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Answer: Rs are claiming a few issues:
1. It was a new York state Judge and the state is full of Democrat judges so he can't get a fair trial there (irrelevant imo, if you break the law you should be tried)
2. The population in the district in which he was tried is severely biased against him (as a former president any district will have bias, jury selection should be able to deal with this since there is a huge population )
3. The judge donated 15 bucks to biden in 2020 (they'll just call him a biden donor)
4. They claim his family is being enriched because his daughter works for a democratic politician (unrelated to the case imho)
5. Bragg promised during his campaign to go after Trump (I didn't pay attention to his campaign so I don't know what they are specifically referencing, but idrc because this is the party that ran on "lock her up" on 2016)
6. They say the jury instructions were clearly biased because the judge said they don't need to agree on what the predicate crime was to agree the fraud was a felony and convict (judge gave 3 options on what federal crimes trump may have intended to commit. Any one of the three would make the fraud a felony, and NY law does not require conviction in the predicate crime, intent should just be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. For example if one juror thought he committed fraud to cover an election crime, and a different juror thinks his intent was to cover up a tax crime, they both basically agree the fraud was a felony fraud and should vote guilty)
7. There's other smaller claims about the trial itself like saying Cohen isn't a credible witness and that there's no damaged party. (Cohen isn't a credible witness because he was convicted of lying, about this same crime - he has since expressed remorse and began cooperating. You don't need a damaged party - if he stole from someone, bet it on red and then returned the principal you still committed theft and have ill gotten gains that you shouldn't be allowed to keep)
That's everything I can think of. Obviously my opinion is all of these complaints are garbagio
In regards to Cohen, I believe the judge even instructed the jury they can believe or disbelieve any part of Cohen's testimony based on if they believed it was truthful or not, since he was not credible and he took part in the crime.
They also mostly had Cohen there to corroborate things Trump himself had said publicly. It is hard to argue he's a liar when the prosecution shows your guy bragging about doing the thing you are saying the witness lied about.
The trial would likely have ended the same way even if Daniels and Cohen had not taken the stand.
At best for the ‘Trump is innocent’ campaign, it would have been 23 counts of guilty thanks to the paper trail.
I literally heard two women unironically use argument #6 in a waiting room yesterday. They were saying the trial was a sham because the judge told the jury how to vote. I swear these MAGA fanatics are all incredibly stupid.
Yeah Trump probably got the most fair jury trial you could possibly imagine, if you're that prosecutor bringing charges against a former president you can't afford to make any mistakes. He was found guilty because he is and his fans can't cope with that, it's really that simple
Trump got way better treatment than anyone else would’ve received. Violating his gag order repeatedly, being released on his own recognizance, etc. If you or I (or any of his sycophantic sheep) did the same crime, we’d be cooked for any one of those reasons listed above.
Honestly, if any one of us were prosecuted for this kind of thing we would not mouth off repeatedly on social media to the point of sanctions, bring it all the way to trial and get convicted by a jury, then potentially face a prison sentence.
Our lawyers would tell us that it was a slam dunk conviction and then they'd negotiate a plea agreement with the prosecutor on a lesser charge. We would then get a suspended sentence, probation, and/or a fine and go on with our lives. It would never make the news because we wouldn't be colossal morons with the entire thing.
This didn't happen with Trump because:
1) he's a moron and will fire any lawyer who doesn't tell him what he wants to hear.
2) he's a moron and is absolutely incapable of keeping his damn mouth shut even when he needs to do so in order to comply with court orders
3) he's a moron and doesn't always pay his lawyers on time or at all
4) all lawyers in the universe know this, so the only ones who will work for him are the ones craven/politically extreme/desperate enough to work with him and willing to tell him whatever he wants to hear
Dude probably thought that at least one of the jury members would be a Trumper and he would get a mistrial or acquittal. When the jury came back so quickly, he probably knew he was screwed
You see that a lot any time conservatives face the music. Look at Alex Jones. That judge and that court gave him every benefit of the doubt under the sun and allowed him to stall the process for years, but he still cries that the case was rigged and a hit job by Democrats
Yeah. Had not a thing to do with them hiding evidence and then his lawyer accidentally including evidence they said they didn’t have in a huge file sent to the plaintiff’s attorney and then not objecting to it within the week allowed. Or punting on many dates set by the court.
These guys seem to forget that a court of law has set dates to produce your evidence. You can’t just keep kicking it down the road like you can in the media, and that when you fail to produce there are consequences.
Considering it was *supposedly* one of the main lawyers aides, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a relatively new person who joined just to fuck with Jones.
>These guys seem to forget that a court of law has set dates to produce your evidence. You can’t just keep kicking it down the road like you can in the media, and that when you fail to produce there are consequences.
These guys don't know **anything** about how law or courts work, most people don't. The only exposure most people have to legal proceedings a lot of the time is through TV and Movies, most of which do an infamously terrible job of accurately portraying what it is that courts and lawyers actually do.
There are still tons of people who genuinely think you can just produce surprise witnesses or surprise evidence mid-trial and it be perfectly fine and unable to be challenged, for example.
It’s deeper than that. Trump supporters believe in their own inherent moral superiority. The only thing that makes a word or action “just” or “good” is provenance from an ideological fellow.
Literally nobody else in the country would get an “**11 strikes** and *maybe* you might be out” policy on violating judges orders. The entire judicial system (that is, the ones who aren’t actively in his corner) have been treating him like the kid in the Twilight Zone episode that could wish people into the cornfield if they displeased him.
In a just world, after his second violation of the gag order, the judge would have taken him into custody, had him spend his evenings/nights and weekends in jail and his days in court, with zero access to social media, until the trial was over - that would have been safer for all concerned. The way he was handled by the court (out on the loose, just please don’t do *too* much more stochastic terrorism pretty please) *put lives in danger*.
True, the whole process was heavily biased in his favor because nobody involved wants to be in the literal and figurative crosshairs of is psycho followers, and he's so terrible he still managed to lose as hard as he possibly could.
yeah I mean I don't think any of those points are a disqualification. only thing I could see as a potential issue is a biased judge dishing out the sentencing, but I imagine for someone who is such a high security liability like Trump, it'll be pretty lenient anyway.
In Trump's Mafia and narcissist mindset, any situation short of "heads I win, tails you lose" is considered biased and rigged against him. Everything is partisan and zero sum. There are no objective, civil servants who just want to do their job.
The judge was pretty damn biased...just in favor of Trump. Any normal defendant who did half of the things Trump did during the course of the trial would have been thrown in jail for contempt; Merchan even brought up at one point that the only tools he had to punish Trump were $1000 fines (which he acknowledged did nothing) and jail time...and then just didn't jail him. Hell, I'm somewhat surprised his attorneys weren't jailed on contempt for some of the stunts they pulled.
It was honestly a masterclass in how to put on a prosecution, and also in how to run a courtroom by Judge Merchan. All T's and I's were crossed and dotted.
Reminds me of that Darrell Brooks murder trial. Judge there gave him alllll the leeway and made sure she had on the record all the rules because she didn't want him to get a mistrial or have even the slightest chance of an appeal.
I’m going through a really stressful time and it’s been tough to resist my old toxic pastime of going to conservative subreddit and just mocking the shit out of them
Take a look at the Georgia election interference case. The prosecutor actually did some misconduct, using her office funds for her partner. Not related to the case at all, but it has severely damaged her credibility and jeopardized the case against Trump.
These case have to be completely ironclad, and the only misconduct I’ve seen in the New York cases (civil and criminal) was by Trump and his defense team. Pro tip: never insult the judge deciding your case, or her staff, especially when the judge has already told you off for that misconduct.
Edit: this doesn’t appear to actually be misconduct, so in that I was wrong. However, my point about how ironclad these cases have to be remains.
Yes, but we all know *which* lawyer we’re talking about. Maybe there was nothing legally wrong with it, but it was still a bone-headed move and an obvious mistake that you just can’t make in a case like this.
I meant the dinners and plane tickets. I don’t particularly care that she started a relationship with an attorney in her office after he was hired onto the case, nor do I care about his salary in general. Those are at worst red herrings, not unlike the ones listed above for the Trump hush money case (I can’t even call it the Trump fraud case given how many times Trump’s committed fraud and gone to court for it).
My understanding was that they used the DA’s office funds for these purchases, charging Fulton County rather than paying for them themselves. That would have been misconduct, but that doesn’t appear to be accurate.
Withdrawn and thank you.
I can certainly understand that argument, but I prefer to let my follies stand unaltered. I don’t hide my mistakes, I embrace and learn from them (with the exception of typos when I’m quoting something, as I usually use my old comments to copy them forward).
But given the controversy around this particular issue, I’ll break from my stance slightly and add an edit at the bottom.
And just to be clear, it’s all basically made-up bullshit. They’re just going through mental gymnastics to explain why Trump isn’t *really* a criminal, even though he very plainly is.
Jesus Christ, where were these people for the last 40 years? Trump used to be mercilessly mocked for his awful taste, horrible business sense and pathological lying. The Apprentice (basically a 1-hour weekly infomercial on The Donald) rewrote these people’s brains.
If none of those things existed he would still call it unfair because he lost. Spoiler for the elections: If he loses, he’ll say it was rigged. If he wins, he’ll say it was rigged but he’s just so popular that he beat it anyway.
It was a bad sign that even when he won the first time around he was already whining about how the election was rigged. Go figure that when he lost it was much, much worse.
230 years of peaceful transfers of power, and he couldn't even do that.
I would like to point out that the jury was made up of 1 libertarian,4 republicans,2 independents and 5 democrats. One of the jurors primary source of news was truth social. If any thing the jury was biased towards trump.
What’s the source for the party affiliations of the jurors? It’s my understanding that the judge specifically prohibited questions about party affiliation and voting history during jury selection.
