Posted on 05/31/2024 8:38:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
OK, serious answers only please...
I'm trying to understand exactly what felony Trump was convicted of in yesterday's verdict.
Here's what I understand (please correct me if I am wrong or inaccurate in any of my interpretation) :
1) Trump was accused of a sexual affair with Porn Star Stormy Daniels almost 20 years ago.
2) 9 years later, as Trump was planning to ran for President, he had Stormy Daniels sign a non-disclosuer agreement in exchange for paying her $130,000 for her silence.
3) Trump is being charged with falsifying business records in relation to this particular payment.
Now, here's what I'm trying to understand ( but still don't ) -- exactly what felony did Trump commit?
#1 Might be morally wrong ( assuming it were true ), but it is NOT illegal between consenting adults.
#2 Isn't illegal either. Non-disclosure agreements are routinely being signed all the time, even with regards to something similar to what Trump allegedly did.
That brings us to Number 3: Falsifying business records.
What exactly did Trump falsify?
How should the payment to Stormy Daniels be declared in order to make it NOT illegal?
Can anyone enlighten me on this? Thanks.
Again, if you don't know, please don't post.
I can understand sarcasm, but the purpose of my opening this thread is to understand what exactly made his act a felony.
Vote for the felon (LOL) it is important.
No, each charge he was convicted of was a felony. He was not charged with any misdemeanors.
Since Trump had not been convicted of a criminal act, the jury had to find him guilty of one.
They didn't convict him of any other crime. All 34 counts were "Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree". The jury had to consider in their deliberations:
1) "Did Trump falsify a business record?" and
2) "Did Trump have intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof?".
Any juror who found that Trump didn't have intent to commit another crime would have to find him "Not Guilty". There was no option to find him guilty of a misdemeanor.
“How is an NDA with Stormy Daniels not a legal fee? Didn’t Michael Cohen prepare the NDA for her to sign?”
Exactly. You and I and common sense would think so, but Bragg argued that it wasn’t a legal fee, it was a campaign contribution because Trump paid it to help out his campaign to become president.
Of course, the feds look at it and didn’t prosecute anything about it. And Trump tried to call an expert witness to testify that it wasn’t a campaign contribution, and the judge wouldn’t allow him to testify.
“what is that something?”
Bragg argued that it was either 1) violation of campaign financing laws, 2) creating other false business records, and/or 3) tax evasion.
Of course, he never (to my knowledge) offered any evidence as to how it was any of the above. And the jury wasn’t asked with crime or crimes they believe it was, nor did all the members of the jury have to believe it was the same crime - just that there was A crime. The verdict form didn’t ask the jury to identify which they found.
Never mind how the alleged false business records in 2017 had anything to do with the 2016 campaign unless you have a time machine.
As an aside, as was pointed out when these charges were filed, even if Trump DID hypothetically identify the payment as a campaign expense, all Bragg would have had to do was to change about five words in the indictment and prosecute him for falsely calling them campaign expenditures instead of legal fees.
The Statute of Limitations for “falsifying business records” was 5 years in NYS. The falsification was alleged to have happened in 2017. SoL ran out in 2022. NYS then indicted Trump in 2022-23. In response, the NYS, post-indictment, extended the Statute of Limitations to make the indictment stick. My argument is that once the SoL has expired you cannot Constitutionally resurrect the dead crime, it is erased. In this case that is exactly what happened, the SoL had already run completely before any extension was passed by the legislature.
There was no crime.
And the people that did this, all of them, should have a price on their head.
OK, so the $130,000 should have been declared as WHAT exactly so that it would not be illegal?
In this case, to the Trump Organization would book the whole $140,000 charged to Legal Expense that rolls up to General Services and Administrative (GSA) in the general ledger. This would roll up to total Overhead Expenses on Trump's Income Statement and be deducted from his Revenues and Other Income to get his EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes).
To Cohen's law firm, he would book the $10,000 as earned income and pass the $130,000 to Stephanie Clifford.
To Clifford, she would report the $130,000 on her IRS-1040 as income for tax purposes.
-PJ
So, bottom line — it was an accounting or tax issue?
How is that a felony?
That's because the same thing happened with John Edwards and his lover Rielle Hunter (who had his love child). Edwards paid nearly $1 million to cover up his relationship with Hunter, he was charged and tried in North Carolina, and a Greensboro jury acquitted Edwards.
This just goes to show... For the exact same charge, a Democrat in a Democrat city is acquitted while a Republican in a Democrat city is convicted.
In the Edwards case the charges were fresh; in Trump's case the charges were expired by several years, yet he was still convicted.
-PJ
In my mind, that should be an ex post facto law.
The statutes of limitations should be what they were when the crime occurred. Changes in statutes of limitations should only apply to crimes that occur once the new statutes are enacted.
The reason for statutes of limitations is that memories fade over time, evidence spoils or gets lost, and it is unfair for defendants to have the threat of prosecution hang over them for decades (unless it is for murder or other egregious crime).
Extending a statute of limitations within the last months of the limit would be cruel and unusual punishment for the accused.
