ChiGoose

This is a pretty good breakdown of what to expect from closing today (and probably tomorrow): What to Expect in the Closings at the Trump Trial. I'll do my best to sum it up here: While we don't have the jury instructions yet, Justice Merchan has stated he wants to hew as closely as possible to NY's standard jury instructions as possible. For the 34 counts Trump is charged with, the standard jury instructions require three elements to be proven: On or about the date in question, Trump made or caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise; and Trump did so with an intent to defraud that Included an intent to commit another crime or aid or conceal the commission thereof Expected Defense Closing: They will likely argue that all of the events from trial happened long ago, mostly from 2015-2017 Center their attack on Michael Cohen's credibility Cohen's testimony included the best evidence the prosecution has as to Trump's intent. If the jury does not find the testimony credible, intent would be difficult to prove with just the circumstantial evidence Attack Cohen's credibility of the October 24th, 2016 call, claiming he lied or said things he did not really know Claim that Cohen was out for revenge against Trump Claim that Cohen is a liar many times over and is shady Point out that Cohen stole $60,000 from Trump that was supposedly meant for the vendor RedFinch Point out that Cohen's record of seeking financial advantage by profiting off of Trump: Millions of dollars from two books Potential TV deal 200+ episodes of podcasts Daily TikToks Cohen admitting on the stand that he had a financial interest in the outcome of the case Potentially able to bring in Cohen's prior testimony that he lied under oath in a previous proceeding Undermine Stormy Daniels' credibility by pointing out the money she's made off of her encounter with Trump Argue that the business records were not false, and alternatively, if they were false, it was not caused by Trump Trump thought that the money he was paying Cohen was truly for legal services Even if the records were false, Trump had nothing to do with the invoice, the checks, or the ledger entry Criticize the prosecution for not calling Allen Weisselberg, the only person other than Trump and Cohen with firsthand knowledge of the alleged scheme. The payments followed standard business practice, which they wouldn't do if they were committing crimes Even if it was a scheme to bury the story, it does not meet the requirement of intent to aid, commit, or conceal another crime because: Trump intended to protect his family It was a legal NDA among friends and business associates Even if Trump intended to benefit his own campaign, he did not do so with unlawful means: There has to be something illegal about efforts by the co-conspirators to influence the election but the evidence only shows that they got together and agreed that they would talk about positive and negative stories As for a conspiracy, one of the alleged co-conspirators (Daniels) didn't even want to participate There was not a coordinated pressure campaign against Cohen to fall in line As to other unlawful means (FECA and tax violations) They will argue that the conspiracy would have to undertake a criminal violation of FECA, not civil. Trump wouldn't have known that his conduct violated FECA There were no unlawful means as NDAs are legal Trump took these actions to protect himself and his family from embarrassment If the jury doesn't believe Cohen, then the prosecution hasn't met the high burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump intended to benefit his campaign There is no evidence that Trump was aware of the tax statute and planned to violate it Cohen testified that he was not focused on the taxes and just wanted to be repaid Expected Prosecution Closing: The records in question (34 invoices, checks, and ledger entries) were false Former Trump controller Jeffrey McConney and Cohen both testified how the $130k payment to Daniels became $420k owed to Cohen Handwritten notes from Trump Org CFO Weisselberg and Cohen, and handwritten notes from McConney, calculating the payments to Cohen totaling $420k Weisselberg's note on the bank statement for Essential Consultants (Cohen's shell LLLC) including a line item for $130k McConney's testimony that he understood that the $130k was to reimburse Cohen for money already owed, not ongoing legal expenses McConney: "Allen said we had to get some money to Michael, reimburse Michael... he had a complaint about his prior year bonus, so he wanted to get paid for that. And then there was some other money he was owed." McConney's testimony on how he sent the invoices to Deborah Tarasoff, who handled checks payable, to cut the monthly checks There was no retainer agreement and there was no ongoing legal work for which Cohen was actually being paid Cohen testified that he did very little legal work for Trump in 2017 and he didn't bill for any Email exchange between McConney and Cohen discussing the first payments shows that Cohen didn't even know the amount he was supposed to be paid. Were this a true invoice for legal work, Cohen would tell McConney the amount, not the other way around Trump made statements on Twitter that the payments were a reimbursement (notably: not a retainer) Trump admitted the same in court filings in civil litigation and in a federal government ethics filing Trump is responsible for the false entries: Cohen testified that in January 2017, he and Weisselberg went into Trump's office and agreed on the calculations and payments Cohen testified that he visited Trump in the White House where Trump told him to work with Weisselberg and that a check would be coming Photos of Cohen and Trump outside the Oval Office, Cohen's electronic calendar showing "Meeting with POTUS", and testimony from presidential executive assistant Madeleine Westerhouse, corroborate that a meeting between Trump and Cohen at the White House took place The following week, there was an email exchange between Cohen and McConney discussing repayment and the first check was date the same day Audio recording of a call between Cohen and Trump from September 2016 discussing Cohen needing to open up a shell company and that he talked to Wesisselberg. They discussed opening a company in connection with money being transferred for a transaction involving David Pxcker and that Trump took an active role in requesting more info about the financing for that payment David Pxcker testified that Cohen asked him to try to convince Trump to pay Cohen back Hope Hicks testified that it would not be consistent with Cohen's character to make the $130k payment without the expectation of being paid back Trump micromanaged his expenses and thus would know the true nature of the payments Tarasoff's testimony that Trump insisted on signing checks personally and would sometimes refuse to