Posted on 06/11/2024 9:42:19 AM PDT by Red Badger
Many of us have expressed alarm at the politicization of the criminal justice system in New York by figures such as Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. It now appears that New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin is angling to get into the lawfare frenzy.
The conviction of Trump on 34 felonies has either thrilled or repelled citizens. For many of us, it is a sign of the degradation of our legal system. Even the chief CNN legal analyst has acknowledged that Bragg contorted the law to bring the recent case against former President Donald Trump in an unprecedented prosecution.
Yet, the use of the legal system for political purposes is clearly popular in New York where people were literally dancing in the street outside of the courthouse after the recent verdict against Trump. Now Platkin’s office has announced that it is “reviewing” whether to pull the liquor licenses for Trump golf clubs since he is now convicted of felonies in New York. It appears that lawfare is nothing if not intoxicating for Democratic politicians.
According to an article in the Hill, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control is “reviewing the impact of President Trump’s conviction” on his liquor licenses for the Trump National Golf Club in Colts Neck, Lamington Farm Club, and Trump National Golf Club Philadelphia in Pine Hill.
The latest effort is based on a vague standard governing crimes of “moral turpitude” under New Jersey law:
No license of any class shall be issued to any person under the age of 18 years or to any person who has been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. A beneficiary of a trust who is not otherwise disqualified to hold an interest in a license may qualify regardless of age so long as the trustee of the trust qualifies and the trustee shall hold the beneficiary’s interest in trust until the beneficiary is at least the age of majority.
A “crime of moral turpitude” is a familiar, though dated, standard in American law. I teach the standard in torts as one of the traditional “per se” categories for slander under the common law. It was generally used to denote conduct of immorality or serious offenses to norms of society. New Jersey defines it as including “any offense that carries the possibility of one year in jail and involves acts of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes to his fellowmen, or to society in general.
Even the New Jersey Alcoholic Beverage Control handbook notes that in “some instances, it may be unclear whether a conviction involves an element of moral turpitude.” Yet, Trump has a way to bringing clarity for his critics whenever they must chose between politics and principle.
For most of us, it is hard to see how falsifying business records would constitute “acts of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes to his fellowmen, or to society in general.” However, for Democrats, it seems that any act by Trump is by definition base, vile, and depraved.
The piling on of investigations and charges by Democratic officials has reinforced Trump’s long narrative of a weaponization of the legal system against him and his supporters. Polling shows that most citizens view some of these cases as political prosecutions and that they are having diminishing impact on voter preferences. Yet, they remain thrilling for Democratic voters who lionize prosecutors who come up with novel or unprecedented avenues to hammer Trump or hit his businesses. It does not seem to matter that removing the liquor licenses of these clubs can endanger thousands of jobs of citizens or chill other businesses in considering investments in New York or New Jersey.
In the end, the effort is hardly surprising. Lawfare is like binge drinking: the excess is the very measure of its success.
The ghettopotamuses and water buffalo lawfare school graduates are on a roll!
I’ll bet his liquor comes from outside the US.
Like Scotland, France, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Russia even, and many others.
He is doing foreign trade with some countries who are our enemies.
“Show me the man, I will show you the crime.”
The NY case verdict to be appealed by whatever legal appeal route(s) are chosen, accepted, heard & ruled on.
Suspending 3 clubs liquor licenses with all that entails, before appeals?
I would say for “Jersey” to jump on this and do it now without due process would invite long term bad consequences, because when the case is overturned due to the NY state horror show trial, Trump has the Jersey state regulators by the short hairs for trying to destroy his business without due process...
I would not believe that the liquor licenses are in Trump’s name personally. Do they think Trump is unexperienced rube when it comes to business? And Trump resigned his CEO & BoD statuses when he was elected in 2016, correct? Who is named as owner of the country clubs? It really should be, and I would expect it is, various LLCs. The jury verdict was rendered against Trump personally and not against any Trump entities
I imagine the license is in the name of his business so even they go after it all he has to do is change leadership to his sons.
Imagine not a lawyer so YMMV
bttt
Were the liquor licenses issued to Donald J. Trump as an individual, or to the Trump corporation as an entity?