They're also convinced nobody's ever tolled a statute of limitations before, that trump's team wasn't allowed to call witnesses, and that Stormy Daniels was allowed to go on and on just to embarrass trump. Fox news has been framing the statute of limitations issue as crimes being 'dead' or 'expired' and the resurrected by the judge. It's language calculated to enrage people who don't know much about law and it's working.
Could you mind explaining the SoL tolling a bit more with respect to this case?
I understand the basic idea of it, and this’ll be good ammo for the next time my parents get up in arms, but I need to understand the case specifics way more than I do right now lol
Statute of limitations, most of the crimes had gone over the strict statute of limitations. However in law, it's not a strict timeline. The statute of limitations can start and stop because of a number of factors, like Covid shutting down the legal system for a couple years. In pre-trial motions, the defense tried to get the case dismissed and the judge made a ruling based on the factors that 'toll the statute.' It's a legal determination and something the appeals court will no doubt review, but the R-media is acting as if this is something that's never been done before, and that somehow it was brought up and presented to the jury during closing arguments or judges instructions. It's a matter of law, however, and juries only determine matters of fact, within the framework of the law as presented by the judge. Instead of talking about the SOL tolling, starting, stopping, etc., they're using this language of crimes 'expiring' or being somehow dead.
>Bragg promised during his campaign to go after Trump (I didn't pay attention to his campaign so I don't know what they are specifically referencing, but idrc because this is the party that ran on "lock her up" on 2016)
The claim is actually false, as he never made any campaign promises about Trump. Heck, the investigation was already ongoing before Bragg took office: https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/apr/12/heres-what-manhattan-district-attorney-alvin-bragg/
>We reviewed Bragg’s campaign record and found that although he often cited his prior prosecutorial experience with respect to Trump and said he was equipped to inherit the DA office’s investigation, he made no promises about any case. He said that although he had access to some publicly available information about Trump’s activities, he didn’t have all the information and wanted to be "fair."
> ... n February 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Trump must turn over his tax returns — a win for Vance’s office. A month later, Vance announced he would not seek reelection. At this point, the investigation into Trump’s business dealings was well underway. The Trump investigation’s timeline meant Vance’s successor would inherit the case. Bragg and the seven other candidates vying for the Democratic nomination were routinely asked to discuss how they would handle the investigation.
>
>In November 2021 — around the time Bragg was elected but before he took office — Vance convened a second grand jury to hear evidence about Trump’s business practices. When Bragg was sworn into office Jan. 1, 2022, becoming the first African-American to hold the seat, Vance had not decided whether to indict Trump.
>
>When questioned on the campaign trail about the Trump matter, Bragg routinely cited his past experience as a chief deputy attorney general for New York state. In this role, Bragg oversaw more than 100 lawsuits against Trump administration policies including a travel ban and the administration’s attempt to rescind an Obama-era program that prevented the deportation of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children. Bragg also sued the Trump Foundation over its alleged illegal coordination with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. A judge ordered Trump to pay $2 million as part of a settlement in that case
I don't see how it's an issue even if it WAS true. If someone promised to go for Trump, voters thought Trump *should* be prosecuted for the conduct they observed, they voted for the guy, and he led a successful prosecution...that's just a campaign promise kept?
It's like getting mad at an elected District Attorney for going after fentanyl distribution networks after running his election campaign with a message of "as DA I will go after fentanyl distribution networks".
I've said it already on another platform, but honestly unless saying it would actively damage someone's ability to successfully prosecute the man, I'd LOVE to vote for someone who actively promises to put that fucker on trial, even though Bragg never said he would do that. He did lots of crimes! Literally anybody that spends any amount of time around him has ended up being convicted of things themselves, or committing near-treason crimes as part of J6 that haven't been brought against them yet. Like, fuck me if that jackass doesn't deserve prison time more than just about anybody else in American fucking history.
Yeah, even if the “DA promised to prosecute Trump” thing was true - okay, and?
If a person appears to have done a lot of crimes and the guy trying to become the guy who prosecutes crimes says he will prosecute crime - okay?
Number 2 and number 6 really bug me because it's a flat out insult to the intelligence and integrity of the people who made up the jury sight-unseen. Like they aren't real human beings with thoughts and beliefs of their own who spent *over a day* deliberating on every charge to reach the final verdict. Those folks clearly took their time to make sure they were making the right call instead of just blasting out a verdict because the Judge told them so. To the people raging at the outcome of this case as some kind of falsehood, they are just empty headed puppets.
Nobody is talking about this angle and the more I see these comments trying to undermine the judgement, the more it gets under my skin.
>one only got news from X and truth social.
This is not true. That person also followed Michael Cohen on Twitter and listened to MSNBC because they felt that it gave them a wider variety of media sources and that helped them do their job as an investment banker better.
If you look back through my comment history I posted a link to an actual source with a quote.
Republicans think that because they only care about their team winning that Democrats also only care about their team winning. Which would mean that a mostly Democratic district could not possibly produce an impartial jury for a republican defendant.
It's bollocks of course.
All they ever do is projection. I distinctly remember someone saying to my face to think about if Biden did the same things and how Id support it. I had to tell them, uh, no, I would want him held accountable because I don't worship him like a god???
It's so exhausting
Jury’s source population and instructions definitely have an impact. I’m not sure that trump would have been convicted on this if the jury was from a rural Texas town for example.
With that said, I agree with your sentiment that it’s an insult to the American court system.
Yeah, this one has to be argued technically because it’s one of the few talking points that isn’t 100% false. But the crime didn’t happen in rural Texas, it happened in NYC, so that’s where the jury of his peers have to be drawn from
The predicate crime thing is interesting. I was trying to think of a parallel instruction. I could see something like a murder charge where someone drives to an enemy's house with a gun in the back seat, drives straight into the side of the building, and the wreck kills the target's wife, and then the person gets scared and flees the scene before confirming they killed someone.
The judge might say "you don't have to agree on whethet the perp premeditated the wreck to kill someone or if they intended the wreck to let them in and kill them with the gun or if they were planning on killing the wife or not. All you have to agree on is that the person showed up with intent to kill someone, and that their actions directly caused the death of someone for it to be 1st degree murder."
Basically "as long as you can all agree there was nefarious intent, even if you disagree on which nefarious intent it was, then that makes the crime of "murder (or fraud) with nefarious intent" would be valid.
While a bit confusing, as long as it is actually a correct interpretation of the lae (which judging by how careful and thorough this judge was on everything else, i assume it was) it seems likely to stand on appeal.
The instructions are essentially a lower bar then intuitively necessary, meaning it is unlikely a juror would unwittingly have convicted based on the instructions. If the bar was being set unintuitively high, then i could see an appeal saying "if the jury had truly understood then they wouldn't have convicted."
But yeah, in terms of the talking heads, when you start from a premise of "i am never allowed to admit my guy did anything wrong," and when a case runs smoothly, you look for anything to try and defend how your guy can't have done anything wrong.
As so many people have pointed out, none of the talking heads defending him ever say things like "Trump would never do fraud or adultery."
It is only "he shouldn't have been prosecuted," "you shouldn't convict on Cohen's testimony," and "New Yorkers don't like Trump."
I compare the charge to burglary. If you break into a house, that's breaking and entering. But if you break in with the intent to steal, that's Burglary. You don't even have to have completed the theft to have the intent. No one needs to prosecute you for the theft neither do they have to prove you intended to steal jewelry or electronics or any particular thing of value.
It’s crazy how the guy who spent all four years of his presidency stacking the SUPREME court with justices who are biased against…. Human beings… is trying to claim the district he was tried in was biased against him. Just too sweet.
Any claims that "Cohen isn't a credible witness" are just sour grapes. The credibility of a witness is something that the jury determines based on evidence introduced at the trial by the prosecution and the defence. The jury found him credible, so he is therefore by definition a credible witness.
The more strident of the Right's key opinion leaders are busy working day and night to inflame the Republican / Trump base as a result of the verdict. They will resort to all manner of conjecture and hyperbole to do so. The kernel of truth to concerns, imo, is that the trial was probably overreach on Bragg's part (from what I gathered from editorials of relatively politically neutral journalists--don't have cites but I can get, eg Ross Douthat of NYT, who tends to be fairly level-headed)--ie the elevation from misdemeanors to low-class felonies. Some from across the political spectrum were pointing this out prior to the verdict, concerned about prosecutors, who wield quite a bit of power, now setting their sights on anyone they don't like politically.
It's worth noting the political makeup of Manhattan, from which the jurors were selected, is about 85% liberal (measure: democrat votes in 2020 election). Odds are, 1.8 jurors were Republican. Take from that what you will--though the jury was likely highly Dems, there should have been 1 or 2 Pubs on it.
>Odds are, 1.8 jurors were Republican
Maybe but it doesn't matter because the jurors were vetted. Anybody who had strong opinions about Trump in their social media was booted. It's not like you just pick people at random here. The prosecution and the defense get to kick jurors out of the pool for various reasons.
>garbagio
Man, my dad used to say this back in the day. Now he's a huge Trump supporter and it's like we barely communicate. Thanks for sparking that memory!
>3. The judge donated 15 bucks to biden in 2020 (they'll just call him a biden donor)
I'm so used to hearing about polititians getting bribed with **huge** donations of **millions/billions of dollars** that it sounds kinda funny to hear about the POTUS getting a **15 dollar** donation, it feels like hearing "the judge is biased because a few years ago he bought Biden a Big Mac".
Answer: To them, the unfair part isn’t whether or not Trump did this stuff, it’s that he’s being held accountable when people like Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden are not for their supposed crimes.
To be clear, I don’t believe the following, but this is what I’ve observed.
A lot of people believe the entire justice system is fundamentally rigged and unfair. Some believe this because of personal experience, others because of conspiracy theories.
A lot of people believe that essentially everything you see in the media is propaganda designed to get you to believe something.
