@Teri_Kanefield Thank you for this! Very interesting reading. It explains my uneasy feeling that there’s a circular argument going on, and that the “election interference” angle is a real stretch.
Honestly the funniest thing about this whole business is the idea that the National Enquirer employs fact-checkers (“we determined that the story was not true, but bought it anyway”)
In what feels like another lifetime (10 years before I went to law school) I earned a master's in fiction writing at UCDavis.
A classmate wanted to write for the National Enquirer. He thought creative writing was a prequistite and he thought inventing stories about aliens would be a hoot.
I see a cover-up (clearly), but I struggle with WTH is the underlying crime.
The only thing I can think is that paying off Stormy et al should have been from the campaign as an expense, but I don’t know enough about campaign finance to see even that clearly.
@Teri_Kanefield Based on your take on the case, it seems like his lawyers should have 1 worked harder to get the DA to drop the case altogether & if he wouldn’t 2 pled this thing down to a misdemeanor. Trump probably wouldn’t agree to #2, but that would have been much less damaging than the 6-8 weeks at trial are proving to be, irrespective of any verdict.
@Teri_Kanefield This is so interesting to me: “Nullum crimen sine lege is Latin for ‘no crime without law’ … The law requires criminal acts to be publicized in unambiguous statutory text.” How would this apply to the new felony laws for physicians providing abortion services under maternal medical exemptions? For example, the legislative language here in SC uses a physicians “reasonable medical judgment” as the standard - which would seem to always include some degree of ambiguity.
Per Business Insider on 4/27/24, Trump: conspired to make an illegally high campaign expenditure (Federal tax law); intended to disguise repayments to Cohen that violated state tax law; conspired to falsify records at National Enquirer.
"Proof of an intent to violate any of these three laws would be sufficient to satisfy Section 17-152."
@Teri_Kanefield in theory, can the jury find Trump guilty of misdemeanor filing false business records, and acquit of the felony charges, if they find there was no predicate crime?
@Teri_Kanefield The hypothetical about a conspiracy to go to the beach raises an interesting question. Lay people often hear about getaway drivers in a robbery being charged as an accessory even though they didn’t rob the bank or shoot a person during the robbery. How is that different from the hypothetical? Is it because the getaway driver knows, or should reasonably know, they’re about to help others commit a crime?
Every crime requires a mens rea, or a mental component. If you ride in a stolen car without knowing it was stolen, you can't be held criminally liable.
Google Aiding and Abetting or Accessory After the Fact (Cornel Law School has a good site with these definitions) and take a look at the elements.
@Teri_Kanefield
Does the agreement that Pecker/AMI signed with DOJ establish that federal election law was violated? If so, is there any legal or procedural reason why the prosecution cannot argue that the same law was also violated when Trump and Cohen did the same thing with respect to Daniels that Trump, Cohen, and Pecker did with respect to McDougal?
@rdnielsen The agreement does not establish that federal election law was violated.
In fact, the defense will get an instruction to the jury that Cohen's guilty plea (and Pecker's ackowledgement of guilt and payment of fine does not mean Trump committed a crime.
Not everyone connected to an act has liability.
Pleading guilty means it was never proven in court.
@Teri_Kanefield
I expect that defense attorneys will generally say that jurors have no latitude, and prosecutors will have a contrary viewpoint. But jurors, like legislators, will make their own judgments about what is bad. So, assuming they are inclined to do so, are there legal arguments to constrain them in jury instructions, or arguments that can be raised on appeal?
@rdnielsen The juror's assessment of the facts cannot be questioned on appeal. But if the law is incorrectly applied, meaning the judge gives bad instructions, yes, an appeal can succeed.
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