I’m not sure he needs to be treated as a typical felon since he’s one of the most recognized people in the world. A normal Joe Blow defendant can slip away easily, but Trump is going to be trivially easy to find. Plus, I personally would be a-ok with not putting any travel restrictions on him so that he does go into hiding or flee the country. Good riddance!
Or even just three. 
I’m wondering is this was another case of Trump leading his own defense to his detriment. Trump is clearly chaffing under the gag order, and I can imagine him being ranting how its unfair that Cohen can get away with saying bad things about him and his lawyer, but he can’t say bad things about Cohen and the Judge’s family. Perhaps he thinks that by bringing it to the judges attention the judge in court the judge will realize the asymmetry and either sanction Cohen or weaken the order on Trump.
I have been loosely watching this thread and loosely reading my print paper and thought this was a slam-dunk. Tonight my spouse said that Jake Tapper thinks this is a losing case against Trump. Anyone else see the Tapper segment my spouse watched? Is this going to be a nothingberder against the Orange Turd? Should I start crying into my cup of covfefe?
So…the “seems pretty dopey” bit was both redundant and understatement…
Small caveat: Jake Tapper’s job is to keep people tuned to CNN as the trial unfolds.
Gotta keep that sweet, sweet Jardiance cash comin’ in.
Haven’t seen it but I’ve been in enough arguments on this forum to know that there’s a goodly number of people for whom anything short of high definition video of the suspect doing it, a confession by the suspect, and five independent witnesses of him in commission of the crime, and there’s still just isn’t any “proof”. There’s just no ground between nothing and “proof”. “Evidence” is a word too vague to define or consider.
Under that outlook on life, we can pretty well imagine that, with Cohen admitting that Trump never gave any concrete direction to falsify the records, and no evidence way beyond Cohen’s say so, that there’s no path to conviction.
Maybe Tapper is a person of that particular view of evidentiary weight, I don’t know, but that would be my first guess.
With two lawyers on the jury, hopefully that sort of nonsense can’t prevail.
I’ve got 34 charges I’m not handling well.
It’s a little case with a big story to tell…
I don’t watch any televised news so I hope ya’ll are correct. The newspaper I read just reports the facts and it seems like they are building a case. I hope it’s true, but I still expect to never see Trump pay any real consequences. Rich people don’t pay for their sins. Poor people pay through their nose and in short order.
This article suggests it has been discussed.
No.
Oh. From the first half of that sentence, I was thinking Cheech and Chong.
If he was willing to cut off his combover and dress down, would anyone recognize him?
Funny you should mention that, I recently saw a Facebook post where he is stripped of his artifices and he looks way better. He’d actually have some gravitas until he opened his mouth. I’d post it but I am not sure how to get around the board software looking like it supports the function but saying no when I try to do it. Edit: got lucky and managed to embed it! Edit 2: well, not sure if “lucky” is the right word in this case but see for yourself:
Any time you go to trial, there are risks. Here, what Tapper might be leaning in on is that no-one has testified (as far as I know) that Trump specifically said “make a false entry.”
I assume the DA is going to be arguing that the jury can infer, from all of the testimony about Trump’s personal involvement in the scheme, and his detailed personal control of his cheques and expenses, that he did in fact know that the transactions were being recorded incorrectly and that’s what he was directing.
Fraud cases often have issues about inferring the state of mind, so I assume the DA lawyers are well-prepared for this issue.
Continuation from Seth Abramson’s first thread. More readable version from threadreaderapp
36/ First, Michael Cohen knows that Trump already admitted to sufficient facts to be convicted in Manhattan in his civil case with Stormy Daniels, as Ryan Goodman of Just Security recently noted on Twitter with video from his own recent appearance on CNN. And that is 100% true.
CNN clip here: Trump admitted to reimbursing Cohen in his civil case with Stormy Daniels.
Interesting broader context. Part of Trump’s business model was entering into contracts that he had no intention of fulfilling: he planned on stiffing his suppliers. That’s theft of services or theft by deception or some other form of fraud. Since this was central to the way he ran his business he had to take steps that there would never be a paper trial. Trump sometimes speaks with mafia-style vagueness because of his experience in running a criminal enterprise.
46/ Trump’s whole business empire is built on felonies—most notably Fraud (defrauding banks and the IRS); Theft (stealing from independent contractors by signing contracts with them he has no intention of honoring, which is a crime); Bribery (once he entered politics, he began…
47/ …selling U.S. domestic and foreign policy in advance to the highest bidder, as he just did with U.S. energy policy); Sexual Assault (Trump appears to have committed clandestine sex crimes as a way of self-regulating his rampant sociopathy); and…
48/ …various other financial crimes relating to stealing from or defrauding investors, renters or potential renters, business partners and—of course—voters.
