Good to know, thanks. I remember one of 2020’s debates, where Trump just would not shut up. I think it may have been the one where Biden ended up saying, “Come on, man.” Trump constantly interrupted, talking over Biden, and there was some talk about a mute button then. Glad to hear that there will be one now.
I’d refuse to watch without a mute button. That debate was the most infuriating debate I’ve ever seen. It just highlighted the bully nature of Trump to shout over anybody else and be the loudest guy in the room. I can’t believe that people thought that was a winning strategy and yet his acolytes all fawned over his style.
Why are you so certain? He will be a convicted felon, and incarceration is absolutely within the range of appropriate punishment.
The crime that he was covering up was improperly influencing a presidential election. It’s hard to imagine a more serious offense in a democratic county. The importance of deterring others is of great importance.
He has also shown utter contempt for the court and the participants in the case, including the jury.
Once convicted, I hope Judge Merchan treats donald like every other similarly situated person.
And I hope that includes some time in jail.
[nitpick]
But the proceedings in Merchan’s court – unless I’m mistaken – will not be adjudicating the predicate/target/underlying crime, right?
Bragg really just has to establish what it was/that it existed in order to get from the misdemeanor to the felony falsifying docs charge.
[/nitpick]
I wonder if the Secret Service and the potential prison authorities have been working on a plan should this come to pass? House arrest with limited visitation and internet seems more workable.
Can the Supreme Court somehow get him off the hook?
I borrowed Euphonious_Polemic’s time machine googles. Here’s a look into the jury room during deliberations:
Fellow jurors, let’s assume that Trump did have sex with the porn star, and he did authorize hush money to keep it out of the news. Let’s also assume that the payment of the hush money was miscategorized in the company’s books.
My question to you is: So what?
Every candidate cuts corners. Every candidate does sketchy stuff to improve the chance of getting elected. You know that’s true. They all do it.
And every company muddles up how something is listed on their books, often deliberately. And I guess if their doing so helps inflate their stock price, it would be wrong. But the Trump Organization is privately-held, so who did the miscategorization hurt?
They aren’t going after every candidate. They aren’t going after every company. They are going after only Mr. Trump and his company.
He is right – this is a witch-hunt. It’s selective prosecution. And it’s wrong.
I can’t be part of this travesty, and I think the rest of you can’t either. Our only real option is to find him innocent on all counts.
(End time machine quote)
A lot of posters are saying that the jury will find him guilty. I wish I was as optimistic. I think the above is only too likely.
I had read (perhaps here) that the last witness the prosecution planned to call was an expert on election law. I had hoped this witness would be able to explain to the jury why what Trump did was wrong. Not why it was illegal, but why it was morally wrong. So I was disappointed to find out they are not planning on calling this witness.
Perhaps the prosecution will cover this in their closing statement. But if they don’t, I fear that some of the jurors will ask themselves, “So what if he did it? Really, why should I care?”
Honestly, your (@anny_m) sounds like a very likely alternate future, based on a schism point where Donald Trump had let his lawyers actually run the case.
If he hadn’t been all “deny deny deny”, making the Prosecution’s case would have been a lot harder. For that matter, if he wasn’t so… Trump… he could be trusted to testify, and rebut Cohen’s words.
But if he wasn’t so Trump, we wouldn’t be in this fork, and for that matter, he’d have dummied up a retainer agreement.
As in many things, Trump is his own worst enemy, sadly he’s done a great job of dragging everyone else down with him.
That isn’t to say he won’t skip out on justice in this case, or that a hung jury won’t further delay things, but I can’t see Trump’s current lawyers being allowed to make that closing argument.
Just read this now. I’ve been watching The Jinx Part Two on HBO about the Robert Durst trial, and I’m amazed at the number of friends Durst had who seem blind to what Durst was capable of. I think a lot of it is how you describe peoples’ relationship to your FiL. Remora around the big shark.
Though the trial is not happening in rural Alabama. It’s in Manhattan, and two of the jurors are Manhattan attorneys.
That argument, even if there is “one angry man” to make it, is not going to fly in that audience.
Agreed.
They will be deciding whether Trump falsified records to cover it up.
