There’s a “bigly” Stormy System headed for New York next month. Lots of thunder and lightening are predicted. You can choose for yourself with Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen which is the lightening and which is the thunder. What matters for the moment is that Trump is desperately trying to break it up this “Stormy System” before it arrives.
His harebrained idea of nuking hurricanes (really, he suggested it) was the kind of Trump stupid one would expect. However, Trump is quite familiar with the legal process and this particular problem has actual tried and true solutions. In this case, motions to exclude witnesses/damaging (to him) evidence from his trial. It might not work, but it’s familiar territory, and in fact common in damned near every trial, civil or criminal. One side wants witnesses/evidence allowed, the other doesn’t so they argue it out in front of the judge ahead of time.
That’s what’s going on now up in Manhattan as this article by Bloomberg News explains. As I said, fights over what does or does not make it into any given trial happen every day in both state and federal courtrooms around the country. What makes this case difference is the sensationalism. A former President. A Porn Star. (and a former Playboy Playmate of the year, A former Trump lawyer who became famous and infamous all at once who arranged the entire scheme – working with the National Enquirer’s honcho David Pecker to cover up scandals that could have harmed Trump’s chances in the 2016 election. Juicy stuff indeed! So just what’s going on?
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg claims Trump made payments on the eve of the 2016 election to Daniels to stop voters from hearing about the alleged affair, which Trump denies. Trump is also accused of paying to silence former Playboy model Karen McDougal, whom he asked the court to block from taking the stand as well.
Trump of course denies the tryst with Daniels and I gather also with McDougal. As for Cohen he has and will continue to paint Cohen as a liar and convicted felon. That’s rather ironic since Cohen was convicted for lying to protect Trump before the proverbial scales fell from his eyes. The Bloomberg article points out that IF Trump is successful the case will barely resemble the one charged in the indictment. So, we’ll want to keep watch to see how this goes. Trump’s argument as made by his lawyers is:
The new filing by Trump lawyers Susan Necheles and Todd Blanche claims the government is trying to make a fraud case out of an innocent effort by a presidential candidate to prevent “adverse publicity about himself during a campaign.”
“Candidates are not required to disclose everything about their personal life during an election and attempts by a candidate to keep certain matters personal are neither inappropriate nor illegal,” the lawyers wrote in the 47-page memo to New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.
Well, we’ll see how it plays to the judge. In the meantime, Bragg has filed his own set of motions. The one getting all the attention right now is the gag order. However, the linked article included another tidbit we should be mindful of:
In another memo to the court, Bragg said his office hopes to include other hush money payments prosecutors say Trump directed — including a payment to a doorman who wanted to sell a story about Trump in 2015 — to show a pattern of behavior, as well as the Access Hollywood video in which Trump discusses groping women.
I’m pretty sure Team Trump will fight like hell to have all that excluded too. However, if allowed it lends credibility to how Bragg has chosen to frame his case which is that Trump engaged in a “pattern and practice” (I think that’s the legal term) to conceal information that would be damaging to his Presidential campaign. He’s certainly not the first to try and cover up damaging and/or embarrassing information. However, in this case he’s alleged to have committed crimes, actual felonies in fact.
So he’s headed to criminal court in Manhattan on March 25. If Trump is unable to exclude the witnesses and evidence he’s trying to keep out he’s likely in a world of hurt when the jury is done sorting through it all and the applicable law. More importantly, as I wrote about recently being a convicted felon WILL change the dynamic for Trump moving forward and not in a good way. So folks, keep an eye on this amidst all the news about the primaries and polls. If this evidence is allowed in which will likely lead to a conviction, and if SCOTUS allows the Jan. 6 trial in DC to resume he’ll head into court in DC as a convicted felon. That will matter.
“However, Trump is quite familiar with the legal process and this particular problem has actual tried and true solutions. In this case, motions to exclude witnesses/damaging (to him) evidence from his trial. It might not work, but it’s familiar territory, and in fact common in damned near every trial, civil or criminal. One side wants witnesses/evidence allowed, the other doesn’t so they argue it out in front of the judge ahead of time.”
Not gonna call you a liar, Denis, but I have to say you must be absolutely wrong regarding Trump’s familiarity with the legal process, with regards to “evidence” in trials.
I mean, after all, wasn’t it Trump’s side that kept demanding various courts hold trials regarding voter fraud in 2020 WITHOUT providing evidence *before* the trial actually took place? I seem to remember his attorneys kept trying to tell judges “Oh, we have all the evidence but we’re going to wait until we go to trial before providing it” in some 60 or so cases and getting–metaphorically–laughed out of court because that’s not how trials and evidence work.