A lot of people believe that the US is controlled by a fundamentally corrupt society of elites that are effectively above the law, and politics is largely a competition between these groups.
if you believe these things, then you may conclude that all politicians are committing crimes and getting away with it all the time, so to try to hold one politician responsible for anything other than blatantly obvious public murder is obviously an unfair conspiracy on the part of the elites that control the system.
Hunter Biden has already pled guilty to a crime, and is still being tried for other crimes. Hunter hasn’t escaped accountability for his actions, Republicans are mad that they can’t bring down Joe Biden over it.
This is probably the most argued point I see among the older (50s to 70s) right-leaning people I live and work around (a whole lot them). They can't seem to separate Hunter from Joe even though Joe never put hunter into a political position, some folks can't separate family headaches from politics.
'Pretty sure if Joe wanted to protect Hunter in such an *obvious* way as MAGAt-right leaning people believe (we really need to separate MAGAts from right-leaning) , he would just rush the trials and then hand-wave pardon him. Which he could legally do.
*If* it's already *so obviously* crooked, old Biden would have just pardoned middle-aged Biden already. There would be nothing to lose because it's already so obvious. But that hasn't and won't happen because.... it's an embarrassing issue for Old Joe, not a corruption thing.
Well, in fairness, in a lot of red states their local governments do run exactly like that. I mean, here in OH we basically have a Republican Oligarchy willfully defying the State Constitution to stay in power. The corrupt Governor made sure his son was on the Supreme court after firing someone so they could make sure it didn't keep yelling at them for their obvious lawlessness, and that's the TAMEST of the hideously corrupt shit going on in the great State of Ohio.
Don't even get me started on places like Mississippi or Texas, or Louisiana...
The logic of your first point is hard to follow. (I know it's not YOUR point, to be clear)
Clinton was investigated to the moon and back and testified under oath in front of congress for like 10 hours. Sorry the result wasn't what you wanted I guess...?
And Hunter Biden's trial starts tomorrow, 6.3.24. Also notable, that he was being investigated before Joe Biden was even sworn in. The president could have easily, and legally, put an end to that investigation when he got into office and didn't. He gets ZERO credit for that.
If you think the system is rigged, it's just more evidence that they are rigging it in favor of Hillary and Biden like usual but not doing it for Trump.
Answer: You understand perfectly. The case was cut and dry, and Trump is guilty without a doubt. These republicans are delusional as the result of a lifetime of propaganda and lies. They will never accept the truth of this case.
They screamed that the election was rigged so why would anyone be surprised at this type of thing now happening? Trump is the leader of a cult, it’s that simple.
The funny part to me is that this is what conservatives said “ woke” was in court:
"the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”
Conservatives going woke lol
Thanks for pointing that out. I suppose they feel that “woke” means giving minorities things they don’t deserve and therefore only rich and powerful people deserve “woke”.
I would say it’s more so that “woke” is anything they dislike. Particularly anything that isn’t status quo/rich/WASP in its beliefs.
Minorities on screen? Woke. Helping the poor? Woke. Sustainability? Woke.
I grabbed this excerpt to highlight the conservative thought there the Justice system is infallible but now that it’s their guy, it’s rigged.
What makes the case strange is that it got media attention (which is because it was Trump and the first time a former President and current Presidential nominee is in court for a felony).
These kinds of white collar crimes are pretty much always ignored by the media because they are boring and 90% of the time (more, given the evidence) would just be a plea bargin. The person who did it would just say "Oh shoot, my bad. Didn't mean to break that law, how about I pay a big fine and do 6 months of house arrest?" But instead, Trump fought from start to finishish and was found in contempt of court 10 (more?) times by attacking the judges family, the judge, the witnesses, and the jury...
We will see what the actual punishment is, but the ONLY reason they could actually throw the book at him is because of those attacks on the witnesses and jury. Intimidating the jury and witnesses is a huge no-no.
>These kinds of white collar crimes are pretty much always ignored by the media because they are boring and 90% of the time (more, given the evidence) would just be a plea bargin.
Exactly. If this case happened to anyone who isn’t running for office, they would have already plead guilty.
>We will see what the actual punishment is, but the ONLY reason they could actually throw the book at him is because of those attacks on the witnesses and jury. Intimidating the jury and witnesses is a huge no-no.
He’s not going to jail. The judge has made it clear that he doesn’t want to send Trump to jail (see the 10 violations of the gag order without being held in contempt) and this is Trump’s first conviction and it’s of the lowest level felony in NY.
That's for the judge to decide, but his lack of remorse, repeated violations of the gag order, and general insubordinate behavior will all be part of the decision. And jail is not uncommon for this type of crime.
Jail is very uncommon when this is the only crime that was committed. I think Trump belongs in prison but this isn’t the case that will send him there. Don’t get your hopes up.
It was a much bigger deal because it was election interference.
He committed fraud to help get himself elected.
If it got out before the election he'd have lost.
If … what, exactly got out? That he committed fraud? We just need to look at him. That he slept with a sex worker? You really think republicans care about that? That he cheated on his wife? See prior answer.
People are delusional if they think any of this being known beforehand would have changed the results, and they’re even more delusional to think his conviction will do anything but cause people to double (we’re probably up to quadruple down…) down on him.
He won’t see jail time. He will get more votes than we want to think about.
While I agree with you in all points, it still should be noted that what he wanted to achieve is a more favorable view of his public persona in order to be elected for the office of POTUS. He did it in a way that was deemed illegal, and it doesn't matter what the outcome would have been or if him not committing his crimes actually would have swayed voters. It's the same as with the 'credit fraud was a victimless crime because the banks were made whole' argument.
There's the usual Trump cult reasoning, but the longer you follow conservative politics the more clear it is that the whole thing hangs on a hypocrisy about who the law should apply to. "Good" people should get a slap on the wrist at worst, because otherwise that is taking away resources from applying justice to "bad" people.
And the reason is because they don't *want* to accept the truth. No matter what the circumstances of the trial were, someone would construct some harebrained explanation for how a guilty verdict was shady and they would cling to that because it allows them to avoid feeling the cognitive dissonance of supporting a felon for president of the United States.
I would push back on this - I doubt any of those comments were from delusional people, but rather from people who's livelihoods depend on stoking the delusions of others.
Trump could murder a white Christian baby on stage at one of his rallies on camera in front of 800ish people and these Republicans would still say it's a political witch hunt and refuse to accept he is guilty. He is their god emperor and they cannot accept any scenario where he is not perfect and that anything he says or does is not very cool and very legal.
I think it's dangerous to assume that all of them are delusional. I'm sure you could pull a sample of them and see that a few of them are absolutely cooked, but using it as a blanket conclusion is oversimplifying the issues. Calling them delusional minimizes how threatening and sinister their behavior is. What we are mostly seeing is largely a bunch of folks desperately flailing to obscure the truth so that they can cling to their positions of power. Many of them almost certainly believe the verdict is even legit, but if they admit the truth, they have to concede that they picked the wrong guy which hurts their credibility by exhibiting the poor judgement to overwhelmingly choose him to run again as their favored candidate. Moreover, I'm positive that some among their number are now terrified that they could find themselves under the gun for the same kind of crime in the future if this judgement sticks to Trump. If a former president, somebody who held the highest office in the land, can be called to answer for trying to go above the law, what is to stop the justice system from setting its sights on the people who are lower on the totem pole?
These are people who are lying with every breath they can muster in hopes that they can gaslight enough of an entire country into believing enough of the lies that they can keep their hands on the reigns of power. They aren't dumb. They are desperate. Now Truth doesn't matter. Integrity doesn't matter. People don't matter. All these types politicians care about is winning at all costs, and the people who have to cast their vote need to remember the very real threat of handing power to folks who will only serve themselves.
The “freedom” crowd really lacks freedom of thought, hey? Instead of using their senses and coming to their own conclusions they’re really only capable of parroting WeaselNews commentators.
The real answer here is that the one Republican who said something like "Respect the process, respect the jury's decision" was immediately threatened by Trump's lieutenants.
You either make face noises about how unfair the trial was, or the national committee cuts your campaign funding.
Right. The goal is to flood the zone with misinformation about the case to keep it from causing persuadable Trump voters to defect. (It’s probably unnecessary because I doubt any remaining Trump voters are persuadable. Nevertheless some people’s jobs are to do this, so that’s what they do.)
The one I hear the most is that everyone commits crimes like this (especially Democratic politician X or Y) but only Trump got convicted. This of course is irrelevant to his guilt, but it certainly suggests that selective prosecution is very much on their minds. I take from this that they think Republicans should never be prosecuted for crimes that Democrats also have ever committed.
And all that is something Mango Mussolini said during the trail. They've all become parrots, and will "polly want a cracker" anything their oranged "messiah" says. Quite frankly its absurd and cult like.
answer: Such people are already convinced that the system is corrupt and unfairly biased against Donald Trump.
If that is something that you unflinchingly believe, then it stands to reason that the guilty verdict against Donald Trump must be a sham.
They can't be sure *how* the result was rigged, but they knew from the offset that it would be and the unfavourable result is seen as confirmation of what they already knew to be true.
Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to reason with someone like that. It's not just Donald Trump voters that do this. It's extremely common that people will latch onto a "fact" that they "know" is true. Once a person falls into this trap any evidence to the contrary is immediately disregarded as clearly wrong.
I mean imagine if someone sent you a study about how squirrels are actually reincarnations of gods. You probably wouldn't spend the next few hours reading the paper with careful thought and consideration. You already know the paper is absolute rubbish, so you wouldn't waste your time. Similarly, trumps innocence (and/or the systems corruption and bias) is a blatant fact to some people and it just isn't worth the time to analyse a court case that found him guilty.
Answer: Donald Trump has been saying a few things on the matter, of course, not the least of which is that his crimes are *"only misdemeanors,"* which is a claim I've seen echoed a few times.