sign even when they were approved by Weisselberg Westerhout's testimony about how Trump paid attention to details and how in the beginning of his presidency he was still doing a lot of work with the Trump Organization Excerpts from Trump: Think Like a Billionaire where trump said "I received a check for fifty cents, and we at the Trump Organization deposited it. They may call that cheap; I call it watching the bottom line... As I said before, I always sign my checks, so I know where my money's going. In the same spirit, I also always try to read my bills to make sure I'm not being overcharged" Trump's Intent was Fraudulent The prosecution will likely argue that ignorance of the law is no excuse in New York; there is no requirement that Trump knew specifically what laws he was breaking or whether he was breaking laws. Prosecutors only need to show he consciously and purposefully undertook the actions that in turn violated that statute. In the August 2015 Trump Tower meeting between Pxcker, Cohen, and Trump, they conceived of the catch and kill scheme with the singular focus of helping Trump win the election Pxcker testified that after the meeting, he told the Editor-in-Chief of the Enquirer, Dylan Howard, that "we were going to try to help the campaign, and to do that, I need to keep this as quiet as possible." Pxcker also testified that: He would hold off publishing the story from doorman Dino Sajudin until after the election His principle purpose in entering an agreement with McDougal was to "suppress her story as to prevent it from influencing the election" He suppressed stories that were "Enquirer gold" in favor to Trump's campaign The prosecution will argue that this is an unreported donation When asked if Trump ever said anything that made him think his concern was his family rather than the campaign, Pxcker said "I thought it was for the campaign... his family wasn't mentioned" The prosecution will try to remind the jury of the federal non-prosecution agreement with AMI in which Pxcker admitted to federal election law violations After the Access Hollywood story broke, Keith Davidson texted Dylan Howard that "Trump is f**ked" to which Howard responded "wave the white flag, it's over people!" Davidson testified that the desire to suppress Daniels' story spiked after the scandal Hope Hicks testified that the campaign was in crisis mode after the Access Hollywood tape came out While the testified that Trump was also concerned about how his wife would react, the prosecution will argue that she made clear the primary concern was the impact to the campaign She also testified that she did not believe Cohen would make the payment out of the goodness of his heart and that Trump explicitly linked the suppression of the Daniels story to the 2016 campaign Hicks: "He wanted to know how it was playing, and just my thoughts and opinion about this story versus having the story - a different kind of story before the campaign had Michael not made that Payment. And I think Mr. Trump's onion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election." Cohen ties together Trump's intent Had multiple conversations with Trump about the Daniels payment Discussed the need to buy the McDougal and Daniels stories Trump ultimately approving the payment With Trump's approval, Cohen and Davidson agreed to $130k payment on October 11th. Trump tried to drag out the process until after the election The prosecution will argue that the evidence cumulatively shows Trump's fraudulent intent to commit election fraud by concealing payments for a campaign expense The prosecution can point to a second intent to commit a crime with tax violations Per Trump in his book, he is a penny pincher but he paid more than the $130k because he knew that in order to continue the cover-up, Cohen would have to falsely claim the reimbursement as income and pay tax. Cohen would need to file false tax documents Trump is a savvy businessman who certainly understands tax basics The mere fact of grossing up Cohen's payment as income is a violation of the law Trump knew that disguising Cohen's reimbursement as income was inaccurate and wrong Defense will likely feel the need to address Cohen's credibility challenges Cohen admitted and explained his mistakes, lies, and crimes He owned up to what he did wrong and paid the price for it Most of Cohen's misconduct revolved around the work he did for Trump, including his tax and campaign finance violations connected with the Daniels hush money payment and reimbursement He was Trump's lieutenant and did Trump's dirty work until his legal problems (stemming from Trump) finally caught up with him He has admitted his bias and been honest with the jury about his hatred toward Trump Witness testimony corroborates Cohen's account Pxcker, Davidson, Tarasoff, and Hicks confirmed key details of Cohen's testimony Gary Farro (the banker who worked with Cohen to set up the shell accounts) also corroborated Cohen Documentary evidence corroborates Cohen Extensive paper trail of bank records, emails, text messages, phone logs, and business records that support Cohen's testimony Audio recording of an important conversation between Cohen and Trump discussing the McDougal payment in detail If Cohen was lying, he could have invented additional conversations or meetings with Trump He could have testified that he and Trump specifically discussed campaign finance or tax violations or the broad illegality of their conduct Instead of lying to make Trump look worse, he testified to what actually happened His testimony has been consistent over several years since he first came clean and testified to Congress Trump's attack on Cohen for stealing $60k only makes sense if the jury believes that the $420k of which it was a part was not legitimate legal fees His only conviction for perjury came from a lie he told for Trump Bottom line This scheme was not a minor peccadillo but a serious conspiracy to corrupt the 2016 election We will never know whether the efforts to cover up unfolding scandals after the release of the Access Hollywood tape changed the outcome of the election, but the fact that the question will forever hang over the contest speaks to the gravity of the wrongdoing Keith Davidson sent a text message to Dylan Howard on election night when Trump was expected to win saying "What have he done?" to which Howard responded "Oh my god" New York is the financial center of the world and we cannot have two sets of rules: one for ex-presidents and one for everybody else Every business that operates in New York needs to know they must keep honest books and records The Jury is entrusted with the responsibility to make sure there is accountability for all of that Conclusion: Expect a focus on three key issues: Cohen's credibility Whether or not the business records were falsified Whether Trump intended those documents to ocver up predicate crimes

