What law? Have they ever stated what law he allegedly broke?

Anyone with half a brain can see its all bullsh*t. All the DA's are bought and paid for... all had communications with the WH and the Biden administration.

It's beyond obvious to those without TDS that it's election interference. It's not going to work. In fact, I think it's having the opposite effect they intended.

No, he's not and neither is anyone associated with Trump. You should be wise enough to have seen the double standard by now.

Cohen by his own admission said he was the one that set up the NDA with Stormy Daniels. Why? Who knows. You're NEVER going to get an honest answer out of that rat faced prick Cohen. Went so far as to take out a HELOC on his own house because his wife runs the "books" in his house and he didn't want her to see anything he was doing. Does that sound like Donald Trump? He didn't even ask Cohen to do any such thing. We're talking about something that even she signed and swore to that she never slept with Trump. So, you have a couple of sleazy operators attempting to gain leverage over Trump. Statute of limitations ran past all this too so why did the DA bring federal charges on a misdemeanor? Because the Biden Administration TOLD him to. That's exactly why the #3 at the DOJ walks down the vaulted ladder to take the NY job...to do his master's bidding. They've met AT the White House. Pedo Joe will have you believe it was to talk about the weather. If these cases don't shake you to the core that you've been lied to then nothing ever will.

Trump, innocent until proven guilty...that's so cute. Thanks for the smile.

Let me see if I can help clarify her case a bit...she kept a private server which is illegal on its own. She had a private email address as well. So, can you see how one could conduct ANY business...legal or illegal with no repercussions, no oversight and free from FOIA requests! When the jig was found out, she was asked to produce the server and phones under a court order. The server wasn't just wiped clean but the world was introduced to a product called bleachbit. The drives were rendered useless. The phones? SIM chips absent and phones smashed with hammers. Did I mention that the server itself wasn't even in a secure environment. It was in a closet! There is NO DOUBT that the CCP, Russians, DPRK and a slew of others had hacked into this server. The destruction was due to her running guns and munitions in Libya that got a US ambassador and a nation's leader killed and the links to that.

About that same timeline was this case to show the hypocrisy.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/us-navy-sailor-jailed-for-taking-photos-of-classified-areas-of-nuclear-submarine

Hillary Clinton deserved to be behind bars.

Have you seen all the evidence and listened to all the testimony in person? No.

Has the prosecution even had its redirect yet? No.

Has the judge instructed the jury on the law of the case yet? No.

Has the defense rested its case and moved for judgement of acquittal yet? No.

I am not saying you are wrong, but none of us has full information.

Just sayin'...

I got schooled on what fraud is from rfenst. It was the thread about White House and FED bank. This forum is a good place for me to learn about the assumptions I make and the opinions I accept w/o challenging them.

Trump is accused of falsely booking a payoff as legal fees. However, there has been ZERO testimony that proves Trump KNOWINGLY gave Cohen money with the specific purpose to buy her silence. How do I know this? Because if there were such testimony or evidence the left-wing media would be reporting it ad nauseam. But they aren’t. Absent that he did ABSOLUTELY nothing illegal.

If they had even a silver of a case they wouldn’t have risked muddying the waters with the jury with all the salacious testimony that had absolutely nothing to do with the charges at hand. In fact the only reason for such testimony was to attempt to embarrass Trump and taint the jury.

Doesn’t really matter what anyone thinks. Proof beyond reasonable doubt is the threshold. At the end of the day it was an attempt by the DA to influence the election. Exactly what he put Trump on trial for allegedly doing. My guess it’s going to hurt Democrats, not Trump.

When the Political Retribution Kangaroo Court Trial is over
I hope Trump moves to disbar DA Bragg and staff, and impeach
Judge Merchan.

Though gutting federal agencies is a popular rallying call doing so isn’t without peril.

Unlike other nations which are essentially single state entities we are a union of 50 individual states. So we have to look at things a little differently. Instead of acting like individual states we are united in a single cause. So it makes sense that certain basic services should be available to every US citizen. The only way to do that is to have a federal agency creating a framework that includes input of all the states to ensure that every citizen regardless of domicile has at least similar access. Otherwise the union really serves no purpose.

