Has a transcript emerged yet of the open-session testimony?
Well, yeah, I suppose it does when the initial premise is Edwards wasn’t convicted. Given how E-DUB presented his argument, though, it strikes me as a bit questionable to insist on “Edwards wasn’t convicted” as a fundamental premise in that syllogism. A more straightforward summation of his point would be ”Edwards was prosecuted, therefore Trump [sic] should know that it was illegal.”
The premise of the accusation of campaign finance law violation is not that Cohen told Trump it was illegal or that Trump told Cohen he knew it was illegal or that there’s some document that shows either. Yet. Testimony or documents to that effect may come out.
It’s the way the payments were executed. You have Trump on tape saying “Cash.” and Cohen saying “No no no no no. No.” in the conversation where they are talking about Weisselberg setting up a shell corp to pay Pecker. Now, is that enough? Eh.
Trump’s defense at this point would be either “I was just trying to hide it and this is how they told me to do it.” or, “I knew I was trying to get around something, but I didn’t know what.”
If deliberate and premeditated is required, it’s going to be hard to pin it on him without a smoking gun.
It’s quite possible that SDNY has looked at Trump and his kids and his Organization in the past.
But if we look at violations of state laws (as opposed to the federal laws SDNY would deal with), we see that the Trumps have come in for scrutiny:
Just as the fix appears to have been in for those state charges, “something” could have happened with potential federal charges; that’s one of the things that may become known as investigations proceed.
Lacking in logic to an equal degree. Being prosecuted does not establish that anything illegal has been done. That’s why we have trials.
Can you cite me a case where it was established that one person broke the law by the fact that someone else was not convicted of breaking the same law?
Regards,
Shodan
It had previously all been small-time stuff, for him as well as the hundred others. Who do you go after? But the other hundred *still *don’t endanger national security or the Constitution. Now, the SDNY has had piles of evidence dumped upon them for free, and an easy prosecution ahead of them.
Wasn’t there video of Trump criticizing Edwards’ law-breaking, at the time? It’s kind of hard to say that he didn’t know it was illegal, after that.
He also declared he knows more about campaign finance law that anyone else. For what that’s worth.