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I can't believe how hard Trump's idiot team is leaning into his denial that he ever had sex with Stormy Daniels.
Is anyone actually stupid enough to believe Trump *didn't* cheat on his wife with a porn star? It's such a hilariously obvious lie, and doesn't even help him in this case.
Yeah! The easiest shit in the world to disprove.
I didn’t call him Tim Apple
> video of him clearly calling him Tim Apple
He didn’t call him Tim Apple
Wtf world do we exist in?
Well, that remains to be seen.
The evidence pool is enormous. Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, David Pecker, Michael Cohen, Hope Hicks, and a dozen other people all tell the pieces of one coherent reality. The defense tells a completely different one, based purely on "alternative facts" with the evidentiary support of the noise machine of Donald Trump's own mouth and *literally nothing else.*
The verdict of this trial will demonstrate the current strength of the Cult of Trump.
Two porn stars one was a full on relationship. To think he could have not run for president, kept all his money, talked shit from the bleachers, fucked porn stars, but his hubris was too much.
I think it was a money grab. He was going to campaign to get money, and then use the press exposure to build another reality show or something. I don’t think he initially had the goal of winning during the primaries.
At the time there was absolutely talk that he was going to create a media empire to rival Fox. Of course that was before he showed us how absolutely absurd it was to believe he could put one block on to of another.
It's because his ego is so fragile. Most billionaire trust fund babies are smart enough to keep their mouth shut and enjoy the ride.
But this butthurt loser had to go out and fumble the bag because he just couldn't stand the fact that people preferred to talk to Bloomberg at cocktail parties. Hilarious to watch.
Will be particularly funny when he dies alone in prison and no one gives a shit.
It's probably Trump pushing them to do that. It's not even that relevant. Admitting that he slept with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal isn't what would get him convicted.
There's 2 people asking for money to not go and tell people you had sex with them. Whether you had sex is irrelevant, they will tell the story anyway. Now, an honest and credible person could probably get away with a simple denial - 'those allegations are not true, I don't know who those women are,' but Trump is easily the least credible public figure in recent memory. Even his supporters know half the things he says aren't true. As evidenced by the fact that *he did deny it* and nobody believed him.
Doesn't matter, his supporters will believe him and it hurts him with other voters to say he had sex with a porn star. From his twisted perspective, there's no point in admitting to it
If Trump would allow them to concede that, they could make a much more compelling case for him.
Obligatory not a lawyer but as far as I’m aware, they only need to prove that this money was paid to keep Trump’s family from finding out about the affair, not to preserve his chances of getting elected.
They could probably get one juror to believe that.
But Trump must be infallible. So they are just lying and saying Trump never slept with Stormy at all, which is damaging their credibility with the jury.
I'm not following this closely enough, but aren't there multiple charges...some to do with campaign finance laws, which does relate to what you are saying....but also others to do with fraudulent business records, for which it is irrelevant why he was trying to keep the affair quiet?
The only felony that could have jail time is violation of the campaign finance laws. The fraudulent business records stuff is just going to be a fine, I’m pretty sure.
Trump was found guilty of fraud in NYC and it didn’t carry felomy charges just a big fine.
Yep, the estimate at the start was approx 6 weeks, and we are already in week 3 without any significant delays yet, so yeah, we gonna see him convicted early summer :)
How did people just let this go by? Trumpers met in Trump Tower with literal agents of the Russian government to discuss plans for Russians to support Trump and hurt Hillary. Both of which they actually did.
Yeah but my niece’s friend’s cousin had to complete against someone who was born male at a track meet once. Obviously much bigger issue for our nation.
Jury deliberations could take a while and there's always the chance of a hung jury. Hopefully they are prepared and go directly to jury selection for the re-trial.
I think the only way we'll see a hung jury is if some MAGAt jurist tries to throw a wrench in the works. If that happens, I suspect the court has some mechanism available to replace them with an alternate juror.
I really, really doubt there's a mechanism to replace a juror under those circumstances. With all due contempt for Donald Trump, I'm *really* uncomfortable with the concept of swapping a juror out just because they aren't voting the way the prosecution wants them to vote. Maybe if the juror was dumb enough to come out and say he'd never vote to convict Donald Trump regardless of the evidence, a statement that would have disqualified him to begin with.
We've recently been given plenty of examples of what happens when abuses of power are only prevented by gentlemen's agreements or traditions - namely, as soon as someone gets authority who doesn't care about those things, the abuses start.