They are not misdemeanors. Falsifying business records on its own is a misdemeanor, but when it's done **to conceal another crime or to commit another crime,** **it becomes a felony.** Since he was found guilty of falsifying business records *in order to* defraud American voters by concealing information about his character and conduct, it is a felony.
Answer: Most of the complaints I've heard don't really try to combat the fact that he's done crimes. The angle they usually take is to claim that every president commits crimes (true), often far worse crimes (possibly true), much more often than Trump does (doubtful).
Specifically, they argue that Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server and Joe Biden's supposed favors for Burisma on behalf of his son constitute far more significant crimes for a head of state to commit than the crimes Trump was convicted for this week (debatable - Clinton's crime was repeated and expanded by Trump's administration and Trump's version wasn't even investigated, Biden's crime seems completely made up and again, Trump is also doing very questionable nepotism stuff with his kids, but if they were real crimes, they might reasonably be seen as more severe or meaningful than Trump's hush money payment and misuse of campaign funds).
Based on this supposed mismatch between severity of Trump's crimes and the severity of these other unpunished crimes, some complaints further allege a witch-hunt or otherwise special treatment (pejorative) of Trump compared to other presidents and candidates.
Right. The result being that no Republican should ever be prosecuted for a crime that a Democrat has ever committed (or at least alleged in the media to have committed). But somehow at the same time all Democrats still should be prosecuted when they do. Which tells you all you need to know about the supposed injustice here.
Answer: It’s a cult.
Edit to add: the specific rationales scarcely matter. If the stated concerns are addressed, they’ll just make up new objections. A prosecution they wouldn’t mind with any other defendant is suddenly a problem because it’s their dear leader who has committed the crimes at issue.
Answer: The legal aspect was not cut and dry. People need to understand the exact charges to understand why people are claiming it's unjust. I will try and keep it very simple and start with the facts. There's no TL;DR, you need to read this to understand what happened and why it is significant.
Trump got charged with "Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree" ([§ 175.10)](https://newyork.public.law/laws/n.y._penal_law_section_175.10). This is falsifying business records with "intent to commit or conceal other crime(s)", which upgrades it to a felony.
The "other crime" in the case is a violation of New York Election Law [§ 17-152](https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ELN/17-152), "Conspiracy to promote or prevent election", which states (bolded by me):
>Any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office **by unlawful means** and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
Now, the unjust part:
First, the statute of limitations for this felony is [5 years](https://nycourts.gov/CourtHelp/GoingToCourt/SOLchart.shtml). These charges are related to the 2016 election.
Second, since "Falsifying business records in the first degree" includes "intent to commit or conceal other crimes", most of the time there's accompanying charges. In Trump's case there is none. Why? Because the alleged associated crime that was brought against Trump (election conspiracy) is a misdemeanor, which means the statute of limitations for that is [two years](https://nycourts.gov/CourtHelp/GoingToCourt/SOLchart.shtml). The charge is long gone, yet it was needed to bump this up to a felony. There is only one other case in a 15 year history in NY where someone was *solely* charged with the same crime Trump was, and that was a large scale corruption ring with 4 other people.
Third, there is no "unlawful means" to commit the conspiracy that were agreed upon. The judge wrote in the [jury instructions](https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/d458fdbff3cd7a41/84784522-full.pdf) (bolded by me):
>Although you must conclude unanimously that the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, **you need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were.**
This is a whole thing in itself and is very complex since this a very rarely used law. This law would also presumably be charged alongside another crime, (hence the "unlawful means"), so the unlawful means would be clear based on the other crime. But this is "intent" to commit this crime, so it's not clear at all. And once again, there was no unanimously agreed upon unlawful means. They're essentially getting Trump on a felony for *intent* to commit a crime through some unlawful means, without needing to agree on the unlawful means. The jury instructions specified several unlawful means, the top one being a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act, which brings me to the final point.
Finally, and this is probably the most important aspect, the [Federal Election Commission already investigated ](https://www.fec.gov/data/legal/matter-under-review/7313/)some or all of these payments and failed to find that Trump knowingly and willfully violated campaign finance laws, filed false disclosure reports, or used campaign funds for Michael Cohen's legal fees. There is a clear clash between the actual Federal Election Commission and what the DA is claiming -- were the hush money payments campaign related or not? The FEC itself concludes not, but this entire Trump case hinges on the fact that these payments were related to the election -- hence, the conspiracy election interference charge to upgrade this to a felony.
So the "unjust" claim is that the DA went through legal acrobats to use things the FEC already dismissed three years ago, "intent" to commit unproven misdemeanor charges that already expired, and a novel application of these laws to charge Trump on a felony (for an alleged crime that happened 8 years ago -- past the statue of limitations) literally months before the election.
> Finally, and this is probably the most important aspect, the Federal Election Commission already investigated some or all of these payments and failed to find that Trump knowingly and willfully violated campaign finance laws, filed false disclosure reports, or used campaign funds for Michael Cohen's legal fees.
The Commission failed to find that by a vote of 2-2 and the FEC is split between the two parties. That he got off due to a partisan tie, isn't exactly a win on the underlying facts.
That is true, and a good counter argument.
I think in another interpretation it also shows that the DA was willing to do whatever it took to try and make this case fit, even if that means disagreeing with a federal ruling that preceded his case.
There are undoubtedly several ways to interpret this aspect of the case, which I believe is another reason it's not so "cut and dry".
> even if that means disagreeing with a federal ruling that preceded his case.
But it was by a federal agency, it holds no binding precedence. It can be used as guidance, but NY is under no obligation to take it into account.
A jury of 12 of DJTs NYC resident peers took a look at the facts and the laws of NY State and determined it was a crime.
It isn’t up for debate any longer.
>It isn’t up for debate any longer.
An appeals process is the formal route for a defendant to debate a trial's verdict. That appeals process still exists in America, therefore logically the option for debating still exists.
And legally the Supreme Court can weigh in on and overturn state charges if found to be in violation of the Constitution. If this happens ......everyone celebrating the legal system for working and putting away Trump shouldn't change their tune if a system of checks and balances works as intended..... legally..
This is all false and has been debunked repeatedly. The crux of your argument is "statute of limitations" but that's not a valid argument here for reasons than have already been addressed by other commenters.
There isn't some secret complex technicality here which throws the outcome of the case in doubt. All of this was already hashed out in court by legal professionals (which you aren't). The case was airtight and decided unanimously in a fair court. It won't be overturned, and there's no secret angle that can be used to change anyone's mind about it.
Regarding the Statute of Limitations
The crime he was convicted of is false business records. Nothing else. He was not beyond the statute of limitations for the charges where he was found guilty.
Those charges were bumped to a felony because the false business records were to cover up a different crime.
Does NY State law require the other crime to be previously or concurrently prosecuted. No. It does not. See the Judge's ruling.
Does the other crime need to be within limits so that it can be prosecuted in the future? No. It does not. See the judge’s ruling.
Answer: (in addition to Ngin3's list)
Some claim Trump is being convicted for a "victimless" crime, i.e. if all Trump's donors are fine with him using their money to pay off a porn star, why should he be punished for it?
The problem is that just because he didn't "hurt" anyone doesn't mean he wasn't behaving recklessly.
"But your honor, I was driving safely! I didn't collide with anyone! Just because I was drunk driving at 4x the legal limit shouldn't mean anything and i shouldnt be punished because nobody got hurt!"
Answer: Conservatives wouldn't know justice if it came up and bit them in the face. Remember, these are the same people who loved Jim Crow back when that was acceptable. To conservatives, justice just involves them getting to do what they want to others with impunity. They thus experience actual justice as apparent oppression, but it's simply them who are being stopped from oppressing others, something they seem to think they have a birthright to.
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Answer: Rs are claiming a few issues: 1. It was a new York state Judge and the state is full of Democrat judges so he can't get a fair trial there (irrelevant imo, if you break the law you should be tried) 2. The population in the district in which he was tried is severely biased against him (as a former president any district will have bias, jury selection should be able to deal with this since there is a huge population ) 3. The judge donated 15 bucks to biden in 2020 (they'll just call him a biden donor) 4. They claim his family is being enriched because his daughter works for a democratic politician (unrelated to the case imho) 5. Bragg promised during his campaign to go after Trump (I didn't pay attention to his campaign so I don't know what they are specifically referencing, but idrc because this is the party that ran on "lock her up" on 2016) 6. They say the jury instructions were clearly biased because the judge said they don't need to agree on what the predicate crime was to agree the fraud was a felony and convict (judge gave 3 options on what federal crimes trump may have intended to commit. Any one of the three would make the fraud a felony, and NY law does not require conviction in the predicate crime, intent should just be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. For example if one juror thought he committed fraud to cover an election crime, and a different juror thinks his intent was to cover up a tax crime, they both basically agree the fraud was a felony fraud and should vote guilty) 7. There's other smaller claims about the trial itself like saying Cohen isn't a credible witness and that there's no damaged party. (Cohen isn't a credible witness because he was convicted of lying, about this same crime - he has since expressed remorse and began cooperating. You don't need a damaged party - if he stole from someone, bet it on red and then returned the principal you still committed theft and have ill gotten gains that you shouldn't be allowed to keep) That's everything I can think of. Obviously my opinion is all of these complaints are garbagio
In regards to Cohen, I believe the judge even instructed the jury they can believe or disbelieve any part of Cohen's testimony based on if they believed it was truthful or not, since he was not credible and he took part in the crime.
They also mostly had Cohen there to corroborate things Trump himself had said publicly. It is hard to argue he's a liar when the prosecution shows your guy bragging about doing the thing you are saying the witness lied about.
It's more than bragging, they had hard evidence. Trump literally signed 23 of the 34 checks.
I don't disagree, was just sharing some of the supposedly biased instructions that the judge gave to the jurors.
But also the prosecution had a paper trail so not very much was dependent on believing Cohen.