-PJ
Bragg might as well have indicted Price Waterhouse (or whoever is Trump's financial auditor) as a co-conspirator if they audited and approved Trump's financial statements.
Remember, Arthur Andersen got taken down for auditing and approving Enron's corporate books, so it has happened.
-PJ
as I understand it:
According to Jefff McConney, Trump controller, Cohen submitted a bill in the form of a bank statement for $130K and also claimed $50K for ‘Red Finch - tech support’. ($30K of this ended up being stolen by Cohen). This was doubled to account for any taxes owed (so add $180K to $180K) and then another $60K was added as a (annual) ‘bonus’ to Cohen (the bonus Cohen claimed was too low so as to justify stealing the $30K). This equals $420K, These numbers were noted on the submitted bank statement by former CFO Weisselberg. The $420k was divided into (12) $35K payments. The payments were drawn on Trump’s personal checking account, since Cohen was Trump’s personal lawyer not corporate lawyer. Cohen said he did no legal work for Trump but assuming that at least part of the $180K ‘for taxes’ wasn’t all going to ‘taxes’, any remainder would have been add’l income to Cohen as a retainer. As I understand it, a lawyer doesn’t have to do any work to be on retainer, just available to do so if requested. Also, one would think that if Cohen didn’t do any work for Trump and wasn’t available to be ‘retained’ why would Cohen whine about being due a ‘bonus’ ???
After AMI refused to buy Daniel’s story, Cohen admits he folded to pressure from Daniel’s lawyer and went behind Trump’s back to construct the NDA with Daniels in Oct 2016, against Trump’s advice he quash the extortion attempt. Cohen said he did this on his own to ‘protect Melania’. In Jan 2017, Cohen submitted the paperwork to be reimbursed to Weisselburg. In Jan 2018, the Wall Street Journal broke Daniel’s story in violation of the NDA. May 3, 2018, Trump tweeted that Cohen had drawn up a NDA “o stop the false and extortionist accusations” and Daniels was in violation of that NDA.
Which brings us to the kangaroo court: The best I can figure is, Bragg’s entire case hinged on two points:
1) Trump mmust have committed fraud because Trump should have broken out the sums as, NDA, bonus, tech support, tax reimbursement, extra for any future work i.e., retainer, instead of the simplified or umbrella version of ‘retainer’ entered in the check register. Or maybe cut separate checks for each of the above..He also argued that there was no ‘retainer agreement’ with Cohen.
2) Bragg further claimed that Trump must have interferred in the election because an NDA was drawn up by Cohen to stop ‘extortion.’ He brought in Daniels who insisted her story was true. Bragg’s position was if the public knew about a supposed 10-yr old fling, people would not vote for Trump . This is a complete misread of the voters who were well-aware Trump had a history as a playboy, didn’t believe Daniels, and that it wouldn’t affect their vote. In any case, it wouldn’t affect NY vote, since Trump had no expectations of capturing the state’s votes. This is where Bragg gets the election interference part, even tho NDA’s are not illegal.
Now, how 12 checks, a GLOAT and an extortionist hooker morphed into 34 charges, is the mystery of the hour.
Read the jury instructions at the link I gave you and all your questions will be answered. I don’t agree with what happened, but they did provide a clear, if unfair, rationale.
It wasn’t a single journal entry. It was 34, hence the 34 so called felonies.
Which is still a valid deductible expense.
And anything related to a nda, which is a legal contract, is a legal fees.
Just a bunch of Klans asshats trying to destroy the competition and make an ass load of money doing it.
“Which is still a valid deductible expense.”
Correct
The issue was how it was categorized
“a single journal entry from a staff accountant”
Shouldn’t the accountant be tried instead? I don’t know of very many billionaires that fine-tune every single aspect of their businesses. None would have time.
You are correct. At the time Trump did this “crime” it was a misdemeanor. And the statute of limitations expired years before these crimes were elevated to felony charges. Elevated only for one purpose. To get Trump
Trump is NOT a felon.
While Bragg emphasized his belief in the seriousness of falsifying business records in Manhattan — “the financial center of the world,” he said last April when Trump was arrested and arraigned — the charges were bumped up from misdemeanors to felonies because prosecutors argued the records were falsified in furtherance of another crime: unduly influencing the 2016 presidential election.
But in what some legal experts described as a “novel” tactic, Bragg did not charge Trump with violating New York election law, the crime prosecutors argued Trump falsified business records to help commit. The specific law cited makes it criminal for two or more people to “to conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”
So in fact, Trump was found guilty of a crime he "intended to commit." And if he did committ that crime - he wasn't charged with it.
Putting it into perspective.... I was speeding. They "know" I was speeding on my way to rob a bank. So they upgrade the speeding ticket to 34 counts of felonies. Yet the intent to rob a bank was never on the table.
Perfectly stated and correctly to the point.
Trump was found guilty of crimes he “intended” to commit.
Basically they found Trump guilty of crimes they didn’t even charge him with. Crimes he “intended” to commit.
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