The common thread in Trump's defenders

[DaisyDay]

You mean the ones that Michael Cohen admitted under oath that he falsified without Trump's knowledge?

What?

What is contrary to fact is "no evidence was presented".

Your question is muddled an vague. What "ones" do you mean? Do you mean invoices presented billing Trump for the non-existent retainer that the three parties agreed he would submit? If that is what you mean, then that there is evidence; if that is not what you mean please clarify.

 

[Eternally Grateful]

No, we just despise him. It's his supporters we're afraid of--angry religious ideologues with guns. Taking out Trump doesn't make them go away.

But your not afraid of Antifa, BLM, and actual people who have terrorized cities who are anti right.

Give me a break man..

 

[Hans Blaster]

The crime being adultery?

Adultery is not a crime.

 

[essentialsaltes]

You mean the ones that Michael Cohen admitted under oath that he falsified without Trump's knowledge?

Cohen did not falsely write "RETAINER" on Trump's own checks.

 

[Zaha Torte]

Adultery is not a crime.

I agree.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Trump and his followers, by explicitly appropriating the Christian Gospel have made it less credible.

And this is a bigger issue for me than any political policy. They embrace and support this scoundrel in the name of the God they claim to believe in and worship. We cannot ignore the character, virtue and vices of this empty spirituality. Sure, perhaps Biden is not to much better. But people do not worship Biden. Even within the democratic party there is plenty of expressed displeasure.

Those of you who claim to be Christian and yet think he can do no wrong, please try to re-evaluate your position.

 

[Zaha Torte]

They were considered campaign contributions because they were made to prevent damage to his status as a candidate. Think of it like an advertising expense: you buy ads to make your guy look good and you buy ads to make the other guy look bad. Your opponent does the same thing in reverse. Advertising/messaging is a big part of a campaign's expenditures and I don't think it's unreasonable to consider as campaign expenses those costs incurred during a campaign to protect a candidate's image . John Edwards was prosecuted for more-or-less the same thing in 2011 for hiding his affair during the 2008 campaign.

Hmmm - I see how that could make sense.

So, the payment wasn't to cover up any crime - but the payment itself was considered a crime because of the perceived intent behind the payment was to protect his image for political purposes.

This means that the "hush money" is considered a "campaign contribution"? How is that?

I know that both Cohen and Daniels claimed several times that Trump did not know about the payments - does that matter in this case? Did they prove that those were lies?

Why wasn't Edwards convicted?

 

[Zaha Torte]

No. Read the verdict, the transcripts and/or the indictment.

Yes, the jury was unanimously convinced by the documents, the recordings and all the witness testimony. The recordings have him discussing the structure of the payments with Weisselberg and Cohen, and he personally signed most the checks to Cohen.

They have recordings of Trump talking about how Cohen paid Daniels?

 

[Yttrium]

In the end, it doesn't really matter. Trump will defeat Biden on election day, he will pardon himself, he will spend his first day of office purging the leftist corruption, and there will be riots and violent meltdowns never seen before. Days after the election, the violence from the left will make the 2020 BLM and Jan 6th look like a love fest.

Those pesky Democrats. We'll have to be well prepared to deal with their crazed assault. I just want to point out that even if Trump gets away with pardoning himself, he can't pardon himself for a state crime.

Now, you might then say that if the felonies were based on a federal crime, then he'd be pardoned for the federal crime, so the felonies would have to be knocked down to misdemeanors. Or something like that. This would be an interesting legal question and could lead to a fun appeal. Personally, I don't like the idea of basing felonies on a crime that defendant hasn't been convicted of, and I feel that Trump only deserves to have been convicted of misdemeanors. But looking solely at the New York law, I can't argue against the felony convictions.

 

[ralliann]

No, Donald was not charged years ago because it was against DOJ policy to charge a sitting president for crimes he may have committed (in this case, did commit).

That involved Russia gate...

Yes, Cohen was an unreliable witness which is why a mountain of corroborating evidence was presented. Keeping Melania from "finding out" - why would Cohen care about that, was only a putative issue from the time the Access Hollywood tape being made public until the end of the election.

He was looking for a position in the white house. He was upset he was left behind.

By the end of the election, Cohen had already paid out of his own pocket with the agreement that he was to be reimbursed for his expenses and for additional income tax owed as the repayments were disguised as income rather than as reimbursements for the campaign contribution and related expenses (setting up an LLC for the purpose of transferring money). He made voice recordings of their conspiring and there were handwritten notes on the invoices. Plus a lot of witness testimony,

Costello was a disaster.

A non disclosure agreement was made into a federal crime. Michael Cohen plead guilty in exchange for no prosecution....

 

[ralliann]

They have recordings of Trump talking about how Cohen paid Daniels?

The bottom line.....a non disclosure agreement was turned into a federal crime.... Cohen, and AMI plead guilty in exchange for no prosecution of tax violations with regards to the whole fiasco....
The entire thing stinks......

