thett3

So to recap, since Micheal Cohens scheme was in fact illegal, and since Donald Trump was found via the evidence presented at trial to be involved in it, that proves to the jury that when Donald Trump falsified his New York business records, that he did so with the intent to (at the very least) conceal another (Micheal Cohen’s) crime.

That is not an adjudication of federal law. That is not a determination of Donald Trump’s guilt in committing a federal crime. It is a determination as to what Donald Trump’s intentions were while he was violating NY criminal law. Because the reason you violate a law is relevant to how severe your violation is.

Legal arguments, such as ‘the state must ignore what is established at the federal level to be a crime’ is not a moral/ethical argument sufficient to substantiate being for or against a moral/ethical charge (such as the justice system is being weaponized against Trump). That is the legal game attorneys must play to defend or convict a defendant through our system of rules that were put in place to protect the innocent.

This is mostly accurate. We agree that a state cannot adjudicate federal law, therefore in order to use a federal crime as a predicate for increased severity of a state crime, the legality of that crime must have already been adjudicated at the federal level. What you are claiming is that this adjudication can only take place in the form of a conviction, I reject that position. 

If the defendant pleads guilty there will never be a conviction because a jury at that point is not necessary. I find it absurd to suggest that the illegality of an act is established when the defendant declares they are innocent and fights the charges and loses, but not when the defendant himself, with advice of counsel says ‘don’t even bother, I’m guilty’.

The prosecutors made the case that he was guilty of that crime. Big difference.

Action X occurred and is a crime =/= Individual Y is guilty of crime X

The former is what the jury was instructed to accept as fact, because that had already been adjudicated in federal court. So what was left to adjudicate in state court is not whether Trump committed a federal crime, but whether Trump’s intent when falsifying his business records was to aid or conceal the commission of that crime.

That’s your opinion and is supposed to be the topic we are debating. But all you’ve offered are legal arguments based on legal technicalities, so if that’s all you’re going to offer that what I’m going to respond to. But then you scoff at me when I use legal technicalities to make my point.

mafioso is caught red-handed and admits everything was premeditated and they knew everything was 100% illegal (as part of a plea deal)

Finally you get it.

I don't give a shit if Trump is innocent or guilty, but not charging him, yet calling it an "underlying crime" is beyond banana republic territory.  You're just making shit up just for the sake of government corruption.

What an egregious lie. I did not argue anything close to this.

What I pointed out was that Cohen is officially, legally, guilty of committing a federal crime, and that per the evidence established through the trial, Trump at minimum, worked to conceal that crime by falsifying his business records.

These facts satisfy every element of the crime as charged and does not require NY to adjudicate federal law, which is what you argued as your major concern here.

Micheal Cohen spent three years in prison in part because he pleaded guilty to the illegal campaign contribution as charged by the DOJ. So yes, I do think they understand campaign finance law better than I, and they locked someone up over it.

The fact that the DOJ locked up Cohen for this crime but not the same guy who in their own charging documents stated that Cohen worked "in coordination with and at the direction of" when he committed it, if you were being honest, would tell you clearly that the decision to not charge Trump had nothing to do with whether the contribution was a campaign finance violation or whether Trump was involved in it. It was and he was. That is a fact according to the federal government that you've been appealing to as the authority this whole conversation.

The relevant authority did decide this. The DOJ (as in the federal government) charged Cohen, and Cohen plead guilty and was sentenced to and served 3 years in prison. That by definition, means that Cohen is, legally speaking, guilty of violating federal law.

Donald Trump was proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be involved in this adjudicated crime. So even if we apply the most charitable position towards Trump in this, he is still guilty. 

It's essentially the same as a "hung jury"

In any case, it by no means indicates Trump violated anything.

This isn’t even about the law anymore, this is a matter of understanding basic common sense, yet no matter how many examples I give you just keep retreating to the same tired talking point without addressing anything I’ve said.

At some point, after so many attempts to get you to engage, your intent to continue ignoring this element of the conversation becomes apparent, some might say beyond a reasonable doubt.

In other words, you are just wrong when you claim the authority here decided this wasn’t illegal. The authority who ultimately decides that is the DOJ, not the FEC. The FEC even said so themselves in their own ruling.

