The Telegraph is playing with us…
Donald Trump jury reaches verdict in historic hush money trial Updated 2 minutes ago
No, they don’t say what the verdict is.
Update: Guilty.
What effect will this have? Personally, I suspect the Democrats have caught a tiger by the tail. They saw some polling in 2020 that said X per cent of voters would be less likely to vote for someone if they had been convicted of a crime and thought, “Aha, this is how we do it”. But it all looks very different when the election is 159 days away. They should have watched more Yes, Minister.
Bernard: “And as you know the letters JB are the highest honour in the Commonwealth.”
Hacker: “JB?”
Sir Humphrey: “Jailed by the British. Gandhi, Nkrumah, Makarios, Ben Gurion, Kenyatta, Nehru, Mugabe, the list of world leaders is endless, and contains several of our students.
(From Season 2,Episode 2 “Doing the Honours”.)
A spell in the clink is not quite so certain a predictor of future high office when the jailers are your own countrymen, but the principle still holds. If the Democrats are really as afraid as they claim to be that Trump will make himself into a second Hitler, they should have considered where the first one got time to write his bestseller.
By the way, there is much of current interest in that 43-year-old episode, including discussion of British universities being dependent on overseas students and what Sir Humphrey calls the “catastrophic” possibility of a pro-Israeli Foreign Office.
The verdict was decided before voir dire, in fact in motion practice when a change of venue was rejected.
Will it swing the election? I think it is very hard to say. I think a lot of people are really furious about this whole thing. But I think the truth is that nothing will change the election. People have already made up their minds. But maybe on the margin, and elections are decided on the margin.
As to catching a tiger by the tail, it is the final act in transforming the USA into a banana republic. Will this lawfare become common? Maybe not common but certainly the seal has been broken. But I think it is far more likely to be used by the left than the right. I’m not sure why that is exactly, but I think it is a consequence of the contradiction of the right and more strongly of libertarians. An idea that government should be smaller, and so we need to get government power to make that happen is almost oxymoronic in nature, and so the right tends to be less enthusiastic to use government power. The left though believes their own narrative: we know how you should live your life better than you do, and so are much more happy to apply the most tyrannical forms of power.
But it is a sad day in history, that is for sure. I have expected this since the start, and I have largely given up on any hope of saving the west, and, as I say, I don’t actually like Donald Trump all that much. But I find myself surprisingly enraged by this news. I mean, my blood is boiling an anger.
Does anyone even know what he has been convicted of? I sure as hell am not clear.
I might have much more to say tomorrow, but for now a reply to Fraser:
Actually, i think of you as one of the best examples on this site of just this sort of libertarianism.
No offense intended.
This is one advantage of being convinced that the modern Western diet causes brain damage: one never gets seriously angry; one just looks down, with a smirk, on people more brain-damaged than oneself.
I am not clear either. But this helps, a bit.
It distills to this: If someone is campaigning for public office, then anything that he does that helps his image must be campaign-related.
Thus, if Trump paid off a whore for silence, it can be termed a campaign expenditure – he must have been protecting and serving his campaign. That’s the crux of the federal-law “underlying crime” in the charges.
Then, if he mischaracterizes that expenditure in his campaign accounts, he has broken NY election law.
Problem is, paying off a whore is entirely legal – there was never a campaign violation to “protect” with bad accounting.
Entirely contrived nonsense on stilts.
BUT – it will be controlled by NY law, and appeals will initially be to NY appellate courts. It might eventually get to the USSC, but that’s a year or more away.
As a side note, gov employees should probably stay away from windows for a few weeks.
Much depends on what you pay her off for, and in which jurisdiction.
(OK, this comment is just to provide some sort of comic relief.)
BTW: can Trump counter-sue?
When an Italian judge delivered a verdict less outrageous (imho) than this, a lawyer friend of mine sued him for corruption, w/o any evidence that money changed hands, only on the basis of the blatant lawlessness.
(I’ll talk to my friend to be sure that i got the story straight.)
A good summary of the contradictions and the bending of the rules is here:
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-legal-shenanigans-being-employed-to.html
As Peter Grant points out, you have to be convicted of a specific crime or offence before you can be accused of falsifying documents to further that crime, not just anything and everything.
I think most of the “average voters” are currently incredulous that they’ve done this, on this basis. Most could not believe that the “system” had reached this point of corruption.
Now that the “system” has basically wandered out into public with it’s nasty little scrofulous wing-wang showing, and pushed it into everyone’s faces about how thoroughly corrupt they are?
It’ll take a little bit for people to process, and then once they do…? I anticipate a whole lot of rage, and an awful lot of “Well, they don’t want me to vote for him? Guess what? I AM.”
I have to be honest with you… A strong component of why I voted for Trump twice? The basic theory that anyone the media and the establishment wanted me to vote against that badly couldn’t be all bad.