 

[Zaha Torte]

The bottom line.....a non disclosure agreement was turned into a federal crime.... Cohen, and AMI plead guilty in exchange for no prosecution of tax violations with regards to the whole fiasco....
The entire thing stinks......

It does seem like things were blown out of proportion.

 

[Eternally Grateful]

This article sums it up pretty well:

The first Trump trial is here, set to begin on Monday, with the allegation being that the former president violated New York law by having his company misreport payments to Stormy Daniels as “legal fees” rather than campaign expenditures.​

Did he report them as campain expenditures? I have seen no evidence of this

​

...​

​

Misreporting business expenses is normally, at most, a misdemeanor. Bragg seeks to ratchet it up to a felony here by arguing that the misreporting was done to cover up a crime. That alleged crime is a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). The theory is that Trump’s payments to Daniels were campaign expenditures and thus needed to be publicly reported as such. By not reporting the expenditure, the theory goes, Trump prevented the public from knowing information that might have influenced their votes. ​

​

So it is alleged based on facts not in evidence.

There is one big problem with this theory: The payments to Daniels were not campaign payments.​

Exactly

​

Trump's Best Defense Has Nothing To Do With Bragg Or Merchan

Commentary on the case has consisted of accusations against Bragg and Merchan, but Trump has a strong defense on the merits.

thefederalist.com

​

So in a nutshell, Trump was found guilty of misreporting business expenses that the prosecution successfully convinced a jury was done to cover up a bigger campaign finance crime.

lol. In other words. trump did what so many other people have done. yet only trump got convicted of it..

However, as the article concludes, "Had Trump made these payments with campaign funds, it seems a near certainty he would now be facing criminal charges for a knowing and willful diversion of campaign funds to pay personal obligations." You're just supposed to forget that "The case surrounding Trump’s payments is one that both the Justice Department and FEC rejected to prosecute in recent years. The Justice Department in 2019 "effectively concluded" its investigation into Trump’s payments. While in 2021, the Federal Elections Commission announced that it had dropped a case looking into whether Trump had violated election laws for the payment to Daniels." (source)

Yes.. A fact that most anti-trumpers refuse to even acknowledge. Their hate has them blind to the facts

So since they couldn't get him on campaign finance law violations, they got him on misreporting business expenses. Because they had to get him on something, amirite?!

Problem is. those charges do not hold water. Unless you have a biased jury or bias the jury with putting people on he stand who are lying, and who talk about a bunch of stuff not related to the case.

 

[Eternally Grateful]

Then stop asking people to explain it to you as if you don't understand, when what you really mean it you don't like it.

No

I still have not seen actual charges.

Do you read the media? I am not the only one still wondering what he was charged with..

 

[Eternally Grateful]

Hardly. I'm a centrist. I think Clinton should have been kicked out of office after having been impeached. Hardly a leftist sentiment. But Trump committed a state crime in cooking the books. Clinton lied to Congress. They are completely different situations, even though they both have immoral sexual conduct in their background.

You can prove he cooked the books?

I have seen no evidence. all I saw is SOMEONE (we do nto even know who) put the cost down as legal expenses by using a drop down menu/

Have you used these things before. I have. and I sometimes do not know what to use, so I pick one that closely resembles what it is.

which is what this person most likely did

hardly a crime (unless your trump)

 

[iluvatar5150]

Hmmm - I see how that could make sense.

So, the payment wasn't to cover up any crime - but the payment itself was considered a crime because of the perceived intent behind the payment was to protect his image for political purposes.

That's half of it. The payment itself was considered a campaign contribution because the perceived intent behind the payment was to protect his image for political purposes. That contribution was a crime because it violated the rules for campaign contributions.

Why wasn't Edwards convicted?

I don't know. It was a while ago and I didn't follow it closely at the time.

 

[DaisyDay]

They have recordings of Trump talking about how Cohen paid Daniels?

They have a recording, a voice memo, of Trump discussing the structure of payments to McDougal (the Playboy model he had an affair with while married to Melania and who he cheated on with Daniels).

 

[Hans Blaster]

No

I still have not seen actual charges.

Here you go:

https://www.manhattanda.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Donald-J.-Trump-Indictment.pdf

Do you read the media? I am not the only one still wondering what he was charged with..

Do you get informed by *not* reading news media?

 

[ralliann]

It does seem like things were blown out of proportion.

Yes, more than that. Any thing anyone does if running for office can fall under that category. Hillary's campaign bought and paid for the steel dossier, money funneled through fusion GPS. Stories are bought and paid for all the time to "kill" them. This is something never done before.

 

[Eternally Grateful]

Ok - things are becoming more clear.

I still don't understand how these payments were considered campaign contributions and how Trump was personally involved considering that Coehn and Daniels claimed that he did not know about the payments.

Because his name is trump