52/ But as to the first item I mentioned, above—Donald Trump commits crimes via a small network, many of them legally bonded to him—that is essential to understanding the criminal trial Trump faces now, and the critical eyewitness testimony Cohen is giving in Manhattan today.
Trump knows a little about how to dodge consequence:
86/ As Cohen has exhaustively explained, Trump likes to work with the same fixer for a long period of time—it’s why Lewandowski keeps leaving and returning to his orbit—so he can get that fixer to engage in misconduct without constantly having to explicitly spell out his demands.
87/ This is why Trump almost never uses email—too much of a paper trail.
88/ This is why Trump often uses aides’ phones to make or take important phone calls—so future investigators won’t know whose phone records to subpoena, or won’t have a proven basis for seeking such a subpoena on the front end.
89/ This is why—as exhaustively established with full sourcing in the Proof Trilogy—Trump often rips up inculpatory paperwork; and/or burns it; and/or bags it en masse and has it tossed; and/or eats it (yes, really); and/or flushes it down a toilet.
He’s obsessed with secrecy.
90/ And he’s obsessed with secrecy because he’s a career criminal. And like any career criminal who won’t commit many of the crimes directly himself but is focused on outsourcing those crimes to others via oral directions they cannot later prove, he needs a fixer.
Like Cohen.
Forbes billionaires typically hire lawyers from top 30 law schools, not guys like Cohen. But that’s ok because Cohen’s degree was a means of producing a degree of attorney-client privilege: Cohen didn’t provide much in the way of legal counsel. So why did Trump stiff Cohen (by cutting his 2016 year-end bonus)? A: Trump stiffs people like Cohen and Giuliani because he figured they could turn around and work side-hustles based on their access and proximity to Trump. Which both Cohen and Giuliani did.
Paying Cohen for his non-legal work implicates Trump. So he avoids that. Cohen’s reimbursement only happened because Trump got sloppy during Fall 2016 after the Access Hollywood tape dropped:
And, for that matter, it’s prosecutors who may have to explain—at least in general terms—how it was that Trump got away with criminal conduct for so long. They would likely argue that they needed the paper trail Trump created.
138/ Indeed, this is one way to understand this case, in conjunction with what we’ve already discussed about how Trump’s FBI and DOJ caused the case we see before us today at the state level: Donald Trump was so desperate to lie to voters on a schedule he created a paper trail.
139/ Trump’s entire criminal history is based on avoiding paper trails using men like Cohen. But he was so desperate to save his brand—(and only secondarily, his political career)—after the Access Hollywood tape dropped that he got sloppy with his usual criminal enterprise.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Trump is a Godfather.
Think of the movie. At no time does the Godfather, Don Vito Corleone, order anything criminal. No, he’s a respectable businessman. Oh, he might say things that his family and associates interpret in a certain way, but those are just broad statements, and it’s his family’s and associates’ interpretation of what he said, not necessarily what he wanted them to do. If they do it, well, that’s on them. It’s history, too bad, so sad. Don Vito didn’t do it, nor did he order it.
That’s Trump. He never actually tells his associates and other minions to do anything; he just drops broad hints about what he’d like to see done, hopes that they understand (which they usually do), and they make it happen. Trump isn’t liable; he didn’t make it happen, it was Giuliani or Cohen or Bannon or somebody else, on their own initiative. That’s why he hates paper trails and doesn’t use e-mail: so nothing can be traced back to him. Don Vito Corleone would be proud.
And if “everyone does it”, then convicting a former president for this sends a pretty strong message: cut that shit out; even Trump couldn’t get away with it forever.
If they fail to convict in this case just because no one else has ever been convicted on similar charges before now, we might as well just scrap election laws entirely, there would no longer be any point to having them.
“Whatever it was, they don’t teach it in law school…”
I don’t see why it couldn’t fly. It’s not like politicians in Manhattan are all paragons of virtue. And there could well be a Cohen-esque lawyer in that jury.
Did they ask if any jurors had ever done business (one removed) from Trump? If he’s been ripping people off for years, maybe someone has firsthand knowledge.
And yes, I get that their “job” to carefully consider the facts. But they’re human, and humans can be crap at just sticking to the facts.
Interlude…while we wait for court to open today.
Don’t think it’s been mentioned yet…