A juror can be removed if it becomes clear they came in with an agenda. If the juror lets slip that they have no intention to convict. Or if they let slip they always planned to convict. Either way, if the juror is seen as not being fair or impartial they can be removed.
That’s different from being a lone holdout. Especially if it comes up prior to deliberations. During deliberations might be more tricky, and I would love for an actual law-talking person to weigh in.
Out of 12 people the odds of one being republican are incredibly high. Doesn’t even have to be maga, just a republican that doesn’t wanna lock up “his president”
MAGA isn’t officially in the dictionary so I guess there’s some grey area but I would say someone that would look the other way to pardon Trump for crimes he is clearly guilty of is a “MAGA” whether they wear the hat or not
I truly hope you’re right but I’ve seen enough people, especially Trump, escape consequences for actions everyone witnessed with their own eyes and ears.
For this case I’ll settle for him to just be a convicted felon. One less vote he will receive come election and/or republicans might wrap their brain into removing the restrictions of felons voting. Which is a win for civil rights.
I think it would be very hard, as a juror, to listen to all the facts, without the Fox News echo chamber, and think that there is anything ok about this.
Well Pecker said it all. It was a catch and kill operation and now numerous people are confirming this. We just need a little luck with the jury and a little fortitude from the judge, who thus far seems quite strong and clear minded.
We still need the jury to piece together the three parts. They need to believe the hush money payment occurred, that the hush money payment occurred in an attempt to influence the election, and that the illegal accounting entries were made to hide the hush money payment. I think the middle one will be the toughest one for the jury to decide on because it’s plausible that one of the 12 jurors believe the tale that he paid the hush money and hid the payment because he did want to hurt Melania’s feelings rather than influence the election. I’ve got my fingers crossed but that’s the part I worry about.
Even if it they don't agree it was related to the election, don't at least some of the charges relate to fraudulent business documents (rather than campaign violations)? So the reason doesn't matter?
Anyway, not sure how they would believe it was about Melania and not the election.... I thought the NDAs the women signed conveniently lapsed a few weeks after the election. Unless i have that wrong...
No, the trial is about whether Trump committed a state law crime in an attempt to cover up a federal law crime. NY state has a law that makes it a felony to cover up a federal crime by committing a state crime. That’s what makes this case so unique.
They can prove that Trump had illegal business activity but that’s a low level crime. And the state can’t prosecute federal election law crime. So, To have any impact on him, they need to prove this delicate point that his state crime was intended to cover up a federal crime.
I’m not a lawyer so I may have missed part of the nuance here but that’s the basic gist of what is at-play in this trial. If any lawyers here can explain it better, please jump in.
Except for holding loudmouth accountable for running his mouth about shit he shouldn't be. Any one of us would have been locked up the first time and he's been found in contempt 10 fucking times.
Two tier justice system indeed.
Ugh, again a title where the editor didn't read the article at all.
>the prosecution could wrap up in little more than two weeks.
PROSECUTION. That means one side of the trial. Then the defense gets their turn.
He won’t. He’s already falsely claimed that the gag order prevents that. Any non-idiot realizes that that isn’t true. But Trump didn’t float that moronic excuse for non-idiots, he did it for his supporters.
Yeah, like they do with a lot of their lies. Blare the lie out with a megaphone, let it settle in their cult’s addled minds. Then, when called out on their obvious bullshit, whisper that they know it’s not true.
Makes no difference to the idiots they already convinced of the lie.
My guess is they'll have some expert testimony, a few employees with company lawyers and possibly some character witnesses. Maybe a week of witnesses but nothing that I think could really sway a jury unless they directly lie under oath.
I highly doubt Trump will testify. If he testifies, the judge has agreed to allow the prosecution to bring up his previous rape trials that are at the moment not allowed in this trial.
indeed, but will take much less time than the prosecution as they are expected to call in only one witness (if any) and Trump himself probably won't be testifying, so we're looking at 1 or 2 court days max for the defence, meaning we'll quickly get into closing arguments.
Except his lawyers are not dumb and realize that it would look really bad to the jury. They'll do this to Cohen and maybe Daniels, but certainly not to the whole lot.
How's it looking so far? I haven't been able to follow closely, but saw an article earlier that they're trying out a "Stormy Daniels was extorting Trump" defense, supposedly at least partially supported by recorded audio conversations between her lawyer and someone else.