Not at all. This stuff has been widely reported. It's been discussed since the charges dropped. Has nothing to do with me.

FECA and tax crimes. Not hard.

I would have no problem with Hur charging the ghostwriter. The elements are there. But prosecutors don’t charge every prima facie case they have. They generally only charge if they are convinced they will win. Hur clearly wasn’t convinced.

I guess Special Counsel Robert Hur planned to assassinate Joe Biden: ”On Wednesday, a person familiar with Special Counsel Robert Hur's investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents after his departure as vice president during the Obama administration, confirmed that the standard DOJ policy statement regarding the use of deadly force was also included in the operations order for the searches at Biden’s residences in Delaware.” (Fox News)

Open script. Turn to page “everything I don’t like is fascism and/or communism.” Post. At least Tommy Eyerolls is consistent in his script.

Personally, I think obstruction of justice is bad. But maybe you disagree.

That sound you hear is E Jean Carrol’s lawyers prepping another defamation suit for third round of “Win Donald Trump’s Money”

You honestly believe the evidence of obstruction is the same for Biden and Trump, don't you?

That’s also all Hur thinks he did. Why do you disagree with Hur? Do you have evidence he got stuff wrong?

Apologies for the formatting. Literally couldn't fit all of Trump's actions into one picture that met the forum's size requirements and still have it readable.

