NY: Trump on Trial!

[Donerail]

Hopefully the DA has been talked out of it.  Whatever you think of Trump, this leads nowhere good.  Would likely result in every former president being prosecuted going forward. 

This is equivalent to saying that former Presidents should be entitled to break laws with impunity.

We all break laws, mostly with impunity. You have assuredly committed multiple felonies over the last year. Most of them go uncharged, but if a DA doesn't like you, he'll find something.

[Donerail]

BREAKING: Gwyneth Paltrow has won her ski crash trial and has been awarded the $1 she requested in her counterclaim.

[Donerail]

I was wrong, I'm surprised Bragg decided to end Dems' 2024 hopes by indicting Trump for paying off a porn star.

I genuinely don't know how you can think that this helps Trump in a general.

Whether an indictment helps or hurts (assuming it gets wrapped up by November 2024) is immaterial — if this ends in a conviction, it hurts (obviously), easy to see how a high-profile acquittal probably helps. Depends on your view of the strength of the case.

[Donerail]

Its a non-violent white collar crime. Anyone can negotiate if they have a good enough lawyer. Better yet, a team of lawyers.

Are there any good lawyers left who don't view Trump as a completely radioactive client at this point? I feel like I've seen the crime-fraud exception get invoked more with Trump than in all other criminal cases I have ever paid attention to combined.

I met one of Trump's lawyers a few months ago — he came across as a pretty sharp guy, think he's probably a good lawyer. There's a fair number of criminal defense attorneys who genuinely subscribe to the everyone-deserves-a-defense idea.

[Donerail]

One flaw in the irrespective defense, is that the hush money was paid coincident with the election, while risk of the exposure into the public square of the alleged Trump tryst had been pending for years. If Trump paid the hush money to protect his marriage or reputation irrespective of the campaign, why did he wait to pay it until it was campaign season? An answer will need to be provided that seems creditable to explain away the long hiatus. The irrespective issue is not a silver bullet defense ala John Edwards' love child hush money payment.

Did the WSJ address the above issue?

The best defense is the statute of limitations. The tolling of it while Trump was out of state given that his whereabouts was known at all times, I just don't think will fly, particularly on equitable grounds. Bragg is going to be very embarrassed if he gets blown out on the SOL issue, and an appellate court might take that up prior to trial, since it moots the whole case right out of the box.

But doesn’t Bragg in turn have the counter argument about the judicial systems views about charging a president with a crime meant he had to wait until Trump left?

That's not enough — Trump left office in January 2021 and it is now April 2023. There's a two-year statute of limitation on the misdo counts (not getting into the felony charges, which have their own issues), so you have to argue both that the statute of limitations was tolled while he was President, even though he was a New York resident, and that it is still tolled now because he is residing out of state.

There is some (bizarre) New York precedent suggesting you count up the individual days in which a defendant is present in the state, but I just don't think that context (suspect was on the lam after bombing a car dealership) is analogous to this situation.

[Donerail]

She'd asked for money before and he didn't pay her though.

Irrelevant. Even if he paid her during the campaign,, the expenditure  wasn’t created by the campaign; and he still had reason to pay her outside of the election 

If I buy a nice $4k suit right before the debates, it’s not considered a campaign expenditure (and I can’t use campaign donor funds to buy the suit) because the need to buy clothes wasn’t created by the campaign. Even if I bought the $4k suit right before the debates and my intent in buying the $4k suit was to influence the election  by looking good on TV  for voters —- it’s not a campaign finance violation because the need to buy clothes wasn’t created by the campaign: I would have had reason to buy the suit outside of the election

In contrast, paying for campaign staff, TV ads, rallies etc. are expenditures created by a campaign, and I have no reason to pay for those things outside of an election. I have to use campaign funds to pay for those things, which must be reported to the FEC (do you understand the difference now between campaign expenditures and personal expenditures?)

If you purchase a nice suit, it's not a campaign expenditure. If you purchased a suit with your campaign slogan on it, that would be a campaign expenditure. Do you understand the difference?

The argument here is that the expenditure was created by the campaign — it would not exist but for the campaign. Trump had the same wife, same business interests, and same public persona all the other times she asked for money and was rebuffed. The sole thing that changed in this instance is that he was a candidate for President, giving him the reason for making the payments.

It's not a slam dunk, but neither is it the obvious case you're making it out to be — the timing is different from the Edwards case, making the causation much cleaner. Still think this all gets thrown out on the statute of limitations issue, but should it get to the merits, there's a colorable argument.

[Donerail]

If you purchase a nice suit, it's not a campaign expenditure. If you purchased a suit with your campaign slogan on it, that would be a campaign expenditure. Do you understand the difference?

The argument here is that the expenditure was created by the campaign — it would not exist but for the campaign. Trump had the same wife, same business interests, and same public persona all the other times she asked for money and was rebuffed. The sole thing that changed in this instance is that he was a candidate for President, giving him the reason for making the payments.

It's not a slam dunk, but neither is it the obvious case you're making it out to be — the timing is different from the Edwards case, making the causation much cleaner. Still think this all gets thrown out on the statute of limitations issue, but should it get to the merits, there's a colorable argument.

The expenditure wasn’t created by the campaign. It’s an objective standard, not subjective .

Even you admit that she had asked him for money before the campaign. Why did she ask for money before the campaign? Because he had reason to pay her outside of the campaign.

Evidently he did not!

Even if he didn’t pay her until the campaign because he subjectively felt he didn’t need to, he still had objective reasons to pay her before the campaign (eg to save his marriage, protect his business, avoid bad publicity)

And those reasons were objectively not sufficient to compel him to actually make the payment before the campaign. You seem to be under the impression that any candidate who can find the thinnest possible pretext can cite that as a reason for why their campaign-related expenditure is actually a personal expense (or vice-versa). That is not how the law works.

Just like if I buy a nice suit right before the debates. It’s not a campaign finance violation because I have a need to buy clothes outside of my campaign. . I certainly had the same need for buying clothes  before the debates, and I could’ve bought the suit before the debates: the only thing that changed is that I would be appearing on TV in front of voters, which giving me the reason for buying the $4k suit. But it’s still not a campaign finance violation because I had reason to buy clothes irrespective of a campaign

Repeating the same analogy will not convince people to take you any more seriously.