The problem as I see it isn’t necessarily a need to do away with all federal agencies but to reimagine them as the hub of ideas put forth from the several states for the greater good. Instead they function as fiefdoms dictating to the very people whom they should be listening to for ideas. It reminds me of IT departments I’ve dealt with in the past. Instead of listening to the users telling them what they need to do their job, they have forced the end users to use what’s supplied to even if the proposed solution creates more problems than it solves.

I call for total anarchy.

I don’t know how downsizing government would cause a global depression. These people joining the work force and some of them setting up small businesses would add to GDP. Government purchases add to GDP but government salaries do not add as much to GDP as any other category of labor and you have to consider that they don’t produce anything. Many of the federal workers, a percentage that is hopefully small, will be hired into state governments that will need to fill in services as they see fit at their local level rather than federal level. I can get with a plan that downsizes 25% of government in 4 years, but I can’t get with a plan that takes 20 years. I’m not following the math on 5% over 20 years to achieve a 75% reduction, but 20 years is too long in my opinion. I’m not saying your opinion is “wrong” but rather just saying I have a different opinion.

No. I’m aware of the temporary surge in unemployment that will result. This is like deficit spending and printing money…we will stop doing it when we can afford it. We need these changed now in my opinion.

It would have to be done slowly so that the effect to the economy is minimized during and after the adjustment period. This would take like 10 years, IMO.

I think you gents are 100% correct that a radical downsizing has a much greater impact on the short term economy. Conversely, the longer we wait the greater the impact on long term economy. Certainly this should be studied before implementing. I can’t deny the validity of your arguments. I think I’m just willing to be Draconian and deal with the consequences immediately.
If we reduce 5% per year for 10 years additive I believe that is a 43% reduction. That could be a working compromise but in reality I know it would be a non-starter. If I were king for a day, I’d start by cutting out the services I think the federal government should not be funding and go from there. Those are just my rambling thoughts on the fantasy.

Cut all the “non-essential” heavily and immediately.

There are plenty of private sector jobs that can absorb them. The problem with that is the private sector expects results.

I came across this article this morning:


A Trump Conviction Doesn’t Hang on Michael Cohen


NYT/GUEST ESSAY By Jeffrey Toobin
The Manhattan district attorney’s case against Donald Trump has unfolded like a north-of-the-border telenovela, with lurid tales of sex, spankings, hush money and silk pajamas, as well as the occasional detour into the editorial practices of supermarket tabloids. But the case, provocative as it has been, may turn on something a great deal more mundane than the testimony.

The key question the jurors will soon be considering is a straightforward one: Did the former president “cause” the creation of false business records? The prosecution has answered half of that question. There’s no reason to doubt the records were false. But the verdict is likely to turn on the other half — whether Mr. Trump caused the false information to appear on the invoices and vouchers. The evidence there is murkier.

According to the prosecution, on the eve of the 2016 election, Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s onetime lawyer and fixer, paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, the porn star, to guarantee her silence about a tryst she and Mr. Trump allegedly had a decade earlier. Mr. Trump then reimbursed Mr. Cohen for his outlay, plus a bonus and additional funds for taxes. The business records of those payments to Mr. Cohen called each one a retainer for legal services, rather than what they were: a reimbursement for the hush money paid to Ms. Daniels.

The prosecution has done an excellent job of proving these details. Was the information on the documents false? Absolutely. Several witnesses support the government’s claim that Mr. Trump’s payments to the lawyer were not legal fees. Mr. Trump himself tweeted in 2018 that Mr. Cohen received a “reimbursement” and said as much in a White House financial disclosure form.