I went to college near Cleveland and one year, the Bills were in town the weekend after winter finals. My parents (Browns fans), my brothers (a Browns fan and a Packers fan), several uncles (mostly Bills fans) came in for the weekend. There were a lot of shenanigans over the weekend including several drunk boomers stealing bar signs and running field goal drills in a hotel hallway, but the game itself was unforgettable even if the result wasn’t what I wanted. That’s because it was the snow bowl of 2007. The game was classic miserable Great Lakes winter football. By the end, my uncles had retreated to the concourse for shelter. Of those still braving the weather in the stands: I was rooting for the Bills; my younger brother and parents were rooting for the Browns; my older brother was rooting for the game clock. Afterwards, we piled 8 or 9 people into one van for the drive to Rochester, which ended up taking about 8 hours due to the storm. The Bills lost, the drought endured, but I had quite the experience with my family to end a semester at college.

You seem to be skipping the part where Biden and Pence cooperated while Trump obstructed the investigation and lied to law enforcement. Tiny detail there…

To be fair, legal stuff is complicated and it’s rarely covered well by the media. But still, I would hope that people would approach obviously ridiculous claims like “Biden was going to have Trump assassinated” with a bit of skepticism.

When conducting an investigation on missing documents with national secrets, the most important thing for the government is to retrieve the documents and assess if any damage was done to national security. To do this, they need to take the documents into possession and perform an intelligence review. However, separately from this, the DoJ will want to preserve the evidence for potential charges. To satisfy both requirements, when investigators found an intelligence document they took it for the intelligence review but put a placeholder in its place so that the DoJ would know that there was an intelligence document there and it would reference which document was removed. This allows the intelligence investigation to continue with the documents being returned to their proper place while still allowing law enforcement to examine the evidence as part of its investigation. Additionally, the language about use of force in a search warrant is standard boilerplate. Any time armed law enforcement officers are being sent to execute a search, you would expect to see that language. It’s not in there for a shootout with the Secret Service. It’s in there because it’s in basically every search warrant.

Hey man, this is a wildly wrong interpretation of the facts here.

Tommy Eyerolls still struggling with how people can think about two things at once. Furiously, he flips through his script to find what he should say. Just reverts back to not understanding how news works.

Do you believe that the President of the United States can designate any document they want as a personal record?

Poor Tommy Eyerolls seems to be having a tough time regulating his emotions. Maybe take a little time out and stick to being confused about how time and news works.

Tommy Eyerolls continues with his usual script. When will he post an original thought? Who knows! He hasn't before

Looks like the video was posted by Natalie Harp, one of Trump's staffers. Her job seems to mainly involve following Trump around with a battery powered printer so she can print out nice things about Trump and hand them to him to read. In case anyone is still doubting that Trump has fairly severe NPD, imagine how you would feel about a friend or family member hiring someone to follow them around and flatter them all day. While the campaign has been spinning the video as created by a random account and reposted by Harp, it was actually created by a group that has worked with the Trump campaign in the past. In the past, Trump and his campaign have actually provided feedback to the group to edit videos and have collaborated with them behind the scenes. There is no evidence that I'm aware of that the campaign collaborated on this specific video. Most likely, Harp just saw the video from people they regular repost and just reposted it not seeing the "Unified Reich" stuff. For the record, I do not believe that Trump is a Nazi, considers himself a Nazi, or believes in the Nazi ideology. Unfortunately, the people who do fall into those buckets seem to be a big fan of his.

If he declassified them first, it would still be a big deal. There were national security documents within Trump’s cache. They tried to negotiate with him for almost a year. It was only after he had his people hide the documents from his own lawyer and the try to destroy the evidence of their actions that the warrant was issued. This would be a slam dunk obvious move in any similar situation. Someone stole things, refused to return them, and then when they finally said the returned them, they were actually lying. How could you *not* execute a search warrant at that point? Also, if what you truly cared about was what was done with the info, you wouldn’t bring up Biden since Hur said that none of the classified info ended up in the book or was documented in any discussions with the ghostwriters.

Oh buddy. You still think whether or not the documents were classified impacts Trump’s right to retain them after his presidency?

Why didn’t they charge Pence? Why don’t they generally charge people who hand the documents over when asked? What would happen if every single person who possessed illicit documents was charged regardless of how they came to possess them? Deep down, you know the truth. You know that the only reason Trump was charged was because he obstructed the investigation but you cannot accept that the godking is fallible so you drive in circles demonstrating your lack of knowledge in fealty to your ideology.

This is a significant divergence from the law and obviously false. But that will never stop the cult!