NY: Convicted Felon Donald Trump!

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/DougJBalloon/status/1637282221932560384

Saw this and it kind of crystallized something I've been mulling over.  I don't think an indictment will change very many votes in either direction.  Here's why:

Who will change their mind to vote for Trump solely because he's been indicted?  If someone wasn't already going to vote for him, an indictment is surely no plus.  Perhaps there are a few people who might do it as a root-for-the-underdog thing (although the idea of Trump as an underdog in life is rather laughable), but it's got to be a very small number.

Who will change their mind to NOT vote for Trump because of the indictment?  Most people who have stuck with him this long are solidly behind him regardless of any of his negatives, as in his famous "I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue" quote.  He won't lose many, if any, diehard supporters over this.

The only place I can see it making a difference is among truly undecided voters, in either the primary or general election, trying to make up their minds at the last minute, and this could be the straw that tips them into voting for someone else or just sitting out.

On balance, I see at most a small negative electoral effect for Trump.

The only two ways I can see it really having much electoral impact are A) that there will be a brief “circle the wagons” surge of support for Trump strictly within the Republican Party base much like the one for the 1-2 weeks after the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was executed and B) in the (imo highly unlikely*) event that there is 1/6 levels of violence (tbh, I am far more worried that the media will diminish the impact of 1/6 by hysterically babbling about a “second 1/6” if there are a few scattered instances of 2-3 idiots breaking a few store windows here and there).  However, if there is widespread violence on anything like a 1/6 scale, I think that will hurt Trump really badly with everyone except the Republican base, the Republican infotainment propaganda complex, and the party’s national elected officials.  In other words, if things get that bad, then everyone who isn’t already a diehard Republican hack is gonna be appalled by it (again). 

This is basically just Trump trying to bully the legal system into letting him break the law with impunity by threatening to burn the house down with mob violence.  A democracy that lets someone do that isn’t worth saving b/c the rule of law is already dead in such a country. 

On a semi-related note, I think Alvin Bragg is a pretty vile individual for numerous reasons that have nothing to do with Trump (although his BS shenanigans to try to block the publication of a book criticizing his handling of the Trump investigations certainly didn’t raise my opinion of him).  Bragg is the worst kind of “progressive” prosecutor: one who badly damages the criminal justice reform movement by implementing all sorts of batsh!t insane policies that distort the public’s views of what the movement is fighting for simply b/c he sees it as a way to raise his profile by competing with folks like Gascon to see who can be the softest on crime.  Bragg is a grifter first, a politician second, and a public servant last. 

I could absolutely believe that he’s only resurrected this case b/c he is afraid of the damage to his reputation from that ex-prosecutor’s book about how he shut down a stronger case about 2-3 weeks before Trump was going to be indicted.  Plus, he claimed there was still an ongoing investigation into Trump to counter said criticism, but for that to be true, there needs to…you know…be an ongoing investigation. 

That said, just b/c Bragg is a schmuck who may have some less than pure motives doesn’t mean indicting Trump for this is the wrong decision.  My understanding is that NY prosecutors initially opted against pursuing this aggressively b/c of how much would rely on Michael Cohen’s testimony.  He has been interviewed ~15 times since then.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided he would be a more effective witness than they initially thought.  Moreover, there has been reporting of a surprise witness testifying to the grand jury Monday afternoon which begs the question of whether they gained another cooperator who could verify key parts of Cohen’s testimony.  I’d want to see the indictment before assessing the strength of this case, but on paper, if they think Cohen will be a compelling enough witness to survive a viciously aggressive cross-examination and/or have someone else who will back up his testimony, then sight unseen I’d say they’re probably making the right call by reviving this case.




*Not only was 1/6 an organized event with Trump present immediately beforehand to fire up the troops as it were, but it both caught folks by surprise (outside the top FBI leadership, which appears to have been content to adopt a posture of willful ignorance about how bad things could get) and - most importantly - Trump could use the levers of power in the federal executive branch to thwart efforts to respond effectively to the insurrection attempt.  Folks will almost certainly be prepared for the worst this time and Biden presumably won’t be throwing up every possible roadblock to swiftly dealing with 1/6 level violence.  On 1/6, Trump had many institutional power cards to play and did not hesitate to do so.  That will not be the case here.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I'm guessing it won't happen until Wednesday, if it happens at all.

The DA has put too many things in place to not indict him

The Grand Jury still has to vote to indict

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The Grand Jury still has to vote to indict

Is that happening right now? Or has court recessed for the day and it would happen tomorrow?