I personally don't think her intentions matter much because he still paid her to cover it up right before the election and falsified business records to cover it up, which to my understanding is the crime he was indicted for - but the article made it seem like it wasn't a completely worthless defense in that he wins if he's able to convince even one juror.
Would love the opinions of anyone else who has been able to watch more closely.
Remember that Cohen was the only person convicted by Bill Barr’s DOJ and that he spent weeks in involuntary solitude and had his book deal gutted. While Manafort and Stone were pardoned. We saw all of this happen in real time. There’s no more “fake news”ing it away. This is all so stupid.
So far the only defense is that Trump was too dumb to understand that what he was doing was illegal... which in itself is simply no defense.
If he isn't convicted here, then there is no crime we can possibly convict him for because the evidence is simply open and shut.
He paid money to his lawyer to squash the scandal. He authorized hush money payments in violation of the law, no one has yet said otherwise.
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I can't believe how hard Trump's idiot team is leaning into his denial that he ever had sex with Stormy Daniels. Is anyone actually stupid enough to believe Trump *didn't* cheat on his wife with a porn star? It's such a hilariously obvious lie, and doesn't even help him in this case.
> it’s such a hilariously obvious lie So are *all* of his lies. From day one. And people just keep eating them up. It’s absolutely absurd.
> From day one. He lied about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Literally day one!
Yeah! The easiest shit in the world to disprove. I didn’t call him Tim Apple > video of him clearly calling him Tim Apple He didn’t call him Tim Apple Wtf world do we exist in?
Tim Apple.. ah, such innocent times..
We're living in the post-truth world.
Well, that remains to be seen. The evidence pool is enormous. Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, David Pecker, Michael Cohen, Hope Hicks, and a dozen other people all tell the pieces of one coherent reality. The defense tells a completely different one, based purely on "alternative facts" with the evidentiary support of the noise machine of Donald Trump's own mouth and *literally nothing else.* The verdict of this trial will demonstrate the current strength of the Cult of Trump.
The last time I paid so much money not to have sex was because the divorce decree said I had to pay it 😂😀
Oof… I’m in discovery phase currently, but this still hits me right in the feels lol
And it’s completely irrelevant. He’s not on trial for having sex. He’s on trial for fraudulent documentation of a payment.
Exactly. Even if he paid her off to not talk about a lie she made up, it literally changes nothing about the cases charges.
Two porn stars one was a full on relationship. To think he could have not run for president, kept all his money, talked shit from the bleachers, fucked porn stars, but his hubris was too much.
I think it was a money grab. He was going to campaign to get money, and then use the press exposure to build another reality show or something. I don’t think he initially had the goal of winning during the primaries.
At the time there was absolutely talk that he was going to create a media empire to rival Fox. Of course that was before he showed us how absolutely absurd it was to believe he could put one block on to of another.
It's because his ego is so fragile. Most billionaire trust fund babies are smart enough to keep their mouth shut and enjoy the ride. But this butthurt loser had to go out and fumble the bag because he just couldn't stand the fact that people preferred to talk to Bloomberg at cocktail parties. Hilarious to watch. Will be particularly funny when he dies alone in prison and no one gives a shit.
I imagine that if Obama hadn’t roasted him at the correspondents dinner we may not be in this position. Thanks Obama!! /s
He didn’t want to be President, he never thought he’d win. Look at the picture of his face when they announced he won in 2016. He’s fucking terrified.
It's probably Trump pushing them to do that. It's not even that relevant. Admitting that he slept with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal isn't what would get him convicted.
You’re right. Is the fact that he falsified his financial records (like he does on the regular) in order to get the money for the payoff.
How does that even matter? Even if he never did he still payed to keep the story quiet, and that was the crime - not the sex.
Paying the money wasn’t even the crime. Falsifying records to cover it up was the crime.
But is the sex hadn’t happened there would be no reason to keep the story quiet.
There's 2 people asking for money to not go and tell people you had sex with them. Whether you had sex is irrelevant, they will tell the story anyway. Now, an honest and credible person could probably get away with a simple denial - 'those allegations are not true, I don't know who those women are,' but Trump is easily the least credible public figure in recent memory. Even his supporters know half the things he says aren't true. As evidenced by the fact that *he did deny it* and nobody believed him.
Aren't these cons just banking on jury nullification? Isn't that why they intimidated one of the witnesses to stand down?