People mis-analyze Trump: He wasn’t elected because he was Donald Trump and people wanted him as President. He was a warning shot across the bow of the establishment, after they thought they managed to defuse the Tea Party movement. All they did was drive the impetus behind that underground, and it manifested as Trump in 2016. They succeed in taking Trump down again, in 2024? I think they better have plans for dealing with the aftermath, because it ain’t going to be pretty, and it won’t be amenable to being dealt with by the “usual measures”.
Huge potential for this blowing up in their faces, which implies it will blow up in all of ours, world-wide. All the Europeans that applauded the elections of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? Guess what? The piper is calling his due; those two criminal regimes set the stage for this, and you’re getting exactly what you wished for, a diminished US world presence. I really hope you enjoy the outcome, because I don’t see much chance of avoiding it.
Well, yes and no. This one is more subtle than most such fights. The prosecutors are modeling their strategy after some RICO statutes that allow for convictions for helping along a crim conspiracy without “proving” (in the sense that we’d all like to think it means here) the underlying crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
There’s really no “aha!” moment in this mess. The State didn’t explicitly violate any statutes that will make this all go away easily. The appeals are going to be a battle, and if the New York appellate courts don’t take a strong stand against their prosecutor, this may well end up at the USSC on a US Constitutional due process fight. (That’s really the only handle for USSC jurisdiction in this case.) And those due process fights are historically vague and wiggly.
(And – pay attention to the issue of “questions of fact” versus “questions of law.” Appellate courts easily reverse legal issues that a judge gets wrong, but they give a lot of deference to issues of fact, whether determined by juries or judges. Merchan is no dummy – he has set up a lot of this trial as factual controversies, which make his ruling harder to attack.)
This is the death knell of the Republic. After the J6 show trials, most people on the right that pay attention were already feeling there was no hope of restoring the Republic without violence. If the system can be turned against a candidate for president, it can be turned against any of us. It doesn’t matter that it will be appealed or that the case will likely be fast tracked to the Supreme Court, this is the end of whatever faith was left in the judiciary. The legislative and executive branches, both federal and state, have long since been viewed as hotbeds of corruption, and the less said about the bureaucracy the better, but at least the judiciary still had a thin veneer of respectability. That’s completely gone now.
We are now in banana republic territory and the next step is violence. I hope it was worth it to the DNC because it won’t be long before we start seeing people make some very drastic decisions that I suspect will lead to homegrown AUC and Los Pepes situations by a lot of veterans of wars in the deserts who actually know how to do those things and who want their country back.
tl;dr
“This is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause.”
-Senator Padme Amidala
bobby b
May 31, 2024 at 1:20 am
“The prosecutors are modeling their strategy after some RICO statutes that allow for convictions for helping along a crim conspiracy without…”
All well and good, but the fact is that at no point during the trial did the prosecution ever state what the crime in question actually was. It first showed up in the jury instructions, in four separate guises, meaning that the defense was never allowed to put up a, well, defense. The judge (whose daughter raised almost $10 million for the Democrats during the trial) committed so many egregious errors during the trial that he’d end up in a law school text book, if we still had law schools that taught legal theory.
I must agree with Steven R: we are truly in banana republic territory now.
So does this mean the Donald can’t stand or just that if he does he will shriek – without having to say a word – from the roof tops the utter totality of the hypocrisy?
So the election will be about the fact that if you are from the right “stable” – from the disgusting degenerate cunter Biden back to the god emporer philosopher king Kennedy himself- that you are, for all practical purposes, above the law?
The Donald on the ticket? Can’t imagine this will be ignored.
He can run for reelection still. But as a felon awaiting sentencing he can’t leave New York State. That’s going to put a real damper on his campaign efforts. There is no way this survives appeal (for a variety of reasons), but that could take months or even years to wind through the process or various levels…unless the Supreme Court fast tracks it, which they are very loathe to do (the only other time I can think of they have done so was Bush v Gore in 2000, but I am not a legal historian so I may very well be wrong). But the problem is that the legislature and governor both willingly went along with what amounts to a Bill of Attainder and the judge essentially ignored the laws and rulings about juries just to hand down a “gotcha” moment so they can say “convicted felon Donald Trump” every time his name is mentioned between now and November.
But the real damage is that the Democrats have basically gutted what little faith remained in the institutions of the US for half the country and did it because they would rather rule over ashes than allow him to take back the White House. Or they really think half of America really believes their nonsense and think we still accept the legitimacy of the courts. I don’t know which is scarier: that they would destroy America just so they can win or that they are so out of touch with America that they don’t see the damage is doing.
Treat it for what it is – a declaration of war.
The democrats have set the precedent, now let them face the consequences.
If any Republican candidate for office can’t provide you with a list of democrat officials they will seek to jail immediately upon election, then they have no relevance at this time.