The question is not whether NU gets to decide what is a violation of federal law, the question is whether NY can determine whether the NY crime someone did commit is considered more egregious because they did it with the intent of violating federal law. That’s a very different question, so if you’re going to keep responding to it please argue the actual topic.

The proper authorities already stated their reasons for why they didn’t pursue the matter, and it’s not even close to what you claim. I already provided you that link.

They stated explicitly that they decided to move on simply because they thought their resources would be better spent elsewhere.

They stated that the reason their resources would be better spent elsewhere was because the DOJ was already dealing with this to which they indicted the guy Trump ordered to do it.

It’s pretty odd that the FEC took the position that this was not a campaign violation while expressly acknowledging that the DOJ was actively prosecuting someone for it and explicitly deferring to them.

Please help me understand how this statement is not a blatant violation of the 6th amendment.... how is Trump not by default innocent without a guilty sentence????

And btw, this whole concept of using an out of jurisdiction crime as the underlying crime was litigated prior to the trial. If you are actually interested see below

All you’ve presented to support your charges of a weaponized justice system are legal arguments you don’t seem to have thought through or researched. That’s just not enough to hold your position. You appear to believe it because it’s convenient.

Kind of hard to argue that a law which says “committing crime X will be deemed worse if you do so in the course of violating federal law”… is a violation of federal law.

Moreover, as I have explained numerous times already but you seem to skip over every time, is that neither the charges nor a conviction here require Trump to be guilty of violating federal law. The requirement is that he falsified the business records with the intent to violate federal law.

The problem here is of course that violation of this law requires it to be done by “unlawful means” which means we have to go another layer deep in order to determine whether this law applies. That’s where the campaign finance violation comes in, and the judge allowed the prosecution to include two other possible violations, tax fraud and another that involves the illegal formation of a shell company (which Cohen used to pay off Stormy).

So yes I can see how this is confusing to many and can be considered problematic, but what gets you to what I believe to be an erroneous interpretation of the law is your insistence that the jury has to agree on “what happened”. They don’t, the only thing they have to agree on is whether the elements of the crime that qualify it as a felony were proven. In this case that means they had to agree that Trump

A) falsified his business records, and

B) did so with the intent to influence the election by unlawful means

This describes every criminal trial we’ve ever seen. Jurors do not have to agree on what actually happened, they only need to agree on the components that make up the crime. How they got there could be and often are remarkably different and no one including the defendant gets to know that unless jurors voluntarily decide to recount their thoughts.

While technically accurate with regards to the defendant, this argument is “in spirit” a load of BS. The FEC explicitly declined to move forward because “other government agencies” were already addressing this, as in the DOJ. And the DOJ didn’t just charge Trump’s personal attorney with making the illegal campaign contribution, they said in the indictment that he did so “in coordination with and at the direction of individual 1” whom we all know for a fact is Donald Trump.

So it seems a bit ironic here that you substantiate your claim of a weaponized justice system on legal technicalities, but when the prosecutors use legal technicalities to prosecute Trump somehow the use of legal technicalities becomes unacceptable.

They didn’t. The trial adjudicated the falsification with intent to commit a crime (which is what the law requires), not whether he ultimately succeeded, so the specifics as to what qualifies under the campaign finance act was not a necessary component for jurors to consider.

Wouldn't that mean under New York law that pretty much every expenditure would have to be handled this way as there's always an argument that any candidate's purchase would affect the election to some degree, even if it is just buying food. (people have a right to know what goes inside their candidate as well as what he puts into other people)

It's such a whacky interpretation of the law you would typically see in fantasy dystopian novels or some obscure 1800's wild west laws. You wouldn't normally expect this in 2024 New York law.

exactly

and by the way it was reported in "the news"

i thought the charge was that he paid off stormy with campaign money

that's how misleading the stories are

Imagine I am on house arrest and I leave my house. It’s a violation no matter why I did it, but the reason I did so matters. If I looked out the window and saw someone getting mugged and decided to stop them… my punishment would be minimal at worst. If on the other hand, I left my house to mug someone else… my punishment would (rightfully) be severe.

In both cases the violation is the same, but the reason why makes the difference as to whether the consequence should be a slap on the wrist or jail time. And it doesn’t even matter if I pulled off the mugging, the fact that this is why I left is makes that violation egregious, and that is what the state is adjudicating.

