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justinspoliticalcorner · 12 days

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Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

Donald Trump’s first of four criminal trials is scheduled to begin Monday in New York. After what is expected to be two to three weeks for jury selection, Trump’s criminal trial—where he is facing 34 felonies--is predicted to take six weeks. That means by mid-June, Donald Trump will be a convicted felon. It’s really that simple. Is there a chance Trump is not convicted? Sure, as a former trial lawyer, I can vouch firsthand that juries can surprise you. But based on the evidence developed in the criminal investigation and disclosed during the pre-trial portion of this case, it is clear that Trump falsified documents to conceal other federal and state crimes. Thus, Trump committed numerous felonies. Everyone knows the core allegation, namely that Trump—via his then lawyer Michael Cohen--paid $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election to stop Stormy Daniels from going public with the tale of her affair with Trump. Now, if Trump had paid Daniels solely to keep his wife from finding out about his affair, that would be one thing. It wasn’t.

Trump paid Daniels the money because he feared that if information went public at the time, he would lose the 2016 election. That at the very least made the secret payment a violation of federal election laws—which is one of the felonies Cohen pled guilty to committing in 2018, telling the court he made the payment “in coordination with, and at the direction of,” a presidential candidate who was Trump. This is why Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has repeatedly stated the “core” of this case “is not money for sex,” it’s election corruption. Indeed, the very first line of the Statement of Facts that details the basis for the charges against Trump tells us that, “The defendant DONALD J. TRUMP repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.”

When you look at the timing of when Trump first hatched this scheme to pay off Daniels, you get why this was all about the campaign. The charging documents tell us point blank: “About one month before the election, on or about October 7, 2016, news broke that the Defendant had been caught on tape saying to the host of Access Hollywood: “I just start kissing them [women]. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…Grab ’em by the [genitals]. You can do anything.” The political firestorm caused by the release of the Access Hollywood tape is why just three days later, Trump—with the help of Cohen and his publisher friend AMI Editor-in-Chief David Pecker-- moved swiftly to pay off Daniels. They heard she was shopping around the story of her affair with Trump. And Trump, former Trump aide Hope Hicks (who the State will be calling as a witness), Cohen and others knew that it would have been devastating for his campaign if voters learned in the midst of the Access Hollywood tape backlash that Trump had an affair with a “porn star” a mere four months after Melania gave birth to their only child.

Indeed, the statement of facts tells us this was all about the campaign: “The evidence shows that both the Defendant and his campaign staff were concerned that the tape would harm his viability as a candidate and reduce his standing with female voters in particular.” That is why Daniels was approached on October 10, 2016, with a deal to “prevent disclosure of the damaging information in the final weeks before the presidential election.” Under the agreement, Daniels was paid $130,000. But here is where the crimes come in. As the pleadings explain, Trump “did not want to make the $130,000 payment himself” so he asked Cohen to come up with a way to do that. “After discussing various payment options,” Cohen agreed he would make the payment and Trump would pay him back. It all worked as planned, Daniels never told America about the affair and Trump won the election.

Then, “shortly after being elected President, the Defendant arranged to reimburse” Cohen for the payoff he made to Daniels on Trump’s behalf. The plan they came up was that Cohen would be paid monthly for “legal fees” until the amount he advanced was repaid. In reality, as the pleadings note, “At no point did Lawyer A [Cohen] have a retainer agreement with the Defendant or the Trump Organization.” Yet Cohen still submitted monthly invoices to Trump’s company for legal services. Some were paid by Trump’s company while nine of the reimbursement checks to Cohen for fabricated legal services came from Trump’s personal bank account and Trump “signed each of the checks personally.” And as alleged, “The Defendant caused his entities’ business records to be falsified to disguise his and others’ criminal conduct.”

Dean Obeidallah wrote in his Dean's Report Substack that Donald Trump will likely have the words "convicted felon" attached to his name by sometime in June or early July should the jury find him guilty in the Manhattan election interference case. Most of America wants to see charges levied against him.