A strange thing that I have come across on sites that have nothing to do with politics. No matter what the subject matter is, some commenter will pop up and make it about Trump. Sometimes he will be shouted down and told to keep his political opinion out of it but other times the rest of them run with it and the thread gets totally derailed. It’s really wierd that this guy is living rent free in all these people’s heads, they’re obsessed with him.
You don’t have a Soviet-style show trial and then find the accused innocent, do you?
Assuming Trump wins in November, could he pardon himself?
Windypants
AIUI, no but upon inauguration he would have pre-emptive Sovereign Immunity as Federal President, but the Presidential pardon only applies to Federal crimes. Also, I assume, he cannot pardon any underlying Federal crime behind the State law conviction, at least to any effect. Upon leaving office he would then go to NY State prison if not acquitted on appeal by then.
Of course, if New York keeps him in prison, presumably he cannot take the oath of office unless someone can get him attested. He then declares all New York State personnel enemy combatants and ships them off to Guantánamo. The Left then take a keen interest in human rights in Cuba.
JG
That seems to have been exactly what happened after the Reichstag fire in 1934 with the Bulgarian Commie Dimitrov.
My response is less rage than simply despair. I had been holding on to the hope that someone on the jury would recognize the farce for what it was and have the courage to hang the trial despite the judge’s instructions, but it was not to be. Some sense of my state of mind is suggested by the fact that last night I dreamed I had been taken to prison for some unknown reason, which is not the sort of form my dreams normally take.
The challenge Republicans have as far as responding in kind is that there are few jurisdictions as overwhelming Republican in composition as Manhattan is Democrat, and none of them are likely to be in a position to plausibly claim jurisdiction over a prominent Democrat. Everyone would at least acknowledge that Trump committed the acts in question while actually in New York, the same would not be true of a rural Texas DA charging Biden with bribery. This is what we had already seen with the J6 prosecutions in DC. If Republicans attempt to go into Democrat strongholds to protest they are held without bail and subject to draconian charges and sentencing, while left wing protestors applying similar tactics are arrested, released and ultimately given token sentences. There are plenty of Republican jurisdictions that would love to return the favor (and have in a few cases where Antifa was foolish enough to give them the opportunity), but leftists have no need to protest there, as they are not the media centers that DC and New York are.
The existence of federal courts in the District of Columbia is one of the most powerful weapons the government establishment has to wield against its enemies. This is a venue inhabited almost entirely by Democrats and government employees (which is redundant) and with a court system that is similarly biased. There is no possible change of venue relief without the matter being moved to another jurisdiction entirely. And almost any action involving the federal government can be filed there. The odds of getting an unbiased jury in a trial with any political implications at all are practically nil. As the national capital it should be a neutral site, and it most certainly is not.
One of the simplest reforms to US government that would have a profound impact would be for Congress to return the District to the state of Maryland (as was already done with respect to the portion of the original district that was from Virginia) and abolish the DC federal courts. This would end the DC statehood nonsense as well as get Congress out of the bizarre situation of being directly responsible for the government of a major city (DC has a local, elected government, but that is entirely a Congressional delegation of its authority under the Constitution. One of my favorite arguments of all time was the late Jerry Pournelle’s position that the Federal Department of Education should not be allowed any influence in US schools until they could make DC schools, which Congress is actually responsible for, the best schools in the country. As opposed to some of the worst, which is what they are).
Not one juror dissented. Sure New York is a Democrat town but it isn’t that Democrat.
Viva Frei has some thoughts.
Martin Seligman did research on the correlation between optimism and professional success. He found that optimists were more successful in every career except as lawyers. Lawyers tend to be more successful if pessimists.
I infer that bobby b must be a very successful lawyer.
— Added in proof: maybe that is why the Bulgarian Commie Dimitrov refused legal assistance in his show trial: he knew that good lawyers would be too pessimistic to put up an effective defense.
From this Breitbart article:
My understanding is that bookkeeping infractions committed in 2016 are beyond the statute of limitations, because they are misdemeanors. (I hope that i make myself clear even with my broken legalese: I am too optimistic to be a lawyer.)
They only become felonies if done with intent to conceal another felony, such as “a campaign finance violation, tax law infraction or falsification of business records”.
But:
* it is dubious whether there were bookkeeping infractions;
* it is dubious whether there was a campaign finance violation;
* ‘falsification of business records’ sounds a lot like ‘bookkeeping infraction’ to me, and one cannot seriously say that a bookkeeping infraction was made with the purpose of concealing itself.
(About the relevant tax laws, i don’t know anything.)
It seems to me that these are questions of law, not questions of fact.
And please note that this is in addition to questions of dodgy legal procedure.