So no, NY was not enforcing federal law by bringing these charges. And yes Trump knew what these second charges were because everyone in earth did given that his personal attorney who handled this exact violation already pleaded guilty to it. Again, difficult questions to address here legally, but far from an egregious use of the law as a weapon the way the political right is pretending this to be.

The law Trump was convicted of is falsifying business records with the intent of covering up another crime. They did not need to adjudicate whether he actually committed a federal crime, because the intent is the only thing that was required.

This is factually false. The office of General counsel at the FEC submitted to the board that Trump’s payment was in fact an illegal contribution, but the vote to rule it as such failed by a partisan 2-2 split. 

, but that doesn’t support claiming the system was weaponized against Trump. For that you need an egregious misrepresentation of the law, not a novel and untested legal theory.

The absurdity is in what Trump was trying to accomplish - using a large sum of money to influence his own election without anyone ever finding out about it. It’s not a gotcha that he had no legal way of accomplishing this, that’s the point of campaign finance law.

I don’t understand the pushback against determining what books available in schools are appropriate for certain age groups. It’s not like these books are being burned and erased from existence! They can still be available in public libraries or bookstores. Meanwhile, some groups are determined to prevent certain books and authors from even being published until they meet their capricious standards:

Can you please explain the difference between teaching kids and indoctrinating them?

When I was a kid I was taught that America is the greatest country on earth, how does this not qualify as indoctrination?

By extension of the law governing the parents' legal fiduciary duties to a child until they turn 18. They are legally required to care for them, nurture them, cloth them, and provide for their health and education. They can even be legally held liable for crimes committed by said children. Children are the legal property of their parents. 

I can't afford that but I told the wife be prepared to homeschooling at a drop of the hat. Fortunately my son's school is pretty good. There are gay teachers there but they are not grooming children they are not part of the woke mob they are just normal dudes who are teachers and just happen to be gay. 

I am ready to pull him at any minute if this changes though

To be fair. I don't think it matters much with high-school kids. They appear to be targeting mostly elementary school kids in these incidents I jeep finding.

As much as your Christian ideology is silly and one can make fun of it all day, you should at least try to defend it better because right now it seems like you are not even trying.

I literally posted a video of a principal saying outright that it is okay to show porn to 8 year olds. It looks like a mod deleted the post. I can PM the video to you and attempt to circumvent the video being hidden. 

Do you have a right to indoctrinate your kids?

Because if yes, then I dont see what is your opposition to indoctrination...It obviously doesnt mean that you own kids or are allowed to dictate their life as if they are your property,

So really, education about sex only triggers you because you think sex is a sin.

Rm, just so you know conservatives are not against sex education here is a principal saying it is fine to show 8 year olds porn. https://youtube.com/shorts/x29ZLCbX3Qc?si=0etrIqtBBI-g8qRo

2. Because of this, polling can't be considered a reliable indicator of what the public wants. If people's private actions seem to be informed by value sets contrary to the values which informed how they responded to a poll, then their collective actions may be thought of as an ongoing poll in itself

They can't refuse to serve gay people, but they can refuse to endorse certain messages they disagree with. They can't refuse to sell gay people a design that they've sold before to someone else, but they don't have to make a custom design if it's not a design they'd make for anyone. I wouldn't be surprised if they've already made plenty of websites for gay people having to do with completely different topics.

As an intelligent progressive, I like that you used the term 'educated' but didn't like that you altered it to 'smart' in your ending statement. Academia isn't just brainwashing but people in white collar jobs are scared shitless to think or say otherwise, due to cancelling.

This is unfortunate because it was rare chance for populist faction to make significant changes had somebody more politically savvy been their bull.

Afterwards, there is a drastic increase in teenage girls, and yet any attempt at suggesting that social contagion has any role is often met with criticism.

I honestly think the whole "non-binary" thing most helps show that the ideology relies on sexist stereotyping. Ask any non-binary person what makes them non-binary and you will always get to something built upon sexist stereotyping. Even if they say something vague like they don't "feel like a boy/girl", pressing on that reveals some sort of stereotype on what they think it means to feel like a boy/girl that they don't fit.

It is why you increasingly see stories of parents with tomboy daughters constantly having people question if their daughters are trans or not.