity in their past, even on matters unrelated to the case at hand. Cohen, though, would not agree to this arrangement: “[H]e would not discuss his business activities outside his work for the Trump Organization,” Berman states, of the office’s initial negotiations with Cohen. (The Southern District made its irritation with Cohen’s intransigence clear in its sentencing memo.) All this meant that the Southern District wouldn’t have been willing to put Cohen on the stand during any federal trial of Trump, making the case even more difficult to bring.

Like the district attorney’s office, SDNY also seems to have been unable to secure the cooperation of Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, who would have been able to testify to Trump’s involvement in the reimbursement payoffs to Cohen. Weisselberg reportedly received immunity to testify before the federal grand jury, but there is no indication that SDNY ever reached a cooperation agreement with him. In fact, the New York Times has reported that SDNY was at one point investigating whether Weisselberg had lied before the grand jury or had otherwise obstructed the investigation—consistent with Weisselberg’s lack of cooperation with the district attorney’s case.

When it comes to the problem of absent or unreliable witnesses, though, Bragg’s office is situated differently than SDNY in important ways. Unlike the Southern District, the district attorney’s office has no policy requiring that cooperating witnesses air all their dirty laundry with prosecutors ahead of time, meaning that Bragg apparently had fewer compunctions about putting Michael Cohen on the stand. It seems that Cohen’s relationship with prosecutors in the Southern District was genuinely strained by the end: During cross-examination by defense attorney Todd Blanche, Cohen acknowledged calling the federal prosecutors, along with the judge in his federal case, “corrupt” and “fucking animals.” Maybe the DA’s office was able to get off on a better foot with their star witness.

The specific charges at issue in the state prosecution, as opposed to the would-be federal case, also make Cohen less of a potential problem for Bragg than he would have been for SDNY. A FECA case against Trump would have required a great deal of evidence about Trump’s knowledge and mental state, which—in the absence of Weisselberg—only Cohen could have provided. The business records charges under which Trump was indicted in New York, though, are much less reliant on Cohen’s testimony.

In charging Trump under FECA, prosecutors would need to have shown that Trump “knowingly and willfully” violated the statute—that, as the Justice Department describes it, he “acted with knowledge that [his] conduct was against the law.” (In its 2017 update to its manual on “Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses,” the department relaxed the standard for just how much knowledge the defendant must have of the relevant law allegedly broken, but the mens rea requirement is still unusually high.) They also would have needed to convince a jury that the hush money payments were made specifically because of the election, rather than covering up Daniels’s and McDougal’s stories to spare Trump’s family embarrassment.