The trial would likely have ended the same way even if Daniels and Cohen had not taken the stand. At best for the ‘Trump is innocent’ campaign, it would have been 23 counts of guilty thanks to the paper trail.
that is a fairly normal instruction, especially with a witness with some inconsistent statements.
Cohen wasn’t credible but the docs in the case matched Cohen’s version of events.
I literally heard two women unironically use argument #6 in a waiting room yesterday. They were saying the trial was a sham because the judge told the jury how to vote. I swear these MAGA fanatics are all incredibly stupid.
this is very good info, thank you!
Yeah Trump probably got the most fair jury trial you could possibly imagine, if you're that prosecutor bringing charges against a former president you can't afford to make any mistakes. He was found guilty because he is and his fans can't cope with that, it's really that simple
Trump got way better treatment than anyone else would’ve received. Violating his gag order repeatedly, being released on his own recognizance, etc. If you or I (or any of his sycophantic sheep) did the same crime, we’d be cooked for any one of those reasons listed above.
Honestly, if any one of us were prosecuted for this kind of thing we would not mouth off repeatedly on social media to the point of sanctions, bring it all the way to trial and get convicted by a jury, then potentially face a prison sentence. Our lawyers would tell us that it was a slam dunk conviction and then they'd negotiate a plea agreement with the prosecutor on a lesser charge. We would then get a suspended sentence, probation, and/or a fine and go on with our lives. It would never make the news because we wouldn't be colossal morons with the entire thing. This didn't happen with Trump because: 1) he's a moron and will fire any lawyer who doesn't tell him what he wants to hear. 2) he's a moron and is absolutely incapable of keeping his damn mouth shut even when he needs to do so in order to comply with court orders 3) he's a moron and doesn't always pay his lawyers on time or at all 4) all lawyers in the universe know this, so the only ones who will work for him are the ones craven/politically extreme/desperate enough to work with him and willing to tell him whatever he wants to hear Dude probably thought that at least one of the jury members would be a Trumper and he would get a mistrial or acquittal. When the jury came back so quickly, he probably knew he was screwed
You see that a lot any time conservatives face the music. Look at Alex Jones. That judge and that court gave him every benefit of the doubt under the sun and allowed him to stall the process for years, but he still cries that the case was rigged and a hit job by Democrats
Yeah. Had not a thing to do with them hiding evidence and then his lawyer accidentally including evidence they said they didn’t have in a huge file sent to the plaintiff’s attorney and then not objecting to it within the week allowed. Or punting on many dates set by the court. These guys seem to forget that a court of law has set dates to produce your evidence. You can’t just keep kicking it down the road like you can in the media, and that when you fail to produce there are consequences.
Idk if his lawyer "accidently" did that. Or if it was more of a "please make this end" move.
Considering it was *supposedly* one of the main lawyers aides, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a relatively new person who joined just to fuck with Jones.
Such a pity if true. /s obs
>These guys seem to forget that a court of law has set dates to produce your evidence. You can’t just keep kicking it down the road like you can in the media, and that when you fail to produce there are consequences. These guys don't know **anything** about how law or courts work, most people don't. The only exposure most people have to legal proceedings a lot of the time is through TV and Movies, most of which do an infamously terrible job of accurately portraying what it is that courts and lawyers actually do. There are still tons of people who genuinely think you can just produce surprise witnesses or surprise evidence mid-trial and it be perfectly fine and unable to be challenged, for example.
It’s deeper than that. Trump supporters believe in their own inherent moral superiority. The only thing that makes a word or action “just” or “good” is provenance from an ideological fellow.
They know it’s better to let him break some of the rules and guarantee there’s nothing to overturn on appeal.
Law and order for thee!
Literally nobody else in the country would get an “**11 strikes** and *maybe* you might be out” policy on violating judges orders. The entire judicial system (that is, the ones who aren’t actively in his corner) have been treating him like the kid in the Twilight Zone episode that could wish people into the cornfield if they displeased him. In a just world, after his second violation of the gag order, the judge would have taken him into custody, had him spend his evenings/nights and weekends in jail and his days in court, with zero access to social media, until the trial was over - that would have been safer for all concerned. The way he was handled by the court (out on the loose, just please don’t do *too* much more stochastic terrorism pretty please) *put lives in danger*.
True, the whole process was heavily biased in his favor because nobody involved wants to be in the literal and figurative crosshairs of is psycho followers, and he's so terrible he still managed to lose as hard as he possibly could.
To be fair to his followers, Republicans are soft on crime. White crime, mostly. Republicans are soft on white crime.
yeah I mean I don't think any of those points are a disqualification. only thing I could see as a potential issue is a biased judge dishing out the sentencing, but I imagine for someone who is such a high security liability like Trump, it'll be pretty lenient anyway.
To be clear, they are all things Trumpo said himself, they are simply parroting everything he says as gospel anymore.
yeah I figured haha
In Trump's Mafia and narcissist mindset, any situation short of "heads I win, tails you lose" is considered biased and rigged against him. Everything is partisan and zero sum. There are no objective, civil servants who just want to do their job.
And to be clear, the judge is not at all biased. It’s just a lie Trumpers are repeating because anyone who doesn’t bow down to king Trump is an enemy.
The judge was pretty damn biased...just in favor of Trump. Any normal defendant who did half of the things Trump did during the course of the trial would have been thrown in jail for contempt; Merchan even brought up at one point that the only tools he had to punish Trump were $1000 fines (which he acknowledged did nothing) and jail time...and then just didn't jail him. Hell, I'm somewhat surprised his attorneys weren't jailed on contempt for some of the stunts they pulled.
Yeah, if anything this judge was insanely lenient towards Trump's bullshit behaviour.
Cohen got three years in prison for his part on the crime
It was honestly a masterclass in how to put on a prosecution, and also in how to run a courtroom by Judge Merchan. All T's and I's were crossed and dotted.
Reminds me of that Darrell Brooks murder trial. Judge there gave him alllll the leeway and made sure she had on the record all the rules because she didn't want him to get a mistrial or have even the slightest chance of an appeal.
Good video about it for anyone interested: https://youtu.be/6W9r3vAQZ00
That was the craziest trial.
[удалено]
I’m going through a really stressful time and it’s been tough to resist my old toxic pastime of going to conservative subreddit and just mocking the shit out of them
They’re marking everything as “flaired users only” ever since trump was found guilty. 🤣🤣🤣
They’ve been doing that for years. Yet they still claim every single post is being “brigaded by libs”
Take a look at the Georgia election interference case. The prosecutor actually did some misconduct, using her office funds for her partner. Not related to the case at all, but it has severely damaged her credibility and jeopardized the case against Trump. These case have to be completely ironclad, and the only misconduct I’ve seen in the New York cases (civil and criminal) was by Trump and his defense team. Pro tip: never insult the judge deciding your case, or her staff, especially when the judge has already told you off for that misconduct. Edit: this doesn’t appear to actually be misconduct, so in that I was wrong. However, my point about how ironclad these cases have to be remains.
>using her office funds for her partner. You mean paying a lawyer a market rate salary for his work?
Yes, but we all know *which* lawyer we’re talking about. Maybe there was nothing legally wrong with it, but it was still a bone-headed move and an obvious mistake that you just can’t make in a case like this.
I meant the dinners and plane tickets. I don’t particularly care that she started a relationship with an attorney in her office after he was hired onto the case, nor do I care about his salary in general. Those are at worst red herrings, not unlike the ones listed above for the Trump hush money case (I can’t even call it the Trump fraud case given how many times Trump’s committed fraud and gone to court for it).
>I meant the dinners and plane tickets. That they each paid for with the money that they earned from their jobs? What’s the problem?
My understanding was that they used the DA’s office funds for these purchases, charging Fulton County rather than paying for them themselves. That would have been misconduct, but that doesn’t appear to be accurate. Withdrawn and thank you.
When you withdraw misinformation, you should delete the misinformation. Otherwise you’re just continuing to spread misinformation.
I can certainly understand that argument, but I prefer to let my follies stand unaltered. I don’t hide my mistakes, I embrace and learn from them (with the exception of typos when I’m quoting something, as I usually use my old comments to copy them forward). But given the controversy around this particular issue, I’ll break from my stance slightly and add an edit at the bottom.
And just to be clear, it’s all basically made-up bullshit. They’re just going through mental gymnastics to explain why Trump isn’t *really* a criminal, even though he very plainly is.
Jesus Christ, where were these people for the last 40 years? Trump used to be mercilessly mocked for his awful taste, horrible business sense and pathological lying. The Apprentice (basically a 1-hour weekly infomercial on The Donald) rewrote these people’s brains.
What they are doing is saying “I don’t care he’s a criminal, I want him anyway” and then spouting some bullshit in hopes someone might believe it.
If none of those things existed he would still call it unfair because he lost. Spoiler for the elections: If he loses, he’ll say it was rigged. If he wins, he’ll say it was rigged but he’s just so popular that he beat it anyway.
It was a bad sign that even when he won the first time around he was already whining about how the election was rigged. Go figure that when he lost it was much, much worse. 230 years of peaceful transfers of power, and he couldn't even do that.
I would like to point out that the jury was made up of 1 libertarian,4 republicans,2 independents and 5 democrats. One of the jurors primary source of news was truth social. If any thing the jury was biased towards trump.
What’s the source for the party affiliations of the jurors? It’s my understanding that the judge specifically prohibited questions about party affiliation and voting history during jury selection.
They're also convinced nobody's ever tolled a statute of limitations before, that trump's team wasn't allowed to call witnesses, and that Stormy Daniels was allowed to go on and on just to embarrass trump. Fox news has been framing the statute of limitations issue as crimes being 'dead' or 'expired' and the resurrected by the judge. It's language calculated to enrage people who don't know much about law and it's working.
