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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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He is for sure not innocent. You can certainly argue that it was a politically motivated prosecution of the 10 felonies a day type but Trump really did commit a crime.

AFAIK they didn't even show evidence that Trump was the person who categorized the expense.

Let alone the necessity that the mis-categorization had to be "in furtherance of another crime," and that crime remained unspecified, untried, and jurors instructed that they could meet this requirement with anything.

What crime? That he put "Legal Expenses" when he should have put "Settlement Payment" in his own ledger? That's a "crime" on the level of putting the wrong category in Quicken.

He’s correct it is a crime.

But every white color worker who has to document their work probably commits it every other day.

Putting the wrong category in quicken is a crime. Telling your co-worker she’s beautiful when she’s bummed a date went bad is a crime.

Telling your co-worker she’s beautiful when she’s bummed a date went bad is a crime.

Technically it isn't. Allowing one co-worker to tell another that she's beautiful when she's bummed a date went bad is a tort on the part of the employer, but sexual harrassment laws are not criminal laws, and are not directly enforceable against non-manager employees.

Normally I wouldn't get this technical, but given that a large part of the "the NY prosecution is a stretch" is based on the distinction between different kinds of illegality, I think we should.

I think it turns into a crime if you make it a business record. If you say it on Skype where it is recorded then it’s part of the business record. If it’s a lie then it’s falsified. I don’t think in the statute it says it needs to be relevant to operations. But it would be a falsified record about the business. You described an employee who is ugly as beautiful which is false.

There is a requirement that it wasn’t intended to defraud. So false is not enough.

I think you can stretch fraud statutes enough to cover that.

It would also need to be a false statement of fact. Statements of opinion can't be legally false. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If "is female beauty a fact or an opinion" gets to SCOTUS, "opinion" wins 9-0, or 8-1 with Thomas dissenting if a "fact" ruling would help a Republican.

And you have to have “intent to defraud.” I’m not sure legal expense is false but Im very sure there was no intent to defraud.