The government also introduced a document in the handwriting of Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, detailing the reimbursement scheme. Mr. Cohen laid out his own money — $130,000 to Ms. Daniels and about $50,000 in another expense. Mr. Weisselberg jotted that the reimbursement would break down as $180,000 in income to Mr. Cohen, $180,000 to cover Mr. Cohen’s taxes, and a $60,000 bonus. The total of $420,000 was exactly what Mr. Cohen received in 11 checks. The prosecution also made a strong showing that the payoff to Ms. Daniels was designed, above all, to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election. That’s especially important in this case because if the jury finds that Mr. Trump was motivated to violate election laws, that elevates his crime from a misdemeanor to a felony.

Mr. Trump’s defense team barely disputed this evidence. At times his lawyers seemed to be trying harder to please their client than to win their case. In cross-examining Ms. Daniels, Susan Necheles did a fine job of showing Ms. Daniels’s anger at Mr. Trump and her financial interest in a conviction in this case. But then Ms. Necheles began a long and unpersuasive attempt to show that Ms. Daniels was lying about the underlying sexual encounter. Ms. Daniels’s story of that night was solid, including such details as her whacking Mr. Trump with a magazine when he condescended to her and his louche outfit when she arrived at his hotel room. “Does Hugh Hefner know you stole his pajamas?” she recalled asking Mr. Trump. (Mr. Trump denies having an affair with Ms. Daniels.)

Given the structure of the case, it almost doesn’t matter whether the two had sex in 2006, which made the defense assault on Ms. Daniels even more unnecessary. All that the jurors needed to know was that her story, true or not, represented a threat to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, and that’s why he wanted to pay to shut her up.

The prosecution went to a great deal of effort to prove that Mr. Trump, notwithstanding his great wealth, was a tightwad who kept a close eye on every expenditure. The jury heard quotes from Mr. Trump’s own book recounting how he personally signed his own checks. In an email, an assistant brought up the purchase of something as minor as a picture frame for “about $650 minus %15 discount. Does DJT want to spend that much?”

This testimony was aimed at shoring up the principal weakness in the government’s case. The defense has argued that while Mr. Trump signed the checks to Mr. Cohen, there was no direct evidence that he knew about how those payments were recorded by the bookkeepers at the Trump Organization. He had no reason to check how the payments were categorized.

This is where Mr. Cohen’s testimony was vital. The three days he spent on the stand so far resembled a prose opera of love, betrayal and revenge. Mr. Cohen said that Mr. Trump knew about a plan to lie about the payments and described how he prepared invoices that falsely characterized the payments as legal fees, even though both men knew that the payments were reimbursements. If the jury believes Mr. Cohen, despite a brutal cross-examination that underlined his history of lying, then conviction is almost assured.

But even if the jury writes off Mr. Cohen or discounts his testimony, the government can still prove its case. Under the law, Mr. Trump can be convicted if he “caused” the false records to be created. The jury has to believe that Mr. Trump knew any documents characterizing the payments as legal fees were false.

The government has argued that Mr. Trump couldn’t have missed at least some of the false statements, because the word “Retainer” was on the stubs attached to the checks he signed. That’s a persuasive argument because someone as penurious as Mr. Trump surely would not spend $420,000 without knowing the reason, and thus he had to know that records describing those expenditures another way were false.

Juries surprise — sometimes. This one, especially with two lawyers on it, is likely to be fastidious about examining the evidence and following the law. Despite the sensational surrounding drama, the issue for these 12 Manhattanites is likely to come down to the prosaic business of invoices and vouchers, and how they came to tell a story that was different from the one that actually happened.

Is this the same Jeffery Toobin that got caught beating his deek during a Zoom meeting?

Actually it refers to public domain information that may or may not be included in evidence presented at trial.

and I thought you understood the law....

That Bassard..!!

Who knows?
You can read the transcripts of the trial at:

https://pdfs.nycourts.gov/PeopleVs.DTrump-71543/transcripts/4-22-2024.pdf

Documents enter into evidence and testimony other than from Cohen or Daniels.

Thanks, Spey. I thought it was already accepted that the payment was for her silence hence the NDA. I must have assumed too much. If that is all they have to prove, Trump is in for big trouble I think. I don’t see how this is against the law though. Does not really seem like it rises to the level of a “crime” when I think about it. I don’t know much about how the justice system works though.