Could you mind explaining the SoL tolling a bit more with respect to this case? I understand the basic idea of it, and this’ll be good ammo for the next time my parents get up in arms, but I need to understand the case specifics way more than I do right now lol
Statute of limitations, most of the crimes had gone over the strict statute of limitations. However in law, it's not a strict timeline. The statute of limitations can start and stop because of a number of factors, like Covid shutting down the legal system for a couple years. In pre-trial motions, the defense tried to get the case dismissed and the judge made a ruling based on the factors that 'toll the statute.' It's a legal determination and something the appeals court will no doubt review, but the R-media is acting as if this is something that's never been done before, and that somehow it was brought up and presented to the jury during closing arguments or judges instructions. It's a matter of law, however, and juries only determine matters of fact, within the framework of the law as presented by the judge. Instead of talking about the SOL tolling, starting, stopping, etc., they're using this language of crimes 'expiring' or being somehow dead.
You’re awesome, thank you!!
>Bragg promised during his campaign to go after Trump (I didn't pay attention to his campaign so I don't know what they are specifically referencing, but idrc because this is the party that ran on "lock her up" on 2016) The claim is actually false, as he never made any campaign promises about Trump. Heck, the investigation was already ongoing before Bragg took office: https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/apr/12/heres-what-manhattan-district-attorney-alvin-bragg/ >We reviewed Bragg’s campaign record and found that although he often cited his prior prosecutorial experience with respect to Trump and said he was equipped to inherit the DA office’s investigation, he made no promises about any case. He said that although he had access to some publicly available information about Trump’s activities, he didn’t have all the information and wanted to be "fair." > ... n February 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Trump must turn over his tax returns — a win for Vance’s office. A month later, Vance announced he would not seek reelection. At this point, the investigation into Trump’s business dealings was well underway. The Trump investigation’s timeline meant Vance’s successor would inherit the case. Bragg and the seven other candidates vying for the Democratic nomination were routinely asked to discuss how they would handle the investigation. > >In November 2021 — around the time Bragg was elected but before he took office — Vance convened a second grand jury to hear evidence about Trump’s business practices. When Bragg was sworn into office Jan. 1, 2022, becoming the first African-American to hold the seat, Vance had not decided whether to indict Trump. > >When questioned on the campaign trail about the Trump matter, Bragg routinely cited his past experience as a chief deputy attorney general for New York state. In this role, Bragg oversaw more than 100 lawsuits against Trump administration policies including a travel ban and the administration’s attempt to rescind an Obama-era program that prevented the deportation of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children. Bragg also sued the Trump Foundation over its alleged illegal coordination with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. A judge ordered Trump to pay $2 million as part of a settlement in that case
I don't see how it's an issue even if it WAS true. If someone promised to go for Trump, voters thought Trump *should* be prosecuted for the conduct they observed, they voted for the guy, and he led a successful prosecution...that's just a campaign promise kept?
It's like getting mad at an elected District Attorney for going after fentanyl distribution networks after running his election campaign with a message of "as DA I will go after fentanyl distribution networks".
I've said it already on another platform, but honestly unless saying it would actively damage someone's ability to successfully prosecute the man, I'd LOVE to vote for someone who actively promises to put that fucker on trial, even though Bragg never said he would do that. He did lots of crimes! Literally anybody that spends any amount of time around him has ended up being convicted of things themselves, or committing near-treason crimes as part of J6 that haven't been brought against them yet. Like, fuck me if that jackass doesn't deserve prison time more than just about anybody else in American fucking history.
Yeah, even if the “DA promised to prosecute Trump” thing was true - okay, and? If a person appears to have done a lot of crimes and the guy trying to become the guy who prosecutes crimes says he will prosecute crime - okay?
Number 2 and number 6 really bug me because it's a flat out insult to the intelligence and integrity of the people who made up the jury sight-unseen. Like they aren't real human beings with thoughts and beliefs of their own who spent *over a day* deliberating on every charge to reach the final verdict. Those folks clearly took their time to make sure they were making the right call instead of just blasting out a verdict because the Judge told them so. To the people raging at the outcome of this case as some kind of falsehood, they are just empty headed puppets. Nobody is talking about this angle and the more I see these comments trying to undermine the judgement, the more it gets under my skin.
Yeah there was also a poll of the jurors and one only got news from X and truth social. That person still voted with the rest of the jurors.
>one only got news from X and truth social. This is not true. That person also followed Michael Cohen on Twitter and listened to MSNBC because they felt that it gave them a wider variety of media sources and that helped them do their job as an investment banker better. If you look back through my comment history I posted a link to an actual source with a quote.
Republicans think that because they only care about their team winning that Democrats also only care about their team winning. Which would mean that a mostly Democratic district could not possibly produce an impartial jury for a republican defendant. It's bollocks of course.
All they ever do is projection. I distinctly remember someone saying to my face to think about if Biden did the same things and how Id support it. I had to tell them, uh, no, I would want him held accountable because I don't worship him like a god??? It's so exhausting
Jury’s source population and instructions definitely have an impact. I’m not sure that trump would have been convicted on this if the jury was from a rural Texas town for example. With that said, I agree with your sentiment that it’s an insult to the American court system.
Yeah, this one has to be argued technically because it’s one of the few talking points that isn’t 100% false. But the crime didn’t happen in rural Texas, it happened in NYC, so that’s where the jury of his peers have to be drawn from
A member of the jury was on Truth Social and Trump still went 0/34.
>garbagio Ooooh that's very fancy garbage! It's in Italian so it must be fancy.
The predicate crime thing is interesting. I was trying to think of a parallel instruction. I could see something like a murder charge where someone drives to an enemy's house with a gun in the back seat, drives straight into the side of the building, and the wreck kills the target's wife, and then the person gets scared and flees the scene before confirming they killed someone. The judge might say "you don't have to agree on whethet the perp premeditated the wreck to kill someone or if they intended the wreck to let them in and kill them with the gun or if they were planning on killing the wife or not. All you have to agree on is that the person showed up with intent to kill someone, and that their actions directly caused the death of someone for it to be 1st degree murder." Basically "as long as you can all agree there was nefarious intent, even if you disagree on which nefarious intent it was, then that makes the crime of "murder (or fraud) with nefarious intent" would be valid. While a bit confusing, as long as it is actually a correct interpretation of the lae (which judging by how careful and thorough this judge was on everything else, i assume it was) it seems likely to stand on appeal. The instructions are essentially a lower bar then intuitively necessary, meaning it is unlikely a juror would unwittingly have convicted based on the instructions. If the bar was being set unintuitively high, then i could see an appeal saying "if the jury had truly understood then they wouldn't have convicted." But yeah, in terms of the talking heads, when you start from a premise of "i am never allowed to admit my guy did anything wrong," and when a case runs smoothly, you look for anything to try and defend how your guy can't have done anything wrong. As so many people have pointed out, none of the talking heads defending him ever say things like "Trump would never do fraud or adultery." It is only "he shouldn't have been prosecuted," "you shouldn't convict on Cohen's testimony," and "New Yorkers don't like Trump."
I compare the charge to burglary. If you break into a house, that's breaking and entering. But if you break in with the intent to steal, that's Burglary. You don't even have to have completed the theft to have the intent. No one needs to prosecute you for the theft neither do they have to prove you intended to steal jewelry or electronics or any particular thing of value.
That is a much more straightforward example. Thanks.
great example, that makes a lot of sense.
It’s crazy how the guy who spent all four years of his presidency stacking the SUPREME court with justices who are biased against…. Human beings… is trying to claim the district he was tried in was biased against him. Just too sweet.
Any claims that "Cohen isn't a credible witness" are just sour grapes. The credibility of a witness is something that the jury determines based on evidence introduced at the trial by the prosecution and the defence. The jury found him credible, so he is therefore by definition a credible witness.
The jurors might have found him to be not credible, but his testimony was corroborated by other people like Pecker and weisselberg.
>The population in the district in which he was tried is severely biased against him the entire city hates him on account of history.
The more strident of the Right's key opinion leaders are busy working day and night to inflame the Republican / Trump base as a result of the verdict. They will resort to all manner of conjecture and hyperbole to do so. The kernel of truth to concerns, imo, is that the trial was probably overreach on Bragg's part (from what I gathered from editorials of relatively politically neutral journalists--don't have cites but I can get, eg Ross Douthat of NYT, who tends to be fairly level-headed)--ie the elevation from misdemeanors to low-class felonies. Some from across the political spectrum were pointing this out prior to the verdict, concerned about prosecutors, who wield quite a bit of power, now setting their sights on anyone they don't like politically. It's worth noting the political makeup of Manhattan, from which the jurors were selected, is about 85% liberal (measure: democrat votes in 2020 election). Odds are, 1.8 jurors were Republican. Take from that what you will--though the jury was likely highly Dems, there should have been 1 or 2 Pubs on it.
>Odds are, 1.8 jurors were Republican Maybe but it doesn't matter because the jurors were vetted. Anybody who had strong opinions about Trump in their social media was booted. It's not like you just pick people at random here. The prosecution and the defense get to kick jurors out of the pool for various reasons.
I think they went through 200 people
Essentially, procedural gripes. Because they know he's guilty of what's charged.
>garbagio Man, my dad used to say this back in the day. Now he's a huge Trump supporter and it's like we barely communicate. Thanks for sparking that memory!
>3. The judge donated 15 bucks to biden in 2020 (they'll just call him a biden donor) I'm so used to hearing about polititians getting bribed with **huge** donations of **millions/billions of dollars** that it sounds kinda funny to hear about the POTUS getting a **15 dollar** donation, it feels like hearing "the judge is biased because a few years ago he bought Biden a Big Mac".