Yes, you’re correct about those election challenge lawsuits getting thrown (and yes sometimes laughed) out of court and the reason why. However, I would counter with other cases where Trump has quite successfully milked the system to provide delay after delay. He’s gotten away with it over and over again in civil matters his entire adult life. So the issue/question is more complicated when you look at the whole picture. For someone guilty of wrongdoing whether civil or criminal delay isn’t as good as an acquittal but functionally it’s just as good. Delay long enough and a case can weaken or even fall apart. Trump knows this, having learned it from the legendarily despicable Roy Cohn.
“Candidates are not required to disclose everything about their personal life during an election and attempts by a candidate to keep certain matters personal are neither inappropriate nor illegal,” the lawyers wrote in the 47-page memo to New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.
Um, maybe that was the case some 50 years ago, but now? Yeah. Voters have a RIGHT to know any and all of a candidate’s potentially salacious (or outright criminal) behavior. For instance, if George Santos’s “indiscretions” had come out BEFORE the 2022 election, he wouldn’t have been elected to office (not even by die-hard GOPers and certainly not by independent voters). Or, if Roy Moore’s behavior with underage girls had been uncovered before the GOP primary, the GOP would’ve retained Jeff Sessions’ Senate seat (his bad behavior didn’t become public knowledge till after the GOP runoff). And there’s been plenty of speculation regarding FDR and JFK’s medical conditions (the severity of FDR’s inability to use his legs; JFK’s reliance on pain killers) that if those had been more widely known before their elections, neither man would’ve become President. Or, if Nixon and Reagan’s teams’ interference with US foreign relations (before either man had been elected President which would’ve given their actions a bit more legality) had been more widely known, they wouldn’t have been elected.
Damn! You want people we give power to…to come clean with the truth? Sure…it would be nice to walk in the light and on the path of truth, but how’s that gonna happen given our culture of hypocrisy? I’ve often joked, though I don’t know why, given what’s it’s cost me in my own life, that the fastest way to bring trouble to your door is to tell the truth. It’s an admirable goal. Maybe a better species than us will achieve it someday. I’m just fool enough to agree with you. Ha.
actually the key point in making this a criminal case is not that he paid these women off. If he had sumply done so with his own money it would not have been a crime, only a scandal. But he FALSIFIED BUSINESS RECORDS to conceal what he did, and claimed the payments as legal expenses ( hence deductible from his taxes). That is criminal fraud. That’s what he’s charged with.
I keep saying: READ THE INDICTMENT!
Thx for the reminder.
That’s what cross witness and juries are all about. Judge will keep the witnesses.
As I understand it, he’s not on trial for paying the hush money, which in and of itself is not illegal. The crime was how he tried to cover the payments using company funds and election contributions.
Trump is such a cheap bastard, he wouldn’t want the cash to come out of his own bank account FFS.
Cohen’s a liar and a felon and a …
But, he went to jail for the same thing. For you, drumpy, he did it for YOU!
To paraphrase Sam Clemens:
‘There are liars, damn liars and then there are politicians’
First of all, it wasn’t an affair . It was a one night stand and fairly close to sexual harassment.
2) She agreed to service him in order to get out of their faster.
3) She says she was scared something bad would happen to her and her kid because,she suspected he had people following her.
I like her a,lot. She is smart, funny, and a businesswoman. All of which is more than you can say about Melanoma.
It’s true that with Stormy it was a one-night tryst BUT Trump wanted more of them so had Daniels been willing to play “casting couch” for a while in the hopes of making it onto his tv show there would have been more such “encounters.” However don’t forget Karen McDougal, the former Playmate of the Year who also was subjected to the “catch and kill” routine Trump had Michael Cohen set up with The National Enquirer’s David Pecker. That went on for a long time and was what I’m sure you (or anyone) would consider an “affair” and apparently the Trump-McDougal stuff will be part of the Manhattan trial.
It’s tawdry to most people, but as so many point out not illegal for someone to cheat on their partner or spouse. Nor is making some type of payoff to get them to “shut up and/or forget about it” and “move on.” However, if one falsies business records and even lies about those records for a tax break it’s a crime. It’s also a crime if say in a divorce proceeding they lie on the record about some payoff to keep an affair/tryst hidden. Or try to keep it hidden to influence an election.
As is sometimes the case, it’s not the actual act that gets someone in legal (even criminal) trouble but the cover up and that’s the issue that will be at the heart of the Manhattan criminal trial.