The verdict sets up the perfect excuse for a Biden “victory” in November, with Trump getting 55% of the vote, and Biden getting 60%. The media will attribute Trumps loss to voter disgust with his conviction. “Perfect” sentencing would be 7 months of community service which would have Trump picking up trash in the NY subways on inauguration day.
WindyPants asked:
No. The president can pardon federal crimes, but these were all state charges. The governor could, but the two are completely separate jurisdictions.
@phwest
I had been holding on to the hope that someone on the jury would recognize the farce for what it was and have the courage to hang the trial despite the judge’s instructions, but it was not to be.
That would have to be a very brave person. There is little doubt that the jury’s identity will become public, and when the person who hung the jury was made known I don’t doubt his life and that of his family would be in a lot of danger. If you are the guy/gal would “caused” Trump to become president again, they’d hunt you down like a dog. And nobody in Manhattan would help you or shed a tear.
The Supreme Court has to wait until the highest state court has finished with it (in this case, the NY State Court of Appeals) before they can do anything, because it’s a state matter, not federal. Even if they were so inclined, they can’t affirmatively reach out and scoop this up because they think there might be reversible error by the trial judge.
Note that the intermediate step is an appeal to the First Department (the appeals court for Manhattan). The appellate bench there is 5 black women.
I read on what-used-to-be Twitter last night that black women are 1.5% of practicing attorneys and that 94% of black women voted against Trump in 2020.
The American system, political, economic and judicial, is corrupt – both at the State and the Federal level.
That has been true for a long time – but this blatantly, obviously, rigged trial has ripped the mask off, showing everyone that the system is corrupt.
This is not the first corrupt trial – in Civil Law as far back as 1935 the Supreme Court de facto decided (5 to 4 – thanks to the coward Chief Justice) that it was fine for the government to rob people of their gold and to violate all contracts – public-and-private (treating the Constitution of the United States as toilet paper – to please the government and the banks), and Criminal Law has also long been perverted – with, for example, a person sent to prison (to be cut up with a knife) for “murder” when the supposed “victim” actually killed himself with drugs (the jury knew that, but did not care), and people have been sent to prison for joke “memes” (but only if they are conservatives – leftists who use the same memes are not punished).
However, “normies” might not know all the above (these “obscure” cases) – but no one, no one at all, can honestly say they do not know this trial was rigged.
So now everyone knows – the “Justice” system, in some States and at the Federal level, is a rigged farce – which hates justice, and supports “Social Justice” (plundering and tyranny) instead.
So now you know Mr and Mrs Average – what are you going to do about it? Or are you going to accept tyranny?
You can not play the “I did not know” card any longer – because you do know now, you know the political, economic and judicial system is a corrupt, and vicious, farce.
Well! This is Paul Marks at his most magnificent.
I have only one tiny quibble:
Not in every State — and SCOTUS does not seem corrupt, either.
Kirk:
First: I don’t know that “Europeans” applauded the election of Bill Clinton.
To me personally, residing in the UK at the time, it seemed a good thing, since i disliked GHW (can you blame me?) and much more importantly because i thought that the Dems should be rewarded for shifting “to the center”. (Right or wrong, I felt the same way about Blair.)
Second: I don’t think that Bill was that bad a POTUS. Granted, he was personally corrupt; but *as President* he could (imho) arguably be rated as the least bad between Reagan and Trump.
Although that is not saying much for him.
Snorri Godhi said:
Snorri… You say this to me, in person? Depending on how you delivered this rather massive set of packaged delusional bullshit, I’d either be staring at you in incredulity or punching you in the mouth.
For one, I lived those years. I used to make a habit of reading at least two or three European newspapers a week that our library got copies of. Every last one of them excoriated the first Bush and Reagan together as being the next worst thing to actual Hitler… If you remember differently, you weren’t paying attention. Clinton was the “new Kennedy”, and his administration was being sold to all and sundry as the “next Camelot”. If an American dared suggest that Clinton wasn’t a great guy on the early Internet, then some smarmy git of a Brit would come along to correct them. Clinton was virtually deified, despite how totally corrupt and criminal he actually was.
And, you’re all going to pay the price for that criminality. The first and biggest thing that sorry POS did was sell all the IP from Loral to the Chinese, after the suspicious way that Loral itself was bankrupted by the so-called “Peace Dividend”. Almost the very first thing the Clinton administration did upon taking office was to move the Technology Transfer Office authority from Defense over to Commerce… Where Ron Brown promptly got to work getting the OK for Loral to be sold. Where the Chinese had had something like a 60-80% failure rate for launching satellites, after the Loral IP was transferred to them, they went up to 90% success on launching anything… Including ICBMs. Little secret for you… One reason that China didn’t have much of a nuclear arsenal back in the day was because they didn’t have decent delivery systems. Guess who changed that? Why, yes… Your “hero”, Bill Clinton.
