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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28025 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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Actually the Trump camp is he didn’t do anything illegal but due to venue shopping and a corrupt judge they were able to get a conviction on what is a minor crime.

Scroll further down to see explanations on why he didn’t break the law

Wasn't Michael Cohen charged and convicted for his part in this almost immediately, though? In 2018? The charge was referred by the special prosecutor's office, to a different NY DA, with the case allowed by a different judge?

Also, was it venue shopping? Wasn't Trump a resident of NY at the time, and didn't the crime happen in NY?

To steelman: actually, Trump didn't do anything illegal but due to multiple corrupt judges and multiple corrupt prosecutors they convicted Trump's attorney and Trump himself on what is a minor crime. All of this happening within one corrupt court, the SD of NY.

Cohen was in trouble for tax charges and taxi medallion scams. They were discussing plea deal and threw in FECA allowing him to plead to something “less bad” with an intent of getting Trump.

More particularly, the biggest lawfare aspect is the grasping to conjure a federal crime at the root of Trump's recordkeeping activities -- if NY had chosen to prosecute Trump for misdemeanor records fuckery it would have been still pretty clearly politically motivated, but probably not had much impact on the election.

The way they went about it seems pretty clearly designed to impede Trump's current national campaign, which is very bad -- maybe some Red State prosecutor can come at the NY DA for 'unauthorized campaign contributions' to the DNC or something?

Sorry, why wouldn't it be a federal crime if it is considered violating federal election law for his campaign for a federal elected office?

The federal authority in charge of prosecuting this kind of crime did not think it was a crime.

Could they have? According to LawyerGPT

Lack of Criminal Authority: The FEC does not have the authority to prosecute criminal violations. When potential criminal conduct is identified, the FEC refers such cases to the Department of Justice (DOJ) or relevant U.S. Attorney's Offices for criminal investigation and prosecution.

The DOJ also was referred this conduct and did not charge it. Saying this was an election law violation requires a tortured interpretation of the statute, and arguably would have put Trump in a catch-22 situation where classifying the expense as a campaign expense would be illegal, but also not classifying it as a campaign expense was illegal.

Ok? They didn't refer Trump's conduct to anyone either -- probably because they didn't think it was clear that paying Daniels was a campaign expense. Or maybe because paying her through an intermediary doesn't make it a donation by that person.

Ok? They didn't refer Trump's conduct to anyone either -- probably because they didn't think it was clear that paying Daniels was a campaign expense.

They did think paying McDougal off was a campaign expense though. Remember the FEC committee is equally split between Republicans and Democrats so what the FEC thinks is basically what a 6 person panel equally split between two opposing sides can hammer out as a compromise. They fined AMI for paying McDougal off on behalf of Trump.

Did Trump pay them back?

probably because they didn't think it was clear that paying Daniels was a campaign expense.

I believe not, just pointing it out because it does counter a couple of your points (that they didn't think it was clear paying an affair partner was a campaign expense) and (paying through an intermediary doesn't make it a donation).

For McDougal they held it was a campaign expense and that AMI paying it made it a donation, which therefore needed to be declared etc.

For Daniels, Trump paid back Cohen which is the difference here, not whether it was a campaign expense, or whether absent Trump paying it back it would have been a donation. Both of those were held to be true in the McDougal case. Paying the intermediary back is the difference here.

More comments

See comment above. Important to note that Brad Smith was appointed by a dem so his opinion adds some weight.

The FEC looked at this very case and decided not to bring any action. The Judge in this trial prevented Trump from providing this fact to the jury.

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