Regardless of the legal status of individual stockholders in a corporation, the corporation is NOT liable for any legal actins taken against the individual. That is why corporations exist, to limit the liability against stockholders, and conversely to limit the corporation from liability assigned to the individual stockholders.
Like Scotland, France, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Russia even, and many others.
He is doing foreign trade with some countries who are our enemies.
Whaaaat???????
Our enemies are in DC and state capitals.
The conviction of Trump on 34 felonies has either thrilled or repelled citizens.I defer to you here, Romulus, but shouldn’t it be repulsed?
Chris Christie sees the Biden Collapse and trying one more thing.
If they can't prove a second crime, then there is no first crime of falsifying a business record. Without a second crime, the business records were entered appropriately. That's why Bragg, Colangelo, and Merchan were desperate to find a second crime at any cost.
This whole case reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "The Drumhead" guest-starring Jean Simmons.
Simmons plays a retired admiral who is called to the Enterprise to investigate a suspected sabotage. She begins reliving her greatest past achievement of discovering a great conspiracy by stringing together apparently random coincidental events into a larger conspiracy aboard the Enterprise that involves its highest officers.
This theme was revisited again in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager called "The Voyager Conspiracy." Seven of Nine expands her database by assimilating all of Voyager's ship logs. Overwhelmed by the amount of data, she begins to string together unconnected, but coincidental events into a plot by Voyager's officers to spearhead a Federation invasion into the Delta quadrant.
This is exactly what Bragg, Colangelo, and Merchan are doing in the Trump case. In order to use the NY State law 17-152, they need to find a predicate crime that was being "furthered" by a falsification of records. In order to do this, they have to find business records that could be alleged to have been falsified in order to further this crime. Which business records these are depends on what they settle on as the crime being furthered.
It was actually Bragg, Colangelo, and Merchan who were the conspirators who were concocting a plot against Trump in order to illegally influence the 2024 election.
They started by building a conspiracy where there was none. They took normal business dealings between Trump and David Pecker, and Trump and Michael Cohen, and Cohen and Pecker, and alleged that they were all working in a conspiracy regarding the election, despite evidence that what Pecker was doing was something he's done many times before for many other celebrities, that Cohen was a liar and a thief and was doing many things on his own initiative, and that buying silence is not a campaign finance violation (see John Edwards).
Now that the alleged conspirators were in place, they needed a predicate crime. Of course, influencing the 2016 election that Hillary Clinton lost was the crime, but prosecuting election interference is a federal matter, not a NY state county court matter. They needed a crime that could be prosecuted in a county court, so they looked at financial transactions of the Trump Organization. They settled on the payments to Cohen as "legal expenses," which they were, and alleged that this was a falsification of a business record to cover up a conspiracy, the conspiracy that Bragg, Colangelo, and Merchan concocted against Trump.
As a misdemeanor, prosecuting these falsified business records expired several years ago. As legal expenses, these records were never falsified at all and should be immune from prosecution. As a conspiracy, the records were falsified in order to further another crime. This is the reverse-engineering of the crime that President Trump was charged with, was prosecuted for, and was convicted of.
Bragg, Colangelo, and Merchan conspired to create a conspiracy where none existed, to illegally influence an election by means that were previously determined to not be illegal, by falsifying business records that were normal and correct business transactions. As with most constructed conspiracies, they usually fall apart under the weight of their own assumptions, and this was no different. They kept the nature of the underlying crime a secret for as long as possible to prevent Trump's team from investigating it more deeply. They kept the nature of the underlying crime vague for the jury so they would focus on the "conspiracy" and not the facts of the alleged crime. They needed the "conspiracy" to be true in order to convert normal business records into "falsified" business records so they could have something to prosecute in their lowly county court.
The whole thing was a fabrication just like in the episodes of Star Trek that I cited at the outset.
-PJ
I think I agree with you, but I’m not home right now. I would like to have a look at the OED and Fowler.
What’s your point?
Just some more insane, illogical reasons to persecute Trump.
Most liquor is from outside the US
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