It doesn’t change the fact that this was a very big thing. It wasn’t covering up records to hide some technically illegal behavior, like “insider trading” or maybe cheating on taxes.
This was a coverup of interfering with a presidential election.
On the scale of things to punish a person for, I’d think this would weigh towards a serious sanction.
Again it’s absolutely not true that there is no way he’s going to jail if he’s convicted. There is some chance he’ll be able to delay going to prison while he appeals. But even that is not guaranteed.
And ultimately he will run out of appeals and his appeals will likely fail. So most likely he is going to prison if he’s found guilty, even if manages to delay that somewhat (which again is not not guaranteed, it’s perfectly possible that Mercan will give him a date to report to jail this summer, and he will need go to prison on that day or have a warrant issued for his arrest)
a reporter was close enough to see what papers trump was looking at during cohen’s testimony. he was editing the remarks by his “maga crew” yest…
whoa!
up to the prosecution on whether they bring it up tomorrow. the trial is nearly over.
george conway is enjoying taunting trump, telling him he is a chicken, and afraid to go on the stand.
Thank you for this wondeful imagery! 
Jesuit Fried Chicken!
If this can be substantiated, I really don’t see what the Prosecution has to lose in asking the Judge to take this up as a prima facie violation of the Gag Order.
Again.
Merchan basically gave DJT the “don’t push your luck, Bub” speech in no uncertain terms.
[I’m also very okay with painting the GOP toady attendees with the same brush, showing them as unrepentant errand boys for TFG]
Of course, attorneys may decided that there is technically a reasonable doubt. They may believe Trump is guilty (assuming they do), and they may wish to find him guilty, but they may decide that by the letter of the law they can’t vote for a guilty verdict because of a legal technicality.
I just don’t think the jury will think that way, because it’s so counter to the information they have and the role they are there to play.
Their instructions are to consider the evidence presented, and only the evidence presented. They spent the last several weeks being given that evidence. They will go into deliberations not having discussed the evidence with each other, but undoubtedly having lots of opinions about it that they will want to share with the others.
I don’t see how they go from that discussion to the conclusion that “everybody does it” and this is “no big deal”.
They will have absolutely no evidence of this. In fact, if “everybody does it”, they’d expect to have heard about it.
The very fact that these facts were considered damning enough that they became the subject of the trial would seem to weigh against saying that this is all mundane and just business as usual.
And I’m sure the DA will press that point. These actions are egregious; these actions were bad. And the people who did these things knew that they were egregious and bad, because they tried to cover it up.
I don’t see how, believing that this is proven true, a juror can just shrug their shoulders and think that this is just like all the other behavior (which they haven’t heard about) from other people (who nobody has named).
What technicality? If you believe the evidence, then this was done with Trump’s knowledge and at his direction. I don’t see the “yeah it’s true but not technically illegal” angle.
Rice recalled: “I could actually look over Trump’s shoulder and see what he was reading, at one point he was actually reading the quotes that these individuals were … and going through and making notations with a pen on the paper.”
A “quote” would generally be understood as a thing which was said in the past. Annotating things that had already been said would be benign - so far as the gag order is concerned.
Listening to the video, he does follow up by saying, “that these people were going to say”, but it takes him a moment to say it and he seems a little less confident. I think the judge would need to call Mr. Rice in to double-check, ask the defense for the papers that Trump was writing on, and figure out the precise timeline.
If true, Trump should get hammered.
Of course, if Trump is found guilty of 33 counts, he’ll fill the airwaves with bloviations that the jury found him innocent.
I’d like to see him found guilty, even if the jurors were to have any niggling doubts about this particular case. There’s always the chance he’ll never have to answer for Jan6. It’s important that this malevolent creature be put away.
IANAL. I read an article today (I don’t know how to find History on Microsoft, so I can’t find it) where a guy who had been on three juries in Manhattan believed the defendant was guilty and wanted to vote guilty, but in each case there was ‘something’ that gave him reasonable doubt. I don’t recall if he was a lawyer. A lawyer on this case might do the same thing.
I sincerely hope that the jury does the right thing and convicts Trump. I like reading the ‘good news’ posts in this thread. But I’m not counting any chickens.