NY: Convicted Felon Donald Trump!

[Florida Man for Crime]

--snip--

Up now for the prosecution:

— Daniel Dixon, another custodial witness who works as a compliance analyst AT&T

We're starting to see phone records.

Why are phone records important to this case? It's been clear since the case has been charged.

On Oct. 26, 2016, Michael Cohen opened his shell company to funnel a $130,000 home equity loan to Stormy Daniels' lawyer — "shortly after speaking on the phone" with Trump

From the exhibits, it's clear that the phone records have Cohen's name, but it's not immediately clear it's the same call.

We'll wait for the release of today's exhibits later.

On cross, Trump's lawyer Emil Bove presses the witness on alternative explanations for the records.

Q: You're familiar with the concept of a pocket dial, right?
A: Correct.

Q: There's a lot of data here, but the data has limits, right?
The witness says they are logs.

--snip--

Thanks for posting in this format, it makes it a LOT more readable.

[Florida Man for Crime]

If Trump is convicted of a felony in New York, will that make him inelegible to vote in his home state of Florida?

No. Because if he is, the Florida legislature will hurriedly enact legislation making clear that, while all other felons remain ineligible to vote, felons convicted of falsifying business records in aid of another crime in the state of New York are eligible to vote after all.

[Florida Man for Crime]

I don’t think this is a difficult case to build reasonable doubt about - all you need is to convince the jury that there’s a chance that there may have been some other motive for the payments besides the election - but the defense team has not done an amazing job thus far.

This is untrue AFAIK. Under NY law, the jury can think that Trump did it for some other motive (i.e. to protect his family) as long as they ALSO think that he did it because of the election. In other words, NY law does not require it to be either-or. It can be both.

Which is an important distinction, because I would think it substantially increases the odds of conviction.

[Florida Man for Crime]

A few observations which I think may be significant:


1) At the start of jury selection, the first thing Judge Merchan said was ~"If you can't do this for whatever reason, you may leave now" (paraphrasing the general idea, based on news reports, not an exact quote). This is not usual in jury selection.

This should mean that any potential juror who simply did not want to be there at all was weeded out from the jury from the very start. This does not mean that every juror actively wanted to be on the jury per se. However, this does mean that there are no people on the jury who just do not want (or are not willing) to serve on juries in general, or don't think it is important in some sort of way for citizens to serve on juries. At minimum, every single person on the jury is someone who at least felt it was sufficiently their civic duty to stay and open themselves up to potentially serve on the jury.


2) The implication of this seems to me to be that you are a lot less likely to have people on the jury that simply who simply want it to end and to go home as fast as humanly possible regardless of the substance of the jury deliberations or regardless of the evidence etc. They all at least have some sort of minimal commitment to the idea of jury duty as a thing. So while obviously most people will obviously not want to stay longer than is substantively necessary, at the same time there should be nobody who isn't ok with being there at all and just wants it to end ASAP regardless of what happens.


3) In addition to that filter (requiring at least some basic conscientiousness) through which the jury pool was sifted, there are also 2 lawyers on the jury, which is very unusual (it is rare to have even 1). If there is 1 lawyer on a jury, there is some risk that the lawyer may end up (even if not intentionally) dominating the rest of the jury, which potentially could (in some cases) be an abuse of what the jury process is normally supposed to be. However, since there are 2 of them, each lawyer serves as a "check and balance" on the other. This means that anything either of the individual lawyers says should not carry undo weight just on the basis of their authority, because at minimum the other lawyer serves as a check.

If one lawyer insists on something that they know that the other lawyer may be likely to disagree with, the credibility/authority of the lawyers should decrease with the rest of the jury, because the rest of the jury won't know for sure which of the 2 is right. Both lawyers should realize this, and neither lawyer should want to blow their credibility with the rest of the jury, which means that each lawyer is incentivized not to somehow abuse their professional authority, because they know the other one could call them out on it if they do. In addition, since this case is high profile, neither lawyer can do something improper without fear that the other lawyer might identify themselves afterwards and give an interview to the media describing what the other lawyer abused. And even if the other lawyer who abused remains unidentified as they are supposed to, there are nevertheless a lot of people who saw them in the court room.

