wanna bet? those are the facts. I'm keeping your post. Trump will never see a day in jail on these charges.
As it turns out, now we know Bragg's office3 was leaking the seal grand jury indictment which IS a crime.
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nypost.com
The indictment was not immediately released, but according to prior reporting the grand jury was considering indicting Trump under a state law against falsifying business records.
That charge ordinarily is a state misdemeanor with a two-year statute of limitations, but under the reported theory it would be elevated into a felony by alleging it was done in commission of a federal campaign finance violation.
Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court in 2018 and was sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion and crimes related to the Daniels payment and another to former Playboy model Karen McDougal he helped arrange prior to the 2016 election.
Trump denies having a tryst with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, whom he alleges extorted him in the final stretch of the 2016 campaign. The indictment may also be related to a $150,000 payment from the National Enquirer to McDougal in 2016 to prevent publication of the details of her own alleged affair with Trump, which he denies.
Former Whitewater deputy counsel Sol Wisenberg said in a TV interview this month that the legal case against Trump was “preposterous,” though Wisenberg said he could support criminally charging Trump for other alleged misconduct.
“The question to ask yourself in a case like this [is], ‘Would a case like this be brought against anybody else, whether he or she be president, former president or a regular citizen?’ The answer is… no,” Wisenberg said.
“You can debate all day long whether or not… Trump should be indicted related to the records at Mar-a-Lago, whether or not he should be indicted with respect to Jan. 6 incitement of lawless activity… Those are real crimes if they occurred, and he committed them,” Wisenberg added.
“This is preposterous.”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said in a Fox News interview shortly after the indictment Thursday that “[Bragg] is attempting to bootstrap [a] federal crime into a state case. And if that is the basis for the indictment, I think it’s rather outrageous.”
“I think it’s illegally pathetic,” Turley added.
“There’s a good reason why the Department of Justice did not prosecute this case: Because it’s been down this road before. It tried a case against former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards arguing that hush money paid to another woman, who bore a child out of that relationship, was in fact a campaign violation. That was a much stronger case, but they lost,” Turley said, referring to federal prosecutors not charging Trump following Cohen’s guilty plea.
“Even if you can bootstrap that dead misdemeanor to something alive, you’re essentially arguing a federal case that the Department of Justice declined. But it’s also a case that requires you to show, if that is the basis of this indictment, that Trump’s only, his sole motive for paying this money or having third-parties pay it was for the election,” he continued.”
Well, that’s the problem from Edwards.
There’s a host of reasons why a celebrity and a married individual would want to hush up an affairs, particularly with a porn star.”
Turley added: “Bragg’s clearly betting on a motivated judge and a motivated juror. You couldn’t pick a better jurisdiction…. [But] under Bragg’s theory, he can take any unproven federal crime and revive a long-dead misdemeanor and turn it into a felony. That’s going to really raise concerns for a number of judges. But once it gets to the appellate level, he’s going to have a particularly difficult time.” |
