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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27864 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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I think that depends on what you mean by "this." I do not think it is that common that powerful people get their lawyers to commit bank fraud and FEC violations to help them get elected, then commit further crimes to try and cover it up.

You don't think that powerful people cover up crimes all the time? I think this is incredibly naive, in an age when regulatory choke means everyone is breaking technicalities all the time.

Moreover: this is an extremely dubious technicality. Your argument is that Trump definiteky committed a crime which wouldn't have been a crime if he'd made one simple bookkeeping change. This is really your idea of a slam-dunk solid case of crime?

Yes. Lots of things can be a crime if entity A does them but not if entity B does them. If Trump had paid Daniels (and maybe Cohen) out of his own pocket there would have been no crime. The crime is entirely in how he went about it.

Then when Hillary and the attorneys at Perkins all get convicted of the same thing over the Russiagate dossier then I'll update as this is legitimate.

Hillary Clinton was fined 100k for improperly reporting expenses on the dossier as legal expenses.

That's my point. Business as usual is fining a campaign some token amount years after the election.

Federal election regulators fined Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee earlier this month

If either Trump's 2016 Campaign or 2020 Campaign organizations were similarly fined no one would be up in arms. When she and the attornies who assisted her in that are all personally convicted on criminal charges that's an indication of similar treatment.

I really would like to through and prosecute everyone and their attorneys whose been given a misreporting campaign expenses fine with criminal fraud charges. Would go a long way to actually draining the swamp.

What crimes did they commit? The only person in Trump's case convicted of (pleaded guilty to) campaign finance violations was Michael Cohen, because he gave an illegally large in-kind contribution. Trump's crime is a New York state charge for falsifying business records.

How are they not falsified business records?

That's a good question actually. I'm not sure how political campaign committees are legally organized. Are they the kind of corporation that would have been covered by the relevant NY law?

Yes. The same statutory section defines

“Enterprise” means any entity of one or more persons, corporate or otherwise, public or private, engaged in business, commercial, professional, industrial, eleemosynary, social, political or governmental activity

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They commit fraud against the FEC when they misrepresneted their campaign expenses. They probably also commit fraud about the background of the dossier when they misrepresnted the Steele Dossier as intelligence to the press. I'm good with nailing swamp creatures to the wall as long as we don't stop at 1. If there are not attorneys willing to lurk in the swamp it would be a good day for the nation.

Yes, a fine is the typical response to misclassifying campaign expenses, not a felony.

Sure. If the Trump campaign had reimbursed Cohen and lied about what it was for they plausibly also would have paid a fine. Instead Trump had his New York business falsify documents to reimburse Cohen.

That is how you see it. I read it as Trump had his New York business correctly state that he was paying Cohen for legal expenses.

Opposition research clearly wouldn't happen except in the context of a campaign, and thus is a campaign expense. Paying someone to sign an NDA to keep their mouth shut about an affair is not a campaign expense. As former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith wrote:

It is true that “contribution” and “expenditure” are defined in the Federal Election Campaign Act as anything “for the purpose of influencing any election,” and it may have been intended and hoped that paying hush money would serve that end. The problem is that almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to “influence an election,” from buying a good watch to make sure he gets to places on time, to getting a massage so that he feels fit for the campaign trail, to buying a new suit so that he looks good on a debate stage. Yet having campaign donors pay for personal luxuries — such as expensive watches, massages and Brooks Brothers suits — seems more like bribery than funding campaign speech.

That’s why another part of the statute defines “personal use” as any expenditure “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.” These may not be paid with campaign funds, even though the candidate might benefit from the expenditure. Not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate.

Right. That's why a bunch of Cohen's testimony, texts, emails, etc were about establishing the motive to pay off Daniels was campaign related. It was Cohen's belief that Trump kept putting off paying Daniels because he hoped he could until after the election, when it wouldn't matter if she went public. That is the perspective of someone concerned about the story's impact on the campaign, not the perspective of someone who didn't want it to get out irrespective of the campaign.

It doesn't matter. Let's say Cohen bought Trump a new suit. They went back and forth talking about how this suit would make Trump look more like an every-man, this other suit made him look more powerful, this one made him look healthier, and how those different impressions would impact the different demographics of voters.

It still would not make the purchase of a suit a campaign contribution. The motive being related to the campaign does not make it a campaign contribution.

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This is crazy! Why would Trump go out of his way to do things the illegal way if it were already legal? Apparently, Michael Cohen paying something on Trump's behalf becomes a campaign contribution, which means Trump paying Cohen back becomes cover-up. That's ridiculous!