Wonder why all that Chinese money came in to the Democratic party, after mismanagement drove them to bankruptcy? Do the math.
You weren’t paying attention, or you would know these things. None of you assholes in Europe did, just like with Carter. Everyone applauded his “humanitarian stand” that led to the Shah being driven out of Iran, but nobody ever wondered why he’d done that, nor did they every hold Carter accountable for what transpired after his brilliant little “humanitarian” gesture blew up in everyone’s faces.
Of course, Jacques Chirac, who was the guy that sold the nuclear reactor the Israelis had to blow up to Saddam, was incredibly happy, because he’d finally broken the American lock on Iran’s defense purchases… To what end? Gee… Well, maybe we ought to ask the millions that are dead due to both direct and indirect causes flowing from lil ol’ Jimmay’s humanitarianism…
I really hope you folks in Europe enjoy the effects you have had on things here in the US, via your well-expressed contempt for people who were actually on your side. European support for Carter and Clinton, then Obama? LOL… Y’all are just like the average American black voter, too damn stupid and credulous to be able to actually identify the real threats to your well-being.
I seem to remember Trump being laughed at, when he said that the European purchases of Russian oil and gas were going to be coming back to haunt them… Was he right? Gee, I think that the way things have eventuated in Ukraine sorta tell us he was… Yet, what did he get for his trouble? Mockery, and general disdain.
There are reasons why I’d never repeat my youthful determination to defend “Western Democracy” in Europe. A lot of that has to do with observing people I was slated to die defending holding hands around where I lived, in order to signal their general disdain for all of us, along with the efforts we made to keep NATO competitive with Soviet tactical nukes, but… Ya know what? Y’all do what you like; just do it on your own, and don’t expect me or mine to lift a finger in the general support of Western civilization. I’ve concluded that that is a chump’s game, particularly after finding all that gear in Iraq that was produced after G.W. Bush’s sanctions regime. It would have been far more honest if your thieving corporations and governments had just come out and said it openly: They didn’t care about anything other than making money off of Saddam killing his own and others citizens. They’re just weird brown people, right?
Do I come off as embittered and hateful? Why, yes, yes I am. I have my reasons, and Europeans making delusionally innocent protestations about these things are one reason why. You love Carter, Clinton, and Obama so much? Good; they’re the primary architects of the world that’s going to shit all around us, and you deserve every bit of the blowback coming your way.
Hell, even today I can find Europeans lauding the way the Democrats twisted the legal system to “get” that bad old Trump, because they just don’t like that man… Never mind the fact that they’re watching a replay of the fall of the Roman Republic, and don’t even know it. How’s it feel to realize that many or most of your fellow Europeans are lauding things that are going to lead to a Caesar actually “destroying democracy”, and likely out of self-defense from the very people you’re applauding for “getting” Trump?
I really hope that your kids can all forgive this generation for their incredible stupidity in their political choices, and what the current generation has done to the coming decades. What’s going on in Ukraine, right now? That’s a direct outgrowth of Europe’s feckless pursuit of cheap energy; own it. Everything that flow forward from that? You were warned, and you were warned by that “clown”, Trump. You all did it, anyway: Enjoy.
Many Europeans may have deluded views about such presidents, but it is Americans who gave them their terms in office. You’d be better off directing your hatred at your fellow citizens who voted to achieve these electoral outcomes.
No. You come across as delusional. Not to mention your poor reading comprehension wrt my comment.
But not as delusional as many of your fellow Americans. I mean, the “progressives”. It was in late 2008 that i decided that xxi century Anglo-American “progressivism” is a suicide cult; but i do not remember whether that was before or after Obama was elected.
Kirk, really love your rants. Mostly because they contain so many unpleasant factual nuggets that many would rather forget. Clinton was certainly a sleazebag and the author of much of the grotesqueness (maybe not a word but certainly describes Clinton) that is my beloved USA in these current grotesque times.
This is a valid point — but i submit that an even more important point is that the European media have a fair level of integrity about European politics (and i am grossly generalizing here about very different political cultures); but they parrot the utterly corrupt Anglo-American media when it comes to extra-European affairs.
NB: In this context, i do not include Britain under the rubric of “Europe”.
And BTW: I am not trying to apportion blame.
European opinion-makers are fully responsible for trusting American opinion-makers; and European folks are partially* responsible for trusting European opinion-makers.
* partially, because the European media having been generally trustworthy about local affairs, it is not unreasonable for their readers to trust them on extra-European affairs.
I’ve thought this is because most contemporary European elites look up to and seek to emulate American elites. The latter are increasingly progressivist/woke and so the European elites follow suit. Many often go to Oxbridge or American universities for grad school where they get a full on dose of this. Working for multinational corporations and NGOs often will have a similar indoctrination effect too.