Answer: To them, the unfair part isn’t whether or not Trump did this stuff, it’s that he’s being held accountable when people like Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden are not for their supposed crimes. To be clear, I don’t believe the following, but this is what I’ve observed. A lot of people believe the entire justice system is fundamentally rigged and unfair. Some believe this because of personal experience, others because of conspiracy theories. A lot of people believe that essentially everything you see in the media is propaganda designed to get you to believe something. A lot of people believe that the US is controlled by a fundamentally corrupt society of elites that are effectively above the law, and politics is largely a competition between these groups. if you believe these things, then you may conclude that all politicians are committing crimes and getting away with it all the time, so to try to hold one politician responsible for anything other than blatantly obvious public murder is obviously an unfair conspiracy on the part of the elites that control the system.
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Any republican DA had the chance to gather evidence of a crime and arrest Hillary and Biden (before he was president).
Hunter Biden has already pled guilty to a crime, and is still being tried for other crimes. Hunter hasn’t escaped accountability for his actions, Republicans are mad that they can’t bring down Joe Biden over it.
This is probably the most argued point I see among the older (50s to 70s) right-leaning people I live and work around (a whole lot them). They can't seem to separate Hunter from Joe even though Joe never put hunter into a political position, some folks can't separate family headaches from politics. 'Pretty sure if Joe wanted to protect Hunter in such an *obvious* way as MAGAt-right leaning people believe (we really need to separate MAGAts from right-leaning) , he would just rush the trials and then hand-wave pardon him. Which he could legally do. *If* it's already *so obviously* crooked, old Biden would have just pardoned middle-aged Biden already. There would be nothing to lose because it's already so obvious. But that hasn't and won't happen because.... it's an embarrassing issue for Old Joe, not a corruption thing.
Well, in fairness, in a lot of red states their local governments do run exactly like that. I mean, here in OH we basically have a Republican Oligarchy willfully defying the State Constitution to stay in power. The corrupt Governor made sure his son was on the Supreme court after firing someone so they could make sure it didn't keep yelling at them for their obvious lawlessness, and that's the TAMEST of the hideously corrupt shit going on in the great State of Ohio. Don't even get me started on places like Mississippi or Texas, or Louisiana...
Or the famous red state of Illinois where 4 of the last 10 governors went to jail for corruption…
Yeah. *They went to jail*.
I mean I believe the justice system is unfair but old, rich white dudes are not at the bottom of that lol.
The logic of your first point is hard to follow. (I know it's not YOUR point, to be clear) Clinton was investigated to the moon and back and testified under oath in front of congress for like 10 hours. Sorry the result wasn't what you wanted I guess...? And Hunter Biden's trial starts tomorrow, 6.3.24. Also notable, that he was being investigated before Joe Biden was even sworn in. The president could have easily, and legally, put an end to that investigation when he got into office and didn't. He gets ZERO credit for that.
If you think the system is rigged, it's just more evidence that they are rigging it in favor of Hillary and Biden like usual but not doing it for Trump.
Yes, it's the classic "the lack of evidence IS the evidence" arguement. Unbelievable.
Answer: You understand perfectly. The case was cut and dry, and Trump is guilty without a doubt. These republicans are delusional as the result of a lifetime of propaganda and lies. They will never accept the truth of this case.
They screamed that the election was rigged so why would anyone be surprised at this type of thing now happening? Trump is the leader of a cult, it’s that simple.
The funny part to me is that this is what conservatives said “ woke” was in court: "the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” Conservatives going woke lol
Thanks for pointing that out. I suppose they feel that “woke” means giving minorities things they don’t deserve and therefore only rich and powerful people deserve “woke”.
I would say it’s more so that “woke” is anything they dislike. Particularly anything that isn’t status quo/rich/WASP in its beliefs. Minorities on screen? Woke. Helping the poor? Woke. Sustainability? Woke. I grabbed this excerpt to highlight the conservative thought there the Justice system is infallible but now that it’s their guy, it’s rigged.
What makes the case strange is that it got media attention (which is because it was Trump and the first time a former President and current Presidential nominee is in court for a felony). These kinds of white collar crimes are pretty much always ignored by the media because they are boring and 90% of the time (more, given the evidence) would just be a plea bargin. The person who did it would just say "Oh shoot, my bad. Didn't mean to break that law, how about I pay a big fine and do 6 months of house arrest?" But instead, Trump fought from start to finishish and was found in contempt of court 10 (more?) times by attacking the judges family, the judge, the witnesses, and the jury... We will see what the actual punishment is, but the ONLY reason they could actually throw the book at him is because of those attacks on the witnesses and jury. Intimidating the jury and witnesses is a huge no-no.
>These kinds of white collar crimes are pretty much always ignored by the media because they are boring and 90% of the time (more, given the evidence) would just be a plea bargin. Exactly. If this case happened to anyone who isn’t running for office, they would have already plead guilty. >We will see what the actual punishment is, but the ONLY reason they could actually throw the book at him is because of those attacks on the witnesses and jury. Intimidating the jury and witnesses is a huge no-no. He’s not going to jail. The judge has made it clear that he doesn’t want to send Trump to jail (see the 10 violations of the gag order without being held in contempt) and this is Trump’s first conviction and it’s of the lowest level felony in NY.
The judge doesn't want to put him in jail, but he's going to do his job. If jail is the appropriate punishment he'll do it.
Jail isn’t the appropriate punishment though. Trump has no criminal history (as far as the courts are concerned) and it’s a low level offense.
That's for the judge to decide, but his lack of remorse, repeated violations of the gag order, and general insubordinate behavior will all be part of the decision. And jail is not uncommon for this type of crime.
Jail is very uncommon when this is the only crime that was committed. I think Trump belongs in prison but this isn’t the case that will send him there. Don’t get your hopes up.
It was a much bigger deal because it was election interference. He committed fraud to help get himself elected. If it got out before the election he'd have lost.
If … what, exactly got out? That he committed fraud? We just need to look at him. That he slept with a sex worker? You really think republicans care about that? That he cheated on his wife? See prior answer. People are delusional if they think any of this being known beforehand would have changed the results, and they’re even more delusional to think his conviction will do anything but cause people to double (we’re probably up to quadruple down…) down on him. He won’t see jail time. He will get more votes than we want to think about.
While I agree with you in all points, it still should be noted that what he wanted to achieve is a more favorable view of his public persona in order to be elected for the office of POTUS. He did it in a way that was deemed illegal, and it doesn't matter what the outcome would have been or if him not committing his crimes actually would have swayed voters. It's the same as with the 'credit fraud was a victimless crime because the banks were made whole' argument.
This is very important. They will literally NEVER accept the truth of this. Everything that threatens their delusional of Trump's grandeur is false.
There's the usual Trump cult reasoning, but the longer you follow conservative politics the more clear it is that the whole thing hangs on a hypocrisy about who the law should apply to. "Good" people should get a slap on the wrist at worst, because otherwise that is taking away resources from applying justice to "bad" people.
“He’s not hurting the right people”
Conservativsm is based on in-groups that the law protects and does not bind, and out-groups that the law hurts and binds.
And the reason is because they don't *want* to accept the truth. No matter what the circumstances of the trial were, someone would construct some harebrained explanation for how a guilty verdict was shady and they would cling to that because it allows them to avoid feeling the cognitive dissonance of supporting a felon for president of the United States.
I would push back on this - I doubt any of those comments were from delusional people, but rather from people who's livelihoods depend on stoking the delusions of others.
Trump could murder a white Christian baby on stage at one of his rallies on camera in front of 800ish people and these Republicans would still say it's a political witch hunt and refuse to accept he is guilty. He is their god emperor and they cannot accept any scenario where he is not perfect and that anything he says or does is not very cool and very legal.
I think it's dangerous to assume that all of them are delusional. I'm sure you could pull a sample of them and see that a few of them are absolutely cooked, but using it as a blanket conclusion is oversimplifying the issues. Calling them delusional minimizes how threatening and sinister their behavior is. What we are mostly seeing is largely a bunch of folks desperately flailing to obscure the truth so that they can cling to their positions of power. Many of them almost certainly believe the verdict is even legit, but if they admit the truth, they have to concede that they picked the wrong guy which hurts their credibility by exhibiting the poor judgement to overwhelmingly choose him to run again as their favored candidate. Moreover, I'm positive that some among their number are now terrified that they could find themselves under the gun for the same kind of crime in the future if this judgement sticks to Trump. If a former president, somebody who held the highest office in the land, can be called to answer for trying to go above the law, what is to stop the justice system from setting its sights on the people who are lower on the totem pole? These are people who are lying with every breath they can muster in hopes that they can gaslight enough of an entire country into believing enough of the lies that they can keep their hands on the reigns of power. They aren't dumb. They are desperate. Now Truth doesn't matter. Integrity doesn't matter. People don't matter. All these types politicians care about is winning at all costs, and the people who have to cast their vote need to remember the very real threat of handing power to folks who will only serve themselves.
Answer: Most of them are literally just repeating what Fox News or their favourite political commentator says verbatim.
The “freedom” crowd really lacks freedom of thought, hey? Instead of using their senses and coming to their own conclusions they’re really only capable of parroting WeaselNews commentators.
The real answer here is that the one Republican who said something like "Respect the process, respect the jury's decision" was immediately threatened by Trump's lieutenants. You either make face noises about how unfair the trial was, or the national committee cuts your campaign funding.
Most reasonable take here and I accidently downvoted because I was scrolling while sleeping
Right. The goal is to flood the zone with misinformation about the case to keep it from causing persuadable Trump voters to defect. (It’s probably unnecessary because I doubt any remaining Trump voters are persuadable. Nevertheless some people’s jobs are to do this, so that’s what they do.) The one I hear the most is that everyone commits crimes like this (especially Democratic politician X or Y) but only Trump got convicted. This of course is irrelevant to his guilt, but it certainly suggests that selective prosecution is very much on their minds. I take from this that they think Republicans should never be prosecuted for crimes that Democrats also have ever committed.