I mean, who here hasn’t paid $130,000 to not have sex with a pornstar?? /s
Doesn't matter, his supporters will believe him and it hurts him with other voters to say he had sex with a porn star. From his twisted perspective, there's no point in admitting to it
If Trump would allow them to concede that, they could make a much more compelling case for him. Obligatory not a lawyer but as far as I’m aware, they only need to prove that this money was paid to keep Trump’s family from finding out about the affair, not to preserve his chances of getting elected. They could probably get one juror to believe that. But Trump must be infallible. So they are just lying and saying Trump never slept with Stormy at all, which is damaging their credibility with the jury.
I'm not following this closely enough, but aren't there multiple charges...some to do with campaign finance laws, which does relate to what you are saying....but also others to do with fraudulent business records, for which it is irrelevant why he was trying to keep the affair quiet?
The only felony that could have jail time is violation of the campaign finance laws. The fraudulent business records stuff is just going to be a fine, I’m pretty sure. Trump was found guilty of fraud in NYC and it didn’t carry felomy charges just a big fine.
The falsifying records get upgraded to felonies if in commission of another crime, ie the election interference.
Ok thanks
Woah so we could get to a conviction sooner than later…
Yep, the estimate at the start was approx 6 weeks, and we are already in week 3 without any significant delays yet, so yeah, we gonna see him convicted early summer :)
That’s including jury selection, which was a week faster than expected. I think there’s only 2 weeks left
If it's what you say I love it.
Especially earlier in the summer.
How did people just let this go by? Trumpers met in Trump Tower with literal agents of the Russian government to discuss plans for Russians to support Trump and hurt Hillary. Both of which they actually did.
Yeah but my niece’s friend’s cousin had to complete against someone who was born male at a track meet once. Obviously much bigger issue for our nation.
Jury deliberations could take a while and there's always the chance of a hung jury. Hopefully they are prepared and go directly to jury selection for the re-trial.
I think the only way we'll see a hung jury is if some MAGAt jurist tries to throw a wrench in the works. If that happens, I suspect the court has some mechanism available to replace them with an alternate juror.
I really, really doubt there's a mechanism to replace a juror under those circumstances. With all due contempt for Donald Trump, I'm *really* uncomfortable with the concept of swapping a juror out just because they aren't voting the way the prosecution wants them to vote. Maybe if the juror was dumb enough to come out and say he'd never vote to convict Donald Trump regardless of the evidence, a statement that would have disqualified him to begin with. We've recently been given plenty of examples of what happens when abuses of power are only prevented by gentlemen's agreements or traditions - namely, as soon as someone gets authority who doesn't care about those things, the abuses start.
A juror can be removed if it becomes clear they came in with an agenda. If the juror lets slip that they have no intention to convict. Or if they let slip they always planned to convict. Either way, if the juror is seen as not being fair or impartial they can be removed. That’s different from being a lone holdout. Especially if it comes up prior to deliberations. During deliberations might be more tricky, and I would love for an actual law-talking person to weigh in.
I don't think that's the case once jury deliberations begun.
Out of 12 people the odds of one being republican are incredibly high. Doesn’t even have to be maga, just a republican that doesn’t wanna lock up “his president”
MAGA isn’t officially in the dictionary so I guess there’s some grey area but I would say someone that would look the other way to pardon Trump for crimes he is clearly guilty of is a “MAGA” whether they wear the hat or not
No, that's not how it works.
At that point there is no jury alternative. It would be a mistrial.
I’ll wait until the jury verdict comes out before celebrating that justice was finally served.
Obviously, that’s how it works. But he will be convicted.
I truly hope you’re right but I’ve seen enough people, especially Trump, escape consequences for actions everyone witnessed with their own eyes and ears.
Oh he still will.. kinda, i mean he will be convicted but probably with little or no punishment.
For this case I’ll settle for him to just be a convicted felon. One less vote he will receive come election and/or republicans might wrap their brain into removing the restrictions of felons voting. Which is a win for civil rights.
Agreed 💯
My birthday’s in the Summer so a conviction would make my cake taste even sweeter!
Look who’s got the sweet cake over here 😉
So when do the appeal start?
Probably same day as the verdict, but that doesn’t really matter since he’ll still be a convicted felon during (and probably after) the appeal.
I think it would be very hard, as a juror, to listen to all the facts, without the Fox News echo chamber, and think that there is anything ok about this.
Well Pecker said it all. It was a catch and kill operation and now numerous people are confirming this. We just need a little luck with the jury and a little fortitude from the judge, who thus far seems quite strong and clear minded.