As a Brit, I’d say a lot of our elite are very guilty of this. The British news media and even its politicians are often more interested in US events than their own country. Many supposed ‘Europhiles’ barely know anything substantial about the politics of many EU states, yet are often completely America obsessed. Even many supposed anti-American politicians in Britain, such as Jeremy Corbyn, just talk like woke American leftists now, so even their anti-Americanism has been Americanised.
Martin: it might interest you that, in the mid-1980s, when i moved to the US and started reading American media, i discovered that i could predict, about a year in advance, the political opinions of an Italian uncle (who is not fluent in English, and gets the news only in Italian).
Of particular interest was his shift from ‘Israel is an American pawn’ to ‘American foreign policy is dictated by the Israel lobby’.
From your lips to . . . well, you know.
Everyone seems sure that this trial was riddled with legal errors which will be quickly rectified. I’m not so sure.
Judge Merchan – despite his current notoriety – is known as a fairly good legal mind. Smart judges put about half of their expertise into making their rulings appeals-proof. (Yes, there are ways of doing that, because of the rules of appeals.)
Merchan has been looking at appeal of this trial since it started. He knows what he is doing, and has crafted his handling well. And he really only has to make his ruling stand until November.
(Yes, I believe that he allowed his personal political bias to infect this trial, as he will when he handles Steve Bannon’s trial this fall. But that fault doesn’t make him less able to craft an appeals-proof ruling.)
My main pessimism comes with knowing what lies ahead. Now, in each and every contested state, we will see the lawsuits filed which attempt to prohibit Trump from appearing in those states’ elections in November, due to his status as a convicted felon.
If even one contested state lawsuit experiences even limited success, Trump’s chances of election take a nosedive. He needs all of those contested states.
I now give Biden an 80% chance of winning, if he survives and runs.
Take that, not as a sign that the case was straight-forward and convincing, but as a sign that a smart judge knows what to ask of the jury, and what not to ask of the jury, and also that the jury was very very anti-Trump.
I would not call this ‘pessimism’, more like thinking ahead, like a chess player.
(I wonder whether Martin Seligman measured the correlation between pessimism and talent at chess.)
But then, you have also to think ahead to what you (or, in this case, “our side”) can do in the worst-case scenario. (Trump’s legal team did some poor thinking in 2020.)
For instance, can’t the Republicans put the VP candidate at the top of the ticket in States that do not allow Trump to be at the top of the ticket?
Having been on a (English) jury, to make a finding of fact that “Mr. Trump committed bookkeeping infractions to conceal a campaign finance violation” I would have to first make a finding of fact that a campaign finance violation had occurred. If there was no evidence presented that a campaign violation had occured, it is not possible to make a finding of fact that it had occured, and thereby is is impossible to determine that it had been concealed, as you cannot make a finding of fact that there is a concealment of something that has not been found to have happened.
But I’m taking jurisprudence here, not politics.
I submit that these are not straight questions of fact. Whether A killed B, is a question of fact; but, having established that A killed B, whether that was murder is a question of law. (I welcome pushback on this from pessimist jurists.)
Similarly, whether Trump consciously paid Storm Daniels via Cohen is a question of fact. (Although i do not know whether the conscious bit is an established fact.)
Whether this payment was a bookkeeping infraction, is a question of law.
Again, i invite pushback; but only if you are a pessimist.
Oh, another quibble about Paul’s comment:
People with dysfunctional brains can honestly say that they don’t know that this trial was rigged.
And please note that brain functionality has little to do with IQ.
If a candidate bought, say, a red silk tie because he liked it, and then debuted it in a televised debate, that might be deemed an unaccounted ‘campaign expense’ in the eyes of a zealous prosecutor, so the scope for lawfare is very wide.
@bobby b
I now give Biden an 80% chance of winning, if he survives and runs.
I’m not sure what will happen here, we will have to see it play out. The concern you raise about getting kicked off the ballot is justified but there are two things to that might reduce its impact — it is very late so very hard to change, and these challenges are most likely to succeed in really blue states and the nature of the election — as 50 independent contests — largely nullifies that.
As to what it looks like going forward, for sure “Trump convicted felon” will be on a loop. But if Trump is smart “Biden — destroying the justice system for politics” will also be on a loop too. And I think that will outrage as many people as the former. All those big donations Trump is getting can be spent on that loop, and if people buy it, it is reason enough on its own to vote for Trump. If it were the secret documents case or the one in Georgia, it would be a lot harder to spin, but the utter ridiculousness of these charges really reveals the political nature of the prosecution.
But who knows? We will have to wait and see. As for me personally, I don’t usually bother to vote both because it is pointless in general, and particularly pointless where I live in Illinois. However, this verdict outrages me so much I am definitely going to vote, and I am definitely going to send Trump money. I don’t think it will make any difference, in fact I don’t think Trump winning will make much difference either. But I need to do these things just as an outlet for my outrage. Surely I can’t be alone in that way of thinking?