The indictment would presumably remain sealed until they’re ready to book and arraign him.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Federal judge denies Manhattan DA’s request to block House GOP subpoena of ex-prosecutor

A federal judge on Wednesday denied a request by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office for a temporary restraining order to stop a House Judiciary Committee subpoena of former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz.

District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil said Pomerantz must appear for a deposition.

“The subpoena was issued with a ‘valid legislative purpose’ in connection with the ‘broad’ and ‘indispensable’ congressional power to ‘conduct investigations.’ It is not the role of the federal judiciary to dictate what legislation Congress may consider or how it should conduct its deliberations in that connection. Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition. No one is above the law,” Vyskocil wrote after hearing arguments in court on the matter earlier in the day.

Bragg’s office had indicated it would likely ask the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay if Vyskocil sided with the committee, but did not have an immediate comment.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/19/politics/bragg-jordan-pomerantz-hearing/index.html

This was a Trump-appointed Judge and the stay will be granted.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Stickied as the trial is in a little over a month

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

One anti-Trump juror excused herself. Good development for Trump.

Looks like he’s gonna lose a pro-Trump juror though

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Test

Can folks post here now?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

If anyone posts video of that again or anything like it, they’ll receive a five day mute from this board, no ifs, ands, or buts.  This is your first and last warning!

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Regarding the other crime, it looks like they’re not relying on federal campaign finance violation. They are relying on an NY misdemeanor, which might be an issue on appeal

prosecutors have often been vague about what, exactly, is the underlying crime that was allegedly being concealed or furthered in the hush money case. But on Tuesday, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said the statute in question is New York State Election law 17-152 — conspiracy to promote or prevent an election. That law makes it a misdemeanor when “any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”

Steinglass said the entire prosecution theory “is predicated on the idea that there was a conspiracy to influence the election in 2016.”

But this would mean the other crime is a misdemeanor, which has a 2 year statute of limitations: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ELN/17-152

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/23/trump-trial-takeaways-hush-money-immunity/

I believe the Court already ruled in the State’s favor on this issue.  Reasonable arguments can certainly be made either way, but hardly an abuse of discretion (not by a long shot).

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/frankrunyeon/status/1791576159496335807
Paywall-free article: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/complaint-dismissed-against-trump-hush-money-judge-who-donated-biden-2024-05-17/

Who care?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Question for our resident lawyers: with the understanding that juries are unpredictable, what's your sense of the trial so far?  Would you rather be the prosecution or the defense at this point?

The prosecution hands down.  It’s not a slam dunk, but the case is in better shape than I expected it to be by now at the start of the trial and I think I’d give it about a 2/3 chance of conviction.  Again, not guaranteed, but certainly the most likely outcome.  

The thing with Cohen is that the fact that he’s a sleazy crook and a convicted perjurer is kinda already baked in.  The lying was at Trump’s direction and he didn’t get special treatment for his testimony in this deal.  Everyone knows he’s a sketchy lowlife, but many of the important parts of his testimony are corroborated to the point that in doesn’t require a big leap of faith to believe him.  

The roughest parts of the cross-examination imo related to things that didn’t really undermine the credibility of Cohen’s testimony itself.  If he being sold as a good man who tragically fell in with the wrong crowd, that’d be one thing.  However, no one was under any illusions that Cohen was a good guy.  I also think the fact that the State got out in front of stuff like Cohen’s skimming and Cohen’s acknowledgement of such (as opposed to trying to minimize it) will play well as he’d be far less credible if he tried to downplay it.  Overall, Cohen’s a sleaze, but he was actually a better witness than I was expecting.

Additionally, everything before Cohen’s cross-examination was an unmitigated sh!tshow for the defense.  They couldn’t even capitalize on the fact that Stormy Daniels came off as a trashy and untrustworthy lowlife (honestly, I think she was a far weaker witness than Cohen).  A good cross-examination of Daniels probably could’ve had a shot at catching her in a perjury trap imo and unlike Cohen, she made claims that I guarantee no juror will believe (ex: “It wasn’t about the money” ).  I think that was a real missed opportunity for the defense.  

A better and more competent attorney would’ve just ignored Trump’s demands that they argue he’d never slept with Daniels and focused on dragging her through the mud until the jurors loathed her and didn’t regard her as credible.  Just plant the seed and see if it goes anywhere.  As a defense attorney, part of my job is to protect my clients from their own ignorance, short-sightedness, and egos.  Sometimes the client wants you to do something that is idiotic and blatantly against their interests and you have to be prepared to stare them down and say “[n]o, I’m not going to argue that and here’s why.  If you can’t accept that, then I’m not the guy for you, but if you want to stay out of jail/prison, then here’s what we’re going to do instead…”

Trump’s lawyers are more afraid of getting fired than they are of doing a piss-poor job and you can’t do right by your client if that’s the case.  In fact, I consider their mindset borderline unethical, but why would a good lawyer agree to handle a client like Trump who never listens to advice, never shuts up, and doesn’t pay his bills?

