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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28012 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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From the jury instructions:

BUSINESS RECORD means any writing or article, including computer data or a computer program, kept or maintained by an enterprise for the purpose of evidencing or reflecting its condition or activity

Sheesh. Was that written by Kamala Harris? There is no way a jury of normal Americans could parse that word salad.

Let's be honest. The judge could have said anything. The jury heard this: "You think Donald Trump bad guy? Say yes if you think bad guy."

The jury isn't exactly normal. There's a banker, two attorneys, and a software engineer.

Low effort, condescending, and consensus-building. You have a bunch of bad posts recently. Improve your posting quality or you're going to get a timeout.

Will do. I am trying to improve the volume of posting here which means lowering my filter a bit. I'll tighten it.

I appreciate the mods for doing a mostly-thankless job.

As many people have noted, this jury was unusually highly educated, and included two lawyers. I reckon they could understand that sentence fine.

It's not word salad. I think it's quite clear. If you know what "writing" is, and you know what it means to "keep or maintain" something, and you know what a "condition or activity" is (perhaps the most vague part of the definition, but still, these are very common ordinary words and it's easy to furnish many examples of conditions and activities), then you understand the definition.

The definition as written may lead to counterintuitive results. For example, if I'm the CEO of a company and I write on a post-it note "we have a lot of money" and I store that in my desk drawer in my office, then that is a piece of writing, and it is kept by the enterprise (on our premises, with security measures to prevent unauthorized access), and it does reflect a condition or activity (the condition of having a lot of money), so it appears that according to this definition, the post-it note would count as a business record. But being counterintuitive is not the same thing as being unclear.

It's not clear because it doesn't clarify the important question, which is: what are the documents Trump is being charged with falsifying? Tax records? Internal memos? Paystubs? Drafts for a contract? Transcripts? Post-it notes?

According to your interpretation, the government could prosecute you for writing on a post-it note in your office, determining that this is a business document, and then alleging that you lied when you wrote it. That's not clear at all!

It's not clear because it doesn't clarify the important question, which is: what are the documents Trump is being charged with falsifying?

The definition of "business record" itself is just a definition of a term. It's not going to include any specifics about what business records a person did or did not create in a particular concrete case. Presumably, that information would have been discussed during the trial proper.

According to your interpretation, the government could prosecute you for writing on a post-it note in your office, determining that this is a business document, and then alleging that you lied when you wrote it. That's not clear at all!

"Unjust" and "counterintuitive" are not the same thing as "unclear".

I was purely addressing the assertion that the definition was "word salad", nothing more. I think that accusations of that sort are thrown around too liberally on TheMotte so I felt that it was important to address. Too often people default to calling something "bad writing" when actually they have a different (and more specific) complaint with it.

The motte seems to agree you can be convicted on any of those.

Perhaps, Trump is actually guilty. I am coming around to this. But in that case a lot of people are guilty.

I am glad I asked this question because I have been wondering for a while what is meant by a business record. And I feel like it’s a key point I haven’t seen people talking about.

No. You have some people coming in with some Nonsense. The key thing is they never proved intent (and the prosecution and judge for FECA wrong).

Pay attention that most of the r people saying he was guilty are the people who were very wrong on most legal issues (ie they lose at SCOTUS).

Intent is a solid reasoning for he’s not guilty. Always tough to prove intent. But by the letter of the law if you can prove intent I guess he’s guilty.

And if you accept Cohen’s uncorroborated testimony. It’s just a really bad verdict.

Literal answer to your question: Trump is accused of falsifying the checks he wrote to his lawyer when he wrote on the checks that they were for legal expenses. He is also accused of falsifying his accounting books for his business when he recorded that the checks paid to his lawyer were for legal expenses.

Edit: sorry, above I said "accused" but the more factual thing now would be to say "convicted." My mind's having a hard time downloading the latest update.

How is payment for signing an NDA not actually legal expenses?

When your political enemy does it.

That is in fact, how laws have to be written - very specifically. I don't doubt that if it wasn't, you'd complain it was too vague - everyday language often is!

I'm not sure the definition of Business Record is very specific or useful since it seems to qualify nearly any piece of data in any equipment or file held by the business.

Based on this definition even messages on Slack or Teams between employees joking about how their manager looks could be argued to qualify as a business record.

I don't think jokes about the managers appearance on Slack would be kept or maintained for the purpose of evidencing the company's condition or activity.

Having said that, yes, many legal definitions are intentionally very broad.

I’m not sure the definition of Business Record is very specific or useful since it seems to qualify nearly any piece of data in any equipment or file held by the business.

That was probably the intent - which in turn makes the definition very useful, to the relevant government authorities.

Yes, that's the idea every document someone working for a business creates is probably a business record.

We're on the Scott subreddit.

It's possible to be clear with plain language. Scott is.

Legalese (and its academic cousin) are more often than not just bad writing. They are optimized for sounding professional, not for clarity. Anyone who interacts with the tax code has experienced this. But this isn't surprising. By necessity, the law is written and executed by people who are simply not that intelligent.

And yet, instructions to an even less intelligent jury should be clear. These were not.

Not disagreeing, just curious. How would you have written that definition to make it easier to understand and also cover all the bases?

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