& then he falsified the biz records in furtherance of effort to viol campaign finance laws.
Are these folks really this stupid?
Bash: We actually have the reimbursement checks… Are you comfortable with this?
#Noem: #MichaelCohen worked for #Trump. Pres Trump paid his legal fees, he paid his Michael Cohen legal fees & bills & that's what this trial will bringing fwd
As lawyers, we don’t take out lines of credit to pay ourselves our own “legal fees”, and then have a client reimburse us for our own “legal fees” as the client at the same time criminally falsifies business records to hide that they were not, in fact, “legal fees.”
@GottaLaff Also, the lawyer in question will TESTIFY that these were NOT legal fees.
That brings the matter pretty much to an end. The recipient of the payments (Michael Cohen) will testify what they actually were for. The jury will not be convinced Cohen set this all up as an operative of Joe Biden, because that makes no sense whatsoever.
@chemoelectric@GottaLaff Lol. Cohen, like Trump, isn't a boy scout. He has been very shady when he was hired by Trump to do shady things at Trump's direction. Trump paid Cohen a lot of money to lie, falsify, and do criminal things at Trump's orders for Trump's benefit, ie Trump was the "Individual -1" in the Cohen indictment and conviction and Cohen went to prison for his part in the crime. Cohen did the time to pay for his part in the crime. Now it's Individual-1's (the one who ordered and benefited) turn. See the Weisselberg, yet another dutiful subordinate, criminal Trump activity pattern? Cohen was also disbarred for his part.
The real question is why did DOJ refuse to charge the person who both ordered and benefited from the crime? I'd love to see Bill Barr supoenaed as a witness for Trump, then crossed by Bragg's team. Will never happen, but I'd enjoy it.
Trump's payments occurred after the campaign. This might have made things very murky for the feds. Murky cases need not be brought, because the defendant is Not Guilty due to the murkiness (not due to innocence).
But not so for New York, where all that need be shown is that the business records are lies, lies, lies! These were repayments for Cohen's criminal activities, not for legal fees.
@chemoelectric@TCatInReality@GottaLaff Hmm. Trump calling Brad Raffensperger on Jan 2, 2021 AFTER the November 2020 election on a recorded call, charged by Fani Willis as part of a criminal election conspiracy, in which the recorded call is evidence.
DOJ has allowed Trump politics to interfere with the fair application of justice, even as they do so out of fear of "the appearance of bias against Trump", they bend to fear of Trump, which he counts on.
@pattykimura@TCatInReality@GottaLaff Trump is currently ON TRIAL in New York for the crime. So I do not see what the analogy means except to say that the same thing is happening in Georgia: a state case instead of a federal one.
@pattykimura@TCatInReality@GottaLaff It is a lot harder (and I would say less satisfying) to prove Trump was some kind of accessory to Michael Cohen's crimes than it is to prove he was falsifying business records to pay for personal expenses of his cronies. The latter is a time tested criminal catch.
@chemoelectric@TCatInReality@GottaLaff
You could view it that way because Bill Barr/ DOJ chose to charge the hitman and not the mob boss, and protected the mob boss with The Presidency of The United States of America.
I'd say Garland chose to be an unwitting political accessory to the precedent set by Barr, allowing an injustice to fester, until states took action. Let me also say that I like Garland, and understand he made a judgment call. I have stood by his inclination to be free from the James Comer effect, however, I believe he (and I) misjudged how dangerous a Trump unfettered by a lifetime free of accountability to any iota of actual justice is a clear and present threat to our nation.
@pattykimura@chemoelectric@TCatInReality@GottaLaff yes. The conservatives rhetoric has put them in a place where they fear setting the legal precedent. They and Trump, keep on with the whole, “prosecution of a president, something unprecedented, never before seen in this country. “ I am like yes, because the citizenry have never elected a crooked, grifting, sociopath for president before.
It's just Trump has burned so many bridges that the usual cronyism won't help him avoid the law.
IMO, that's good. It's a sign of a country's maturity when it can hold leaders to account. In fact, I suggest the DOJ have an open investigation into every past admin for 30 years.
Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I were criminals but out of a warped sense of what it meant to be American, rather than out of pure self-interest. Bush II I see mainly as a pawn of Dick Cheney, who is of the warped category.
Reagan in particular and Republicans in general did attract a lot of plain old crooks. Everything is so warped. So jillions of their appointees end up convicts.
Trump is different. He'd rename the place Trumplandia.
Richard Nixon was a traitor who should have been prosecuted and convicted. But John Dean will tell you, Nixon did it because he thought it necessary for the national security. This is not Trump's calculation. Trump's calculation is "TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!"
But my point is not to rank the corruptness, or motive, or the past POTUS. It's to praise accountability and rule of law that has not been applied to them for over 200 years.
Even with Harding it was his cabinet secretary who was taking the bribes.
This is the general way of things with Republicans. Look at their campaigns, even. Romney had people who turned out stuff that said "Amercia" on it and yet, no doubt, expected to be paid more than a Democrat would pay for proper work.
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