I also think the State got off to an extremely strong start with Pecker.  It’s hard to imagine how Pecker could’ve gone better for the Prosecution.  

TL; DR: Cohen faced a rough cross-examination to be sure, but it was a far cry from the killshot the defense desperately needed with him.  The rest of the trial was a sh!tshow for the defense, although I suspect that Daniels made a very poor impression on the jury.  

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The defense really fumbled the ball here with that whole Costello matter.

I never understood why they were calling him; it was clearly not going to go well.  But yeah, not the note they’d want to end the day on.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I think people who think Cohen was a disaster are missing an important nuance.  Jurors don’t expect witnesses who are themselves ex-con lowlifes who flipped on a Defendant to be honest men, they expect them to be truthful.  Cohen had rough cross-examination, but he came across as someone who was telling the truth during their testimony, didn’t minimize their own bad deeds, and was pretty forthright on the stand.  

It was equally clear that he was a sleazy lowlife crook, but Cohen would’ve been far less credible had he been billed as an honest man rather than simply a truthful witness.  It may seem like splitting hairs or semantics, but it is a very important distinction.  I think Cohen came out of the cross-examination bruised, but with his credibility fully intact.  I also think because the defense has been such a sh!tshow during the rest of the trial, the fact that they did a competent cross-examination caused it to be covered as more effective than it actually was.

By contrast, Stormy Daniels did not present as a truthful witness.  She often seemed to be trying to figure out what the Prosecutor wanted her to say and made some claims that I don’t think anyone would possibly believe (the best example being her claim that it wasn’t about the money for her ).  

Jurors often don’t expect witnesses in a case like this to be good people, but they expect them to testify truthfully.  Cohen very clearly did so imo.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

About Cohen being a sleazeball: the jurors already knew that before the trial. Sammy the Bull Gravano was a much nastier individual (a murderer) and the jury in that situation still found him credible enough to get John Gotti convicted. Jurors always see sleazeballs connected with the defendant testify against said defendant, especially in New York

That’s another example.  Gravano is a conniving murderous psychopath who’d happily murder anyone for a nickel.  He was a complete sociopath and there was simply no hiding that.  When he testified about the murders he committed (including of at least one member of his own family), I’d bet you that every single person on that jury thought that Gravano should be executed the second his testimony was over (if not sooner ).  However, he didn’t shy away from testifying about it.  Of the 19 or 20 (I forget which) murders Gravano testified about committing, he only implicated Gotti in four…but you can be d*** sure the jurors believed Gotti was involved in those four murders.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Conviction on all felony counts with an outside possibility that the jury tries to compromise by convicting him of some of the felony counts and acquitting him on others simply because juries sometimes do weird things like that.  I stand by my assessment of a 2/3 chance of conviction on all felony counts.  Not a slam dunk, still about a 30% of a hung jury/(or only misdemeanor convictions if misdemeanor stuff is included in jury instructions, but misdemeanor only conviction is much less likely than even a hung jury) and like a 3% chance of acquittal.  

However, conviction on all felony counts is the way to bet.  The Cohen cross was rough, but far from the knockout blow to his credibility the defense needed.  I thought Cohen came off as a sleezeball giving extremely forthright, truthful, and frank testimony.  I also think the fact that he didn’t shy away from acknowledging his own misdeeds or try to minimize them enhances rather than undercuts his testimony’s credibility even though I’m sure the jurors would agree he’s a crook who’d think nothing of stealing from his own mother on her deathbed.  

This is to me a Gravano situation where you hate the guy and what he’s about, but totally believe what he’s saying because he doesn’t try to hide his own misdeeds and is very forthright about them.  The defense needed a Rick Gates situation where the jurors largely disregarded Gates’ testimony (despite still convicting Manafort) b/c he initially tried to downplay/weasel around a direct answer on cross when initially asked about his womanizing (making him look like someone who couldn’t be trusted to tell things as they happened even if it made him look bad) and that was very much not the case with Cohen (which pleasently surprised me as my biggest fear before he took the stand was that he was going to try to strike the pose of a naive friend thrown under the bus and whose only real crime was misplaced loyalty which would’ve rightly destroyed his credibility with the jury).  