Donald Trump was convicted of the “crime” being Donald Trump.
But those people who say “well it is just about him” are deluding themselves – the corrupt economic, political and judicial system (the Corporate State – and I am using the term of Mussolini quite deliberately) can and does target other people.
Once the interests of the Corporate State are held to be more important than traditional concepts of justice (of right and wrong) then law, as traditionally understood (not the Hobbesian definition of law as the commands of the ruler or rulers) has ceased to exist.
There is no “law”, as traditionally understood, in America – no justice. People can be sent to prison (to be cut up with knives) for “murder” when no murder has taken place, people can be sent to prison for passing on joke internet memes, people can have their property fined away and themselves flung into prison (to be tortured and abused) for any “reason” – if the regime (the Corporate State regime) does not like them. Indeed a famous person such as Donald John Trump is likely to be treated much BETTER than an ordinary conservative – because he is more in the public eye.
So, I ask again, Mr and Mrs Average – what are you going to do about it? Because eventually it is going to happen to YOU.
You will offend the wrong person, or you will just be in the way of something – and then the full might of the Corporate State, including the corrupt sadists of the FBI, will come down upon you.
Donald John Trump has the gift of brevity – which, sadly, I lack.
Instead of one of my long comments, he said “America is becoming a Fascist state” – and he was correct.
Unless the cancer that is the Axis of the government and the Credit Money corporate entities is destroyed (including their thugs – the FBI and others) – then America will indeed become a Fascist state.
Turning to the United Kingdom….
When you come upon a body that is part funded by the corporations in an industry and part funded by the government, and you find that this organisation has a political and cultural agenda (and is pushing it) – what do you think you are dealing with?
No prizes for a correct answer – as the answer is obvious.
The secret documents case looks pretty dodgy to me.
But there might be something to the Georgia case, i don’t know.
Paul Marks
So, I ask again, Mr and Mrs Average – what are you going to do about it?
This question jumped out to me Paul. So what is your answer? What are YOU going to do about it? What do you suggest others should do about it?
Very sobering insights, bobby b.
I don’t know if this poster of Trump, our outlaw president will make you smile. Admittedly, Tombstone is one of my favorite movies and I do have the American fascination with outlaws. That does not include the Clantons, however. So the metaphor in the poster is a bit muddled. To
Sorry, here’s the link to the poster.
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1796626573631635655
Exasperated: I love the hat.
But i do not recognize the reference to Tombstone.
No pushback here from this pessimist. Entirely correct. (And law v. fact can be a subtle thing, mostly only studied by judges wishing to encourage appellate judges to look elsewhere, and by the lawyers who serve or fight them. To see a judge’s level of fact/law craftiness, read his jury verdict forms.)
Exasperated: Love the hat, and the look. I have a hat just like it. Of course, I currently have eight good hats, as I’m kind of a hat guy.
And, finally, Snorri G: See https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/kurt-russell-and-val-kilmer-in-tombstone.jpg?w=1920&h=1080&crop=1&resize=1536%2C864
It was Kurt Russell’s hat.
Snorri, the clip from Tombstone.
https://youtu.be/ynKoZD-sFi4?si=je5OH0LzXZt6XSdN
Snorri – Georgia was one of the States rigged by the Democrats (and their RINO helpers) in the 2020 elections – so President Trump is accused of the crimes of his enemies (the establishment enjoy the irony).
Frasor Orr – after my defeat in May 2025 I hope I have the courage to make a one way trip to Switzerland and be properly disposed of, but it remains to be seen if I will find the courage to do that.
At this time I can think of no other plan of action.
I could write a book about what I don’t know about the law, so bear with me. Is it true that there were 35 pages of jury instructions and the jury doesn’t get a copy? Is this SOP?
Yes
However, the smart ones know that it isn’t about Trump. They know its a rejection of their endless failures, their incompetence, their mendacity, their corruption and their sneakiness. Trump is just their foil and a means to distract and deflect. They need him because their vision for America is so creepy, bleak and dystopian. Trump is all they got to sucker their midwit rank and file and it’s red meat for all their vacuous and fatuous, soap opera women who live for drama. Pathetic, I know.
Once again, Trump is Toto pulling back the curtain on Oz.
Yet, it’s a self inflicted wound. Minorities have decried the corrupt legal system for decades. Trump exposed them in a matter of months. The Rittenhouse trial, too.
(I wonder how this will play in black communities).
Paul Marks
Snorri – Georgia was one of the States rigged by the Democrats (and their RINO helpers) in the 2020 elections – so President Trump is accused of the crimes of his enemies (the establishment enjoy the irony).
FWIW, I was not at all saying that the charges in Georgia or Florida are valid. On the contrary, I think they are both obviously also politically motivated. There is just a bit more meat on the bone than the ridiculous farce that just occurred in New York. And, moreover, Bragg’s charges are far easier to mock: “First President convicted because of an imagined book keeping error? Seriously?”