That's not a serious legal theory, which is why it's never been used on anybody before now. That's the rationalization made up to explain why Trump was guilty. If it weren't that, it would have been something else.

This is crazy! Why would Trump go out of his way to do things the illegal way if it were already legal?

Part of the problem with this whole thing is assigning intent to a guy who seems to wing it on instinct and never really bothers to do due dilligence to make sure he's doing things the proper way -- and who hires shitty, sleazy lawyers who are also incompetent at covering the legal bases. Trump is sloppy. Contrary to the memes, he's barely playing 1-D Chess. He follows the straight line from his desires to his ego. It's entirely possible given his apparent modus operandi that no one thought to check if there were any legal issues with anything related to the FEC or any other set of regulations, and "legal services" was written on the checks because Cohen was a lawyer, making anything he does "legal services."

I don't doubt that Trump is guilty of hundreds (if not more) of compliance violations, because he generally holds all rules and official processes in contempt. Felony convictions for details he likely never bothered to consider or understand seems harsh; but it does make a good case for why political parties should screen their candidates with a more serious sense of purpose.

But that’s the entire point. You needed to do it with an intent to defraud and commit another crime. If he wasn’t thinking at all about that, then that is proof he didn’t commit the crime.

The prosecution has to argue he was thinking about it, there was in fact a legal method, and Trump was like “fuck that, I want the criminal way. Leeeeeeeroy Jenkins.” That just isn’t reasonable.

But that’s the entire point. You needed to do it with an intent to defraud and commit another crime. If he wasn’t thinking at all about that, then that is proof he didn’t commit the crime.

Yeah, I agree. But Trump is his own worst enemy and creates most these problems for himself. It's hard to feel sympathy for him when he is essentially dooming himself by repeating the same mistakes over and over rather than adapting -- even though I think he is being unjustly persecuted in a way that really hurts the entire country. Even if he's the least-bad part of this whole debacle, I can only shake my head in pity at mess he's put himself in.

The prosecution has to argue he was thinking about it, there was in fact a legal method, and Trump was like “fuck that, I want the criminal way. Leeeeeeeroy Jenkins.” That just isn’t reasonable.

But having laundered that through a jury, it's established. There's no avenue for appeal there.

There are some avenues for appeal where a fact is improperly admitted as evidence or testimony, or where a jury makes an improper decision of law, albeit with a fairly high standard of error...

But it doesn't really matter. Trump (probably) can't even file an appeal until after sentencing, and there's zero chance that the New York Court of Appeals will decide the case before November (and might not even hear the case before then), in the likely event that they refuse, it'll be a year or longer for federal courts to get involved, and there are extremely limited grounds where a federal court can bypass state courts.

And while a lot of the errors here are reversible, or even cause to mandate recusal by the judge, they're not severe enough to throw out the case; even a 'victory' just starts the trial over again, and Bragg will not be dropping this case.

I think a lot of the progressive legal sphere is assuming that even if this case is overturned, it'll happen after Georgia/federal documents/whatever gets him, too (or Trump will self-moot sometime), but to anyone that isn't as far buying every charge against Trump as AshLael is, there's a non-trivial chance that Trump will eventually be found not guilty of multiple different cases... in 2025 and 2026. After he's lost the election.

Georgia is jammed up due to the crooked prosecutor, and the documents case is jammed up due to the usual FBI malfeasance combined with a Trump-friendly judge, so neither is likely to matter in the election.

I think there clearly is since the judge did not allow evidence in where FECA / the prosecution made false statements

If Trump were really sloppy as you allege, prosecutors would have been able to find more serious charges to bring against him. Ten years of political spotlight and they can only get him on charges that have literally never been used against anyone ever before. You don't doubt that he's guilty of hundreds of similar crimes? Then why haven't they brought anything forward? That's the sloppy thinking here.

If Trump were really sloppy as you allege, prosecutors would have been able to find more serious charges to bring against him.

Not necessarily. As we can see in this case, it can be really hard to create the semi-coherent appearance of a case out of a bunch of nonsense and make it just opaque enough to pay off. If a guy is racking up hundreds of little process violations because HDGAF about process, the trick is to turn those into a felony in one of the jurisdictions jaded enough to convict without ever questioning the premises. It's probably easier to charge and convict a smooth operator who is knowingly committing crimes because once you catch them in act with intent, you have your smoking gun. If someone is carelessly racking up violations by just not caring, it's going to be really hard to prove an intent that never existed.

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