And I cannot stress enough that the rest of the trial, including Trump’s behavior during jury selection, were just a complete dumpster fire of incompetence by the defense.  The perfect example is how they started their cross-examination of Pecker by getting chewed out by the Judge for basically attempting to mislead the jury about what a document they were asking Pecker about actually said.  Never a great way to start  And the defense case was a mess.  They couldn’t call their expert witness because they only intended to ask him blatantly improper question.  And Costello was a sh!tshow!  Even without getting chewed out in private by the Judge, he came off horribly and I can’t imagine he made any better an impression on jurors than he did on the Judge.  

Ultimately, someone noted that it doesn’t take a leap of faith to believe all the relevant aspects of Cohen’s testimony, just a tiny skip.  I think that’s pretty much spot on.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The defense really needs to get off the idea that the affair never happened. I know their client is probably insisting, but it just skewers their credibility with the jury.

Kinda too late for that isn’t it?

They never should’ve made that claim.  They should’ve humored Trump’s demand until the trial and then simply ignored his demands that they do so and done their job.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Let me give another example of something done on purpose that will backfire on the defense: the list of ten reasons for doubt. It's snappy, it's quick, it probably came from Trump himself -- but all they've done is give the prosecution ten memorable items to easily shoot down.

The prosecution is not going to be able to shoot the GLOAT reference down.

You are massively projecting your own biases onto this dude

Yeah, even in the unlikely event that Trump does get acquitted, it won’t be because of that really dumb “GLOAT” line.  Speaking as a defense attorney - I.e. someone who actually does this for a living - the defense’s closing argument was pretty unimpressive.  It wasn’t awful, but it was a wasted opportunity and is unlikely to change anyone’s mind.  The curative instruction could definitely backfire on the defense though.  Screwing up your closing statement badly enough that the judge needs to issue curative instructions is not a good ending note.

GLOAT is the kind of cute thing that probably won't stick for more than five seconds because of how hyperbolic it is. A real pound-the-table move.

Ehhh, zingers have their place in closing, but they have to articulate and encapsulate a feeling that is already there.  There are plenty of things you can say about Cohen and he’s clearly a sleazy lowlife crook, but he came across as very forthright and truthful in his testimony.  He didn’t shy away from fully acknowledging his own misdeeds either.  As such, I don’t think the “Michael Cohen is a liar; you can’t trust his testimony” attack will stick even though I suspect most of the jurors consider him a sleazy crook who’d steal from anybody if given half a chance (although obviously none of us knows).  

If Cohen got caught lying to the jurors or had tried to minimize his own misconduct, then I think that might be more effective.  As it stands though, I don’t think it speaks to an underlying truth about how Cohen’s testimony came across.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I don't think Cohen is the same person he was when these events went down.

I do.  In fact, I think he’d flip right back to being Trump’s lapdog if there was enough money in it and Trump would have him.  He’s clearly a fundamentally dishonest and immoral person, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t give truthful testimony.  I think he pretty clearly did.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I don't think Cohen is the same person he was when these events went down.

He’s clearly a fundamentally dishonest and immoral person, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t give truthful testimony.  I think he pretty clearly did.

We cannot be sure of that. I tend to not trust known liars.

I think we can be sure beyond reasonable doubt here, especially given all the other evidence and corroborating testimony. 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Personally, I don’t expect a verdict until at least next week regardless of the outcome.  Anything earlier than that is probably extremely good news for the prosecution (although the OJ verdict came in much quicker than anyone expected and we all know how that turned out, but obviously this is a very different situation). 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Key point - it will come down the corroborating evidence, which there is quite a bit of

This is very good for Trump.
Key parts of Cohen's testimony are not corroborated by any other evidence.
The most important part is Cohen's testimony that Trump told him to fix it and knew about it all the time.

On the contrary, there was a boatload of corroborating evidence.  This is wishcasting.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Ljube has gotten nearly every procedural thing about this trial wrong. It’s almost impressive.

We'll see in the end.

Well, no.  Even if he’s acquitted, you’ll still be wrong.  It’s a bit like how if someone asks “what’s 1+10” and you say “11 because 1+1+0=11,” you definitely don’t understand how math works despite the broken clock moment.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Presumably if they don't reach a verdict by EOD Friday then the odds of a hung jury go up fairly substantially.

Not really

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

This seems very bad for Trump

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS

NEVER IN MY WILDEST DREAMS

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

To the Supreme Court to overturn the verdict!

Imagine actually believing this