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