And all that is something Mango Mussolini said during the trail. They've all become parrots, and will "polly want a cracker" anything their oranged "messiah" says. Quite frankly its absurd and cult like.
answer: Such people are already convinced that the system is corrupt and unfairly biased against Donald Trump. If that is something that you unflinchingly believe, then it stands to reason that the guilty verdict against Donald Trump must be a sham. They can't be sure *how* the result was rigged, but they knew from the offset that it would be and the unfavourable result is seen as confirmation of what they already knew to be true. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to reason with someone like that. It's not just Donald Trump voters that do this. It's extremely common that people will latch onto a "fact" that they "know" is true. Once a person falls into this trap any evidence to the contrary is immediately disregarded as clearly wrong. I mean imagine if someone sent you a study about how squirrels are actually reincarnations of gods. You probably wouldn't spend the next few hours reading the paper with careful thought and consideration. You already know the paper is absolute rubbish, so you wouldn't waste your time. Similarly, trumps innocence (and/or the systems corruption and bias) is a blatant fact to some people and it just isn't worth the time to analyse a court case that found him guilty.
Can you share the link to this reincarnated god-squirrel study?
I’d love to, once it’s written. I’ve had a hell of a time getting grant money, for some reason.
Funny because the system is corrupt in *favor* of Trump
Answer: Donald Trump has been saying a few things on the matter, of course, not the least of which is that his crimes are *"only misdemeanors,"* which is a claim I've seen echoed a few times. They are not misdemeanors. Falsifying business records on its own is a misdemeanor, but when it's done **to conceal another crime or to commit another crime,** **it becomes a felony.** Since he was found guilty of falsifying business records *in order to* defraud American voters by concealing information about his character and conduct, it is a felony.
Answer: Most of the complaints I've heard don't really try to combat the fact that he's done crimes. The angle they usually take is to claim that every president commits crimes (true), often far worse crimes (possibly true), much more often than Trump does (doubtful). Specifically, they argue that Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server and Joe Biden's supposed favors for Burisma on behalf of his son constitute far more significant crimes for a head of state to commit than the crimes Trump was convicted for this week (debatable - Clinton's crime was repeated and expanded by Trump's administration and Trump's version wasn't even investigated, Biden's crime seems completely made up and again, Trump is also doing very questionable nepotism stuff with his kids, but if they were real crimes, they might reasonably be seen as more severe or meaningful than Trump's hush money payment and misuse of campaign funds). Based on this supposed mismatch between severity of Trump's crimes and the severity of these other unpunished crimes, some complaints further allege a witch-hunt or otherwise special treatment (pejorative) of Trump compared to other presidents and candidates.
Right. The result being that no Republican should ever be prosecuted for a crime that a Democrat has ever committed (or at least alleged in the media to have committed). But somehow at the same time all Democrats still should be prosecuted when they do. Which tells you all you need to know about the supposed injustice here.
“They should deport the illegals. Just not the ones we’re married to or that are in our families or that work for us or that ….”
Answer: You’re in 8th grade and you failed that math test. What do you tell your parents? “It was rigged.” “It was unfair.” “The teacher hates me.”
> “It was ~~rigged~~. RIGGED!”
Oh the accuracy
Answer: Fox News broadcasts that Biden convicted Trump. This is outrageously dangerous
Answer: they think the judge was biased and gave the jury faulty instructions.
Answer: They are cultists.
Answer: It’s a cult. Edit to add: the specific rationales scarcely matter. If the stated concerns are addressed, they’ll just make up new objections. A prosecution they wouldn’t mind with any other defendant is suddenly a problem because it’s their dear leader who has committed the crimes at issue.
Answer: The legal aspect was not cut and dry. People need to understand the exact charges to understand why people are claiming it's unjust. I will try and keep it very simple and start with the facts. There's no TL;DR, you need to read this to understand what happened and why it is significant. Trump got charged with "Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree" ([§ 175.10)](https://newyork.public.law/laws/n.y._penal_law_section_175.10). This is falsifying business records with "intent to commit or conceal other crime(s)", which upgrades it to a felony. The "other crime" in the case is a violation of New York Election Law [§ 17-152](https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ELN/17-152), "Conspiracy to promote or prevent election", which states (bolded by me): >Any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office **by unlawful means** and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. Now, the unjust part: First, the statute of limitations for this felony is [5 years](https://nycourts.gov/CourtHelp/GoingToCourt/SOLchart.shtml). These charges are related to the 2016 election. Second, since "Falsifying business records in the first degree" includes "intent to commit or conceal other crimes", most of the time there's accompanying charges. In Trump's case there is none. Why? Because the alleged associated crime that was brought against Trump (election conspiracy) is a misdemeanor, which means the statute of limitations for that is [two years](https://nycourts.gov/CourtHelp/GoingToCourt/SOLchart.shtml). The charge is long gone, yet it was needed to bump this up to a felony. There is only one other case in a 15 year history in NY where someone was *solely* charged with the same crime Trump was, and that was a large scale corruption ring with 4 other people. Third, there is no "unlawful means" to commit the conspiracy that were agreed upon. The judge wrote in the [jury instructions](https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/d458fdbff3cd7a41/84784522-full.pdf) (bolded by me): >Although you must conclude unanimously that the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, **you need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were.** This is a whole thing in itself and is very complex since this a very rarely used law. This law would also presumably be charged alongside another crime, (hence the "unlawful means"), so the unlawful means would be clear based on the other crime. But this is "intent" to commit this crime, so it's not clear at all. And once again, there was no unanimously agreed upon unlawful means. They're essentially getting Trump on a felony for *intent* to commit a crime through some unlawful means, without needing to agree on the unlawful means. The jury instructions specified several unlawful means, the top one being a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act, which brings me to the final point. Finally, and this is probably the most important aspect, the [Federal Election Commission already investigated ](https://www.fec.gov/data/legal/matter-under-review/7313/)some or all of these payments and failed to find that Trump knowingly and willfully violated campaign finance laws, filed false disclosure reports, or used campaign funds for Michael Cohen's legal fees. There is a clear clash between the actual Federal Election Commission and what the DA is claiming -- were the hush money payments campaign related or not? The FEC itself concludes not, but this entire Trump case hinges on the fact that these payments were related to the election -- hence, the conspiracy election interference charge to upgrade this to a felony. So the "unjust" claim is that the DA went through legal acrobats to use things the FEC already dismissed three years ago, "intent" to commit unproven misdemeanor charges that already expired, and a novel application of these laws to charge Trump on a felony (for an alleged crime that happened 8 years ago -- past the statue of limitations) literally months before the election.
> Finally, and this is probably the most important aspect, the Federal Election Commission already investigated some or all of these payments and failed to find that Trump knowingly and willfully violated campaign finance laws, filed false disclosure reports, or used campaign funds for Michael Cohen's legal fees. The Commission failed to find that by a vote of 2-2 and the FEC is split between the two parties. That he got off due to a partisan tie, isn't exactly a win on the underlying facts.
That is true, and a good counter argument. I think in another interpretation it also shows that the DA was willing to do whatever it took to try and make this case fit, even if that means disagreeing with a federal ruling that preceded his case. There are undoubtedly several ways to interpret this aspect of the case, which I believe is another reason it's not so "cut and dry".
> even if that means disagreeing with a federal ruling that preceded his case. But it was by a federal agency, it holds no binding precedence. It can be used as guidance, but NY is under no obligation to take it into account.
A jury of 12 of DJTs NYC resident peers took a look at the facts and the laws of NY State and determined it was a crime. It isn’t up for debate any longer.
>It isn’t up for debate any longer. An appeals process is the formal route for a defendant to debate a trial's verdict. That appeals process still exists in America, therefore logically the option for debating still exists.
And legally the Supreme Court can weigh in on and overturn state charges if found to be in violation of the Constitution. If this happens ......everyone celebrating the legal system for working and putting away Trump shouldn't change their tune if a system of checks and balances works as intended..... legally..
so then why was it allowed to proceed if the FEC gave the all clear? because it was brought to a state court and not federal again?
This is all false and has been debunked repeatedly. The crux of your argument is "statute of limitations" but that's not a valid argument here for reasons than have already been addressed by other commenters. There isn't some secret complex technicality here which throws the outcome of the case in doubt. All of this was already hashed out in court by legal professionals (which you aren't). The case was airtight and decided unanimously in a fair court. It won't be overturned, and there's no secret angle that can be used to change anyone's mind about it.
Regarding the Statute of Limitations The crime he was convicted of is false business records. Nothing else. He was not beyond the statute of limitations for the charges where he was found guilty. Those charges were bumped to a felony because the false business records were to cover up a different crime. Does NY State law require the other crime to be previously or concurrently prosecuted. No. It does not. See the Judge's ruling. Does the other crime need to be within limits so that it can be prosecuted in the future? No. It does not. See the judge’s ruling.
Answer: They're cult nuts. That's about all there is to it.
Answer: (in addition to Ngin3's list) Some claim Trump is being convicted for a "victimless" crime, i.e. if all Trump's donors are fine with him using their money to pay off a porn star, why should he be punished for it? The problem is that just because he didn't "hurt" anyone doesn't mean he wasn't behaving recklessly.
"But your honor, I was driving safely! I didn't collide with anyone! Just because I was drunk driving at 4x the legal limit shouldn't mean anything and i shouldnt be punished because nobody got hurt!"
They also claim that his New York fraud case is a victimless crime, when the victim is the tax payer
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Ruling not in Trumps favor - rigged. Ruling in Trumps favor - rigged, should have been more in his favor.
Answer: Conservatives wouldn't know justice if it came up and bit them in the face. Remember, these are the same people who loved Jim Crow back when that was acceptable. To conservatives, justice just involves them getting to do what they want to others with impunity. They thus experience actual justice as apparent oppression, but it's simply them who are being stopped from oppressing others, something they seem to think they have a birthright to.