#Donald Trump #People of New York v. Trump #Donald Trump Trial #Trump Indictment #Alvin Bragg #Juan Manuel Merchan #Stormy Daniels #Michael Cohen #Stormy Daniels/Donald Trump Affair #2016 Presidential Election #2016 Elections #Trump Organization #American Media Inc.#David Pecker #National Enquirer #2005 Trump Access Hollywood Tape

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liberalsarecool · 6 months

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None of this is new info. The people that know Trump best all know he is a scumbag.

This kills the myth of white superiority that white supremacists cling to.

There are no more unguarded moments. Nothing left to reveal.

The cheating, lying, racism, and fraud are the cornerstones of the white superiority myth.

Republicans have internalized Trump. They are the strip club loser. They are the shady business loser. They are the 'pay for sex' losers. They are the 'I cheat on my wife' loser. They are the tax dodge loser.

And Republicans only want to be worse because they are addicted to the shamelessness.

#michael cohen

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mysharona1987 · 1 year

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#stormy daniels #trump #donald trump #twitter #nyc #michael cohen #news

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rejectingrepublicans · 3 days

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#Michael Cohen #traitor trump #crooked donald #trump farts #trump smells #republican assholes #trump humor #maga morons #political humor #republican hypocrisy #republican family values

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republicansaredomesticterrorists · 4 days

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#Trump trial #trump hush money trial #Trump election interference trial #David pecker #Michael Cohen #Steve Bannon #national enquirer #stormy daniels #bill and Hillary Clinton #Marco Rubio #Ted Cruz #Ben Carson #never trump #republican assholes #traitor trump #crooked donald #maga morons

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tomorrowusa · 12 days

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The Donald Trump hush money trial starts today in NYC.

Jury selection is the first order of business. In normal trials that may take a day or two. With Trump's legal foot-dragging, that could go into weeks.

There had been some doubts about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's approach to this case. There is some new ground here. But Slate's Mark Joseph Stern, an attorney who initially had some reservations about the prosecution, is now "fully onboard" with it.

Over the past year, though, I have realized that my initial doubts about Bragg’s indictment were misplaced. It now seems clear that Trump’s New York trial, slated to begin this week, will be the former president’s only criminal trial before the November election. The other three strong indictments against him in other jurisdictions have unfortunately been delayed by a corrupt judge, a foot-dragging Supreme Court, and a district attorney’s questionable conduct in an already complex case. This, combined with Bragg’s excellent pretrial briefing, has substantially strengthened the case for this prosecution. It is important to American democracy that Trump be forced to defend at least some of his alleged criminal conduct before a jury of his peers in advance of Election Day. [ ... ] Shortly before the 2020 election, Trump wanted to kill a story about his alleged affair with Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress. So he allegedly directed his longtime fixer Michael Cohen to pay off Daniels, through a shell company, for her silence. Afterward, Trump funneled $420,000 to Cohen in installments. But he allegedly concealed the payments by listing them as legal expenses for a retainer that did not exist. Last year, I was uncertain whether this scheme, while sordid, rose to the level of a felony offense. I am now convinced that, if proved that he took these actions, it surely does. The falsification of business records is, by itself, a misdemeanor under New York law, but it’s a felony when it’s done with the “intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” In his indictment, Bragg claims that Trump lied about the payments with the intent to violate election law, which is what elevates the crime to a felony. Initially, I was suspicious of this theory; what election law, exactly, was the former president attempting to violate? The district attorney’s initial statement of facts was hazy on this crucial point, raising the possibility that he couldn’t tie the underlying fraud to a state or federal statute. Turns out he could. Bragg has argued, convincingly, that the former president intended to violate at least two election laws—one state, one federal. First, Bragg asserted that Trump and Cohen ran afoul of the Federal Election Campaign Act by making unlawful campaign contributions (in the form of a payoff) at the direction of a candidate (that is, Trump).

As a criminal defendant, Trump has to be in court for the trial. And except for holidays, court will be in session four days a week.

So Trump will be in Lower Manhattan quite a bit for the next couple of months. The New York County (Manhattan) Courthouse is at 100 Centre Street. And he owns a major property at 40 Wall Street (modestly called The Trump Building) where he might occasionally be seen. Google Maps puts the walking distance between the two locations at 0.8 miles (1.28 km). So if you're tempted to exercise your First Amendment right to express your opinions to Trump...