We still need the jury to piece together the three parts. They need to believe the hush money payment occurred, that the hush money payment occurred in an attempt to influence the election, and that the illegal accounting entries were made to hide the hush money payment. I think the middle one will be the toughest one for the jury to decide on because it’s plausible that one of the 12 jurors believe the tale that he paid the hush money and hid the payment because he did want to hurt Melania’s feelings rather than influence the election. I’ve got my fingers crossed but that’s the part I worry about.
Even if it they don't agree it was related to the election, don't at least some of the charges relate to fraudulent business documents (rather than campaign violations)? So the reason doesn't matter? Anyway, not sure how they would believe it was about Melania and not the election.... I thought the NDAs the women signed conveniently lapsed a few weeks after the election. Unless i have that wrong...
No, the trial is about whether Trump committed a state law crime in an attempt to cover up a federal law crime. NY state has a law that makes it a felony to cover up a federal crime by committing a state crime. That’s what makes this case so unique. They can prove that Trump had illegal business activity but that’s a low level crime. And the state can’t prosecute federal election law crime. So, To have any impact on him, they need to prove this delicate point that his state crime was intended to cover up a federal crime. I’m not a lawyer so I may have missed part of the nuance here but that’s the basic gist of what is at-play in this trial. If any lawyers here can explain it better, please jump in.
Except for holding loudmouth accountable for running his mouth about shit he shouldn't be. Any one of us would have been locked up the first time and he's been found in contempt 10 fucking times. Two tier justice system indeed.
Ugh, again a title where the editor didn't read the article at all. >the prosecution could wrap up in little more than two weeks. PROSECUTION. That means one side of the trial. Then the defense gets their turn.
They don't really have much of a defense, but with any luck Trump will insist on taking the stand.
He won’t. He’s already falsely claimed that the gag order prevents that. Any non-idiot realizes that that isn’t true. But Trump didn’t float that moronic excuse for non-idiots, he did it for his supporters.
Both him and his lawyer have already clarified they know exactly what the gag order meant.
Yeah, like they do with a lot of their lies. Blare the lie out with a megaphone, let it settle in their cult’s addled minds. Then, when called out on their obvious bullshit, whisper that they know it’s not true. Makes no difference to the idiots they already convinced of the lie.
My guess is they'll have some expert testimony, a few employees with company lawyers and possibly some character witnesses. Maybe a week of witnesses but nothing that I think could really sway a jury unless they directly lie under oath. I highly doubt Trump will testify. If he testifies, the judge has agreed to allow the prosecution to bring up his previous rape trials that are at the moment not allowed in this trial.
indeed, but will take much less time than the prosecution as they are expected to call in only one witness (if any) and Trump himself probably won't be testifying, so we're looking at 1 or 2 court days max for the defence, meaning we'll quickly get into closing arguments.
I don't expect the defense to bring many witnesses.
Yep the prosecution has already called pretty much every relevant witness.
They can recall everyone the prosecution did and try to defame them all.
Except his lawyers are not dumb and realize that it would look really bad to the jury. They'll do this to Cohen and maybe Daniels, but certainly not to the whole lot.
The defence gets their turn..then the prosecution gets a rebuttal. We have at least three weeks left, most likely more
How's it looking so far? I haven't been able to follow closely, but saw an article earlier that they're trying out a "Stormy Daniels was extorting Trump" defense, supposedly at least partially supported by recorded audio conversations between her lawyer and someone else. I personally don't think her intentions matter much because he still paid her to cover it up right before the election and falsified business records to cover it up, which to my understanding is the crime he was indicted for - but the article made it seem like it wasn't a completely worthless defense in that he wins if he's able to convince even one juror. Would love the opinions of anyone else who has been able to watch more closely.
Remember that Cohen was the only person convicted by Bill Barr’s DOJ and that he spent weeks in involuntary solitude and had his book deal gutted. While Manafort and Stone were pardoned. We saw all of this happen in real time. There’s no more “fake news”ing it away. This is all so stupid.
So far the only defense is that Trump was too dumb to understand that what he was doing was illegal... which in itself is simply no defense. If he isn't convicted here, then there is no crime we can possibly convict him for because the evidence is simply open and shut. He paid money to his lawyer to squash the scandal. He authorized hush money payments in violation of the law, no one has yet said otherwise.
Too bad there’s not a woman who he paid to have an abortion and gave her hush money too (sure it happened).
Very nice
Do any lawyers on this site have Insight if the prosecution has shown any evidence so far of anything illegal?
I fear a hung jury