FWIW, in the darkness of this verdict you might watch this video clip to see what at least some on the left are saying about it. There are definitely two sides to this in the department of spin.
Frasor Orr – after my defeat in May 2025 I hope I have the courage to make a one way trip to Switzerland and be properly disposed of, but it remains to be seen if I will find the courage to do that.
I’m not sure I fully understand what you are saying here, but moving to Switzerland, if you have that option, isn’t a bad idea. Geneva is beautiful if your French is up to it.
Soap opera women. There are legions of them. I saw an article describing an elderly woman who wept in relief that Trump was convicted. Can you imagine someone so hollow, so shallow, so lacking in principles and ethics.
I hope someone will develop a list of public figures, who are not already in the Trump camp, who have publicly objected to Political Lawfare and its use against Trump. Id like to know who has character and integrity, and stands on their principles, despite their disdain or fear of Trump. Id like to know who can think past step one, and step two and envision the negative consequences for all the rest of us. I know among them are Robert Kennedy, Jeb Bush, and even Mitt Romney.
Fraser:
Broadly speaking, i agree.
WRT the “classified” documents case: I understand that POTUS can de-classify any document.
OTOH, that does not mean that POTUS can take any document with him on leaving office.
On the gripping hand, there is some evidence that the “classified” documents might have been planted. Sadly, far from inconceivable in Obama/Biden’s America.
But this is just what little i understand, and might well be wrong.
WRT Georgia: I understand even less. My vague understanding is that Trump put pressure on the Georgia gov not to certify the election in his State. Even those of us who believe that the 2020 Presidential election in Georgia was illegitimate*, should be worried about such behavior. But i don’t know about the legal aspect.
* Personally, i believe that all, or almost all US elections are illegitimate, due to lax procedures.
Which does not mean that every US election was stolen, in fact most of them probably weren’t.
But that does not make them legitimate.
Exasperated: Thanks for the clip. Part of the reason why i could not identify the reference is that Trump is depicted in broad daylight in open country, rather than at night at a railway station.
I have a couple of cowboy hats, one of them with flat rim like that, which i bought in a 2nd-hand shop in England for £6, close to the end of the last century, and is obviously not in a good state.
Both hats are made of leather, inconvenient for summer, even in Estonia.
I have other hats for summer, and for Estonian winters.
The second Trump will learn from the first Trump’s mistakes.
‘But maybe on the margin, and elections are decided on the margin.’
Democracy is when 49% of the people vote for one side all of the time and the other 490% vote for the other side all of time.
I read that apparently if Trump were to go to Australia he’d need special permission, even as President. They don’t normally allow convicted felons entry. Which I think is weird — didn’t being a convicted felon used to be a requirement to go to Australia?
I am usually restrained in my use of smileys, but this rates well above a 🙂
Related: Breitbart Europe often has misleading headlines, but this must surely rate as one of the most, if not THE most, misleading of the last several years:
Report: Trump Banned from UK, Canada, Other Countries After Guilty Verdict
If you follow the link, you’ll find that Trump has not actually been banned.
It’s just that he would presumably be banned according to British and Canadian laws.
Do you seriously think that banning POTUS from the UK or Canada would hurt POTUS more than it would hurt the UK or Canada?
FYI, I ran across the jury instructions, if anyone cares to review them. If nothing else, you’ll understand what the jury was asked to do.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24699534-trump-ny-criminal-trial-jury-instructions?embed=true&responsive=false&sidebar=false
bobby b
FYI, I ran across the jury instructions
Is it normal for jury instructions to be over fifty pages? How can the judge possibly expect the jury to remember that much information without a written copy to review? Is it normal not to provide a written copy to the jury?
Reading the instructions, at the point of reasonable doubt, were I on the jury I’d basically say “I don’t believe anything Cohen said including ‘my name is Michael Cohen’, and he bristles with animus toward Trump; I don’t believe anything the porn star says and she bristles with animus too. There is almost no evidence in this trial that I have any confidence is true, how can I possibly not have reasonable doubt?” On the other hand maybe I wouldn’t, given that taking that position and not relenting would possibly set me and my family up for violence, swatting, doxing, threats, stalking, protests outside my house and the general destruction of my life.
Fraser Orr
Exactly. And I’m interested in the SOP, too. For 53 pages, I’m expecting genocide or the Nuremburg trials not something frivolous. Understandable if the issue was technology or IP.Think of the resources that went into this farce. What a waste.
One key witness is a porn star engaging in a shake down, with multiple versions of her story and the other is a perjurer, admitted thief, hustler, and wannabe shake down artist. How can the pumps of NY law, think the rest of the country is going to roll over and whizz in the air for this.