Overall, this seems to me like a positive thing for the rule of law/proper procedure etc, because on the one hand the lawyers will naturally tend to do their part to make sure nothing crazy happens and the jury does what it ought to do by the book, but on the other hand you also have a check that heavily disincentivizes any potential abuses by the lawyers.


4) The fact that the jury has already asked several questions relating clearly to the evidence and the testimony, in addition to wanting to hear the jury instructions again, seems to support this analysis. It appears indeed that the jury is a conscientious jury, and they are going through the evidence and the jury instructions with care, and are incentivized to follow them properly. This also has various other implications (i.e. if the deliberation takes a while, that is less likely to mean a hung jury than it would be in a typical case with an average jury).


5) I think you could make a reasonable argument that in an ideal world, all juries ought to be more like this. There would be a selection process weeding out anyone who is not going to take it seriously at all. And also you could maybe have at least potentially having 2 independent/random lawyers involved - though maybe more ideally the lawyers would be sort of "jury assistants" rather than actual voting jurors). Of course, there could be some disadvantages as well, but this has some advantages for the rule of law as compared to a more normal/average jury.

[Florida Man for Crime]

With it being this fast, I have a hard time believing it can realistically be anything but guilty - and moreover, very likely guilty on all counts.

If it were something other than that, surely a jury - especially a jury with 2 lawyers - would surely take longer than this to deliberate.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Just came in from a run -- frankly I'm shocked.  Thought for sure we were going into Friday. 

Me too.

If I were on the jury, even if I were pretty sure he was guilty, I think I would want to take longer than this on making absolutely sure it is the right decision.

Of course, we have not actually been there in person to watch the testimony in person like they have, so to them I guess they have had longer to consider (within their own minds anyway).

[Florida Man for Crime]

If Trump were being prosecuted for let's say, molesting an underage girl on Epstein Island, you would not see the kind of backlash we are seeing. People are rightfully angry at this verdict because anyone who isn't a democrat partisan can see how obviously political the whole charade is. If you are going to break a 250-year precedent of never prosecuting former presidents, it better be over something pretty damn serious. This trash out of Manhattan does not even come close to meeting that standard.

And I mention the Epstein scandal because there is sufficient evidence that Trump did in fact sexually abuse an underage girl being trafficked by that POS, at least enough to warrant an investigation. And this actually would be a case that would legitimately destroy Trump politically. Everyone agrees child molestation is a horrific crime worthy of punishment, you have a clear victim who was physically harmed, and solid evidence and credible witnesses (unlike say E Jean Carroll). I do wonder why Dems have never tried going after Trump over that?

     What struck me is that not only virtually everyone I know who supports Trump thinks this case was a nothingburger and blatant partisan lawfare (which I expected), but even quite a few people who are on the fence about him have expressed the same. I'm not sure why they didn't pursue charges on something that would elicit a stronger disgust reaction from the voting public, other than maybe they were unsure if they could put a case together quickly enough.

An Epstein-related prosecution would implicate many people in positions of power, including many Democrats, which is why there hasn't been a push from the McResist left to go after Trump for that. Even though, as you point out, such a conviction on that egregious a crime would absolutely destroy Trump. A good chunk of his MAGA cultists would abandon him over that.

If you have information of which the rest of us are not aware indicating that Donald Trump is a child rapist who molested an underage girl on Epstein's island, as you apparently claim you do, you should report this information to the FBI immediately.

Since you are apparently not aware of how to do this, I shall help you in this endeavor by providing this helpful link:

https://tinyurl.com/24rgornv

[Florida Man for Crime]

Is Murkowski the ONLY Republican elected official so far who didn't defend Trump and denounce his conviction?

Larry Hogan, but he was almost IMMEDIATELY promised to be ostracized from the party by the trump sycophants. His crime was saying that we should "respect the verdict."

Moreover, he even said that (very) shortly before the verdict was announced.

The funny thing is he clearly intentionally did so to try to avoid or limit that blowback, but he suffered that blowback nonetheless.

The Republican party is, literally, a cult.