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No, they'll consider the issue already decided by Cohen's plea, and not subject to re-litigation by Trump. The legal system is full of sneaky little gotchas like that.
I find this utterly implausible. For the record, I find it completely plausible that various courts could find some way to rule against Trump, but this one will simply not be there. Higher courts know that there are plenty (not in percentage terms) of people who are in prison for non-crimes, especially as parts of plea deals, that would be found to be non-crimes if contested appropriately. It would be one thing if Donald Trump had plead guilty to the requisite non-crime; I could absolutely see a court viewing that as settling the matter. But I cannot possibly believe that someone else pleading guilty to a non-crime settles the matter in the case in front of them. In fact, I imagine the court records are full of people appealing (some successfully) their convictions for things that are non-crimes, even though they had accomplices who plead guilty to those very same non-crimes. I challenge you to find me one example of a court simply rejecting any possibility of such an appeal based solely on a third party's plea agreement.
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