#new york #donald trump #hush money #trump's legal problems #alvin bragg #stormy daniels #michael cohen #falsification of business records #cover-up #federal election campaign act #lower manhattan #mark joseph stern #lock him up #election 2024 #vote blue no matter who

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not-safe-for-democracy · 2 years

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#allen weisselberg #steve bannon #roger stone #michael cohen #paul manafort #mike flynn #rick gates #trump #donald trump #he barely knew them

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 6 months

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Donald Trump stormed out of a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday after a heated day in court that saw the former president called to the witness stand in his $250 million fraud case and fined $10,000 for violating a gag order.

Trump's abrupt departure appeared to surprise even his own lawyers and his Secret Service agents, who went scurrying after him. He returned to the courtroom after the court day ended, and after his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, finished his contentious testimony.

Judge Arthur Engoron handed down the financial penalty after calling Trump to testify under oath in the afternoon about who he was talking about when he told reporters earlier in the day that the person sitting next to the Judge was "very partisan."

Trump said he was referring to Cohen, who he's previously called a rat, a liar and a felon.

The Judge asked Trump if he'd previously referred to his law clerk as "partisan" and Trump said, "maybe" he had referred to her as not fair because she's "very biased."

But, Trump insisted, he was referring to Cohen when he told reporters earlier that Engoron is “a very partisan judge with a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.”

Engoron's law clerk sits next to him and has been the subject of complaints from Trump's team, including earlier Wednesday, when Trump lawyer Alina Habba asked that there be no eye-rolling or whispers from the bench during her questioning of Cohen.

Engoron said he found Trump's testimony "not credible." He fined Trump for violating the gag order he issued earlier this month after the former president had smeared his law clerk on social media.

Trump stormed out of the courtroom about 45 minutes later, after the Judge denied a motion from his lawyers on a separate legal issue. Trump lawyer Cliff Robert had seized on Cohen's testimony that Trump never explicitly instructed him to inflate his financial statements to ask the Judge for a directed verdict dismissing the AG's claims about the statements, which Engoron refused.

The abrupt departure appeared to catch even his attorneys by surprise and caused gasps throughout the courtroom.

"The witness just admitted that we won the trial and the Judge should end this trial immediately. Thank you," Trump told reporters after he left.

Under questioning from AG's office, Cohen testified later Trump didn't specifically tell him to inflate the numbers and said he was like a "mob boss" who tells you what he wants without directly telling you.

When Cohen wrapped up his fiery two days on the witness stand, Robert again asked the Judge for a directed verdict, a request he said was "absolutely denied."

"This case has credible evidence all over the place," the judge said. "There is enough evidence in this case to fill this courtroom."

“They wanted to make a motion to dismiss the case, to which the judge responded: ‘Yeah, absolutely not,’” Cohen told reporters after leaving the courtroom. “You know why? Because he will ultimately be held accountable.”

Trump's lawyer had earlier asked the Judge to reconsider the fine, again contending the "partisan" person Trump referred to was Cohen. The Judge denied the motion and told Trump, "Don't do it again." If he does, the Judge said, the penalty will be "worse."

This is the second time Engoron has fined Trump for violating the gag order.

#us politics #news #nbc news #2023 #republicans #donald trump #conservatives #Michael Cohen #Judge Arthur Engoron #gag order #fraud #Alina Habba #Cliff Robert #letitia james #new york

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dontmean2bepoliticalbut · 1 year

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#us politics #twitter #tweet #donald trump #indictment #republicans #conservatives #gop #stormy daniels #michael cohen #hush money #sdny #alvin bragg #2023 #truth social #Molly Ploofkins #inciting violence #george soros

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justinspoliticalcorner · 12 days

