>> I feel that there is likely zero chance Bragg WON’T continue trying the case.
I’m not going to speculate on whether Bragg would push to retry right away, or later, or never. However...
** They’d have to start completely over, right? Including select a new judge? Merchan couldn’t just roll into a new trial, right?
** There would be an even better argument now for a change of venue
** Most of the witnesses were called by the prosecution, and the defense has had the great advantage of ripping them a new a-hole. Who else but those same, damaged witnesses would be called in a new trial?
IANAL, just stirring the pot. :-)
All good points. I think I can agree with them all. I’m not sure about whether it would be the same judge. I saw one of those “Innocent or Guilty” shows recently where a kid got a mistrial and was then retried by the exact same judge.
But the amount of pressure brought to bear on a defendant, and in this case the American people and the precedent it sets can be such a destructive force in and of itself.
There may be quite a lot of positive points to be made leading into a subsequent trial. But man, it’s gotta be tough to be the person who has it continuing to hang over their head. I’d imagine you’d get a day or two of feeling relieved, and then back to the lawyer’s office to prepare for trial.
Note there was no false record created. The Trump Organization (TO) recorded the payments to Cohen as legal expenses. But the TO could have listed them as “payments for legal settlement” and that would have been 100 percent accurate, and no one could have deduced the payments were going to Clifford from that 100 percent accurate description. Why didn’t the TO do this? Obviously because they didn’t care how the expenses were listed, they are just accountants. There is no financial significance to how the payments were described. They just recorded the expenses in the easiest way possible. They could have described them more accurately and there would no difference at all in the ability of anyone to determine that some of the money went to Clifford. Also, they DID NOT KNOW HOW MUCH WENT TO CLIFFORD so they couldn’t accurately state the amount retained by Cohen and the amount paid to Clifford. This logic destroys the notion that anyone intended to conceal the payments by labeling them as legal expenses, they could have concealed the payments in numerous other ways and the statements would have been bulletproof accurate.
Nice stirring!
The guy who was with Cohen when Trump supposedly agreed to pay off Stormy Daniels. The guy in jail. Don’t remember his name.
The guy in jail...Jeannine Pirro said the Prosecution had control of him...and didn’t call him for a reason.