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S.V. Dáte at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON ― Would Donald Trump ever have become president if he hadn’t paid off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet in the days before the 2016 election? The answer is impossible to know, but the premise of the question forms the basis of the very first criminal trial of a former president in American history: whether Trump’s scheme to keep Daniels’ claim of a 2006 affair with him under wraps was, in fact, a crime for which the coup-attempting former president should be punished. While “hush money case” has become the shorthand to describe the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial, particularly among Trump defenders who wish to diminish it, that is not how it will be described to prospective jurors Monday at the scheduled start of jury selection. Judge Juan Merchan’s first sentence of a 223-word summary describing the case to jurors reads: “The allegations are, in substance, that Donald Trump falsified business records to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the 34-count indictment against Trump just over a year ago, will argue that the ledger entries and other business documents Trump created claiming that he was paying lawyer Michael Cohen for “legal services” when in reality he was repaying him for the $130,000 check he delivered to Daniels, were felonies under New York law. “The core is not money for sex,” Bragg told New York’s public radio affiliate last year. “We would say it’s about conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and then lying in New York business records to cover it up.” Trump’s campaign did not respond to HuffPost’s queries for this report. He has primarily argued on social media and in his campaign speeches that the case was brought to hurt his efforts to regain the presidency, another piece of the “witch hunt” that he claims the “deep state” is conducting against him.

He repeated those claims Friday during a brief news conference. “It’s not even a crime,” he said. “It’s very unfair that we have this judge who hates Trump.” It’s unclear precisely how long the trial will last or even how many days it will take to seat a jury, although estimates suggest it could stretch into June. Merchan, in an April 8 letter to prosecutors and defense lawyers, noted the logistical challenges involved in trying a former president and presumptive major party nominee who travels with a substantial Secret Service detail. “In a case where security concerns are implicated every time anyone enters or exits the courtroom, or mingles around the corridors, moving the entire jury panel is no simple task,” Merchan wrote.

Bragg’s filing accompanying the indictment lays out the plan Trump and his ally David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer, developed to “catch and kill” stories that could hurt Trump’s presidential campaign. The scheme also involved paying off a doorman at a Trump building, who claimed Trump had a fathered a child outside his marriages, as well as a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who also claimed she’d had an affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. Neither of those payments, though, were made by Cohen, and the actual indictment only involves Trump’s reimbursements to him.

To what extent Trump’s successful pre-election silencing of Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, played a role in his narrow 2016 win is unclear. Trump lost the national popular vote by 2.9 million ballots but won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by a combined 77,744 votes, which gave him a healthy Electoral College victory. After watching his poll numbers crater after the Oct. 7, 2016, release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he bragged that his celebrity allowed him to grab women by the genitals, Trump slowly recovered over the coming weeks as Russia’s spy agencies and their ally, Julian Assange, on a near daily basis released stolen emails designed to hurt Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

[...]

Whether it would have cost Trump the election, of course, does not matter in terms of his criminal trial. Prosecutors must only prove that Trump had Cohen make the payment to Daniels for the purpose of influencing the election and that he subsequently created fake business records to disguise the purpose of the reimbursements.

“I think the case is strong as a matter of both evidence and New York law,” said Norm Eisen, a White House lawyer under former President Barack Obama who recently published a book about the New York prosecution. “If Bragg proves that theory of the case, and I think he will, he will establish this was no minor hush-money peccadillo but a serious democracy crime.” Trump faces three other felony criminal prosecutions ― two of them based on his attempt to remain in power despite having lost reelection in 2020. A federal indictment could go to trial as early as late August, depending on the timing of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on his claim that he is immune from prosecution. A Georgia state prosecution based on his attempt to overturn his election loss in that state could also start later this year. An unrelated second federal prosecution based on his refusal to turn over secret documents he took with him from the White House to his South Florida country club has not yet been set for trial.

Today is the first day of Donald Trump's first criminal trial in New York v. Trump to determine whether the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal made by Donald Trump to falsify business records in order to influence the 2016 elections leads to convictions for Trump.

If Trump is convicted on even one charge, he'll be forever known as Convicted Felon Donald Trump, and that would hurt him at the polls come election day because people who are hesitant on voting Joe Biden again but don't like DJT likely won't vote for a convicted felon to lead the nation.