I've scrolled through the top ~10 or so comments, and none of them, describe or comment on the nature of the charges against Trump. To be fair to the commenters, most stories are vague. The charges relate to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, but hush money is not a crime. It's also not a crime to have an affair with Stormy Daniels. So the most salacious parts of the story are not what the crime is. My understand…
Yes it seems weak. However: 1 iirc Grand Jury's are the ones that get to do everything behind closed doors. So we wouldnt know if they had a smoking gun until after trial possibly. 2 The US has a history of pursuing people it doesn't like through financial crimes. Rico etc. I think its easy to see this in the lens of "oh its another attack on trump that will go away again" and if you experience your entire life throu…
Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump
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Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump
#702I commented on my understanding of the situation on reddit a while ago. Copy/pasting here: He paid off Stormy Daniels to keep her from talking about their relationship. Paying her to stay silent is 100% legal, there is absolutely no issue with an NDA like that. The illegal part isn't the what, it's the how. Political campaigning laws set a limited budget for how much money you can spend on campaigning, which is defin…
Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump
#703Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difficulty here, as I understand it, is that Trump could have plenty of reasons for paying off someone, not all of which are to do with political campaigning. For instance, he could argue that he paid off SD to avoid damage to his relationship with his wife or family, and that it had nothing to do with his campaigning. (In fact, you could argue that this defence is even stronger because he is Donald Trump. He has…
I'm not convinced it's the strongest possible case that could be brought against Trump, but I think he'd have a tough job convincing people that he arranged to pay someone in the middle of an election campaign in 2016 not to talk about something that happened in 2006 without any expectation of it having any impact upon his campaign, particularly not when his lawyer already pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance…
You must have not seen much of the 2016 election crap then. It was pretty clear that it would not have any impact on his campaign by the time she was paid in October. So much crap was said about him by then, it would have been a small side story.
Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump
#704Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure if there’s an actual crime, but what exactly is worthy of charging here? The point of a fair justice system is not to charge a specific someone with something , it’s to go after a specific crime. The legal gymnastics this DA is jumping through to attach charges here makes a joke of the entire justice system. I won’t be surprise if Bragg is disbarred for this.
I’m pretty sure that George Bush Jr. qualifies for way more charges solely based on the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. But no, hush payments to porn stars is a lot more important. Welcome to clown world!
Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump
#705Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a lawyer, nor am I American. No horse in this except maybe a citizen of the world. This seems like a weak case to me. For a former president and polarizing figure, you would think the bar on prosecution would be air tight. If he goes to jail for a crime the population (or his support base) considers is trivial or if he does not get convicted, it raises Trump's stock to the stratosphere. Perhaps if he goes to jail…
I'd imagine part of the strategy is to get Trump on the stand. He's going to lie (because he can't help it) and that opens him up to perjury charges. But there are bizarre aspects to this case. One is that Trump associates like Giuliani and Deripaska were raided, but there don't seem to have been any subsequent charges. Another is that there's so much on Trump - from tax dodging, to Jan 6, to links to suspect foreign…
Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's kind of interesting because, according to a lot of other people (whether they are speaking factually or in an opinionated fashion), Trump has managed to avoid a lot of laws (inciting an insurrection, etc.). Why is this hush money thing the biggest law a Grand jury is able to stick on him? If he's supposedly guilty for so many other things, why is this all he's been indicted on the past few years? Genuinely askin…
The most interesting aspect to this indictment is that, until now, there’s been a clear reluctance to go all the way on nailing Trump for the sort of extremely common crimes that many of our wonderful politicians/wealthy engage in on a regular basis. It’s why they didn’t stick him on emoluments, nepotism, tax dodging - even “improperly storing classified documents” somehow turned out to be a brush too broad. So now A…
https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/08/22/election-law-violatio...
Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump
#707Nearly the entire point of the United States at its founding was that the law should apply to political leaders. We are overdue for setting the precedent of a former President being charged with a crime, and we ought to go back and charge a few other former Presidents with crimes while we’re at it.
Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump
#708Welcome to the mess created by the democrat party and there Big Tech/media axis.
Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump
#709I've scrolled through the top ~10 or so comments, and none of them, describe or comment on the nature of the charges against Trump. To be fair to the commenters, most stories are vague. The charges relate to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, but hush money is not a crime. It's also not a crime to have an affair with Stormy Daniels. So the most salacious parts of the story are not what the crime is. My understand…
I've recently served on a jury for a criminal trial, so I've learned some things about the process that courtroom dramas did not teach me.
One: stacked charges (in this case, 30+) can indicate repeat offenses of the same crime / crimes on separate occasions (usually denoted as separate dates). I do not think this is simply a matter of a single hush money payout (or two, as has been reported in the news). I would not be surprised if there are 10 or more distinct events in play. edit: Note that the jury can render separate verdicts for each charge if desired.
Two: the grand jury merely decides whether there's enough evidence to bring this to trial. The standard of evidence for a grand jury is much lower than the actual trial jury.
Three: this is more theoretical because I'd be surprised if this happens, but the defendant in any criminal proceeding is more than entitled to neither testify on his own behalf, and the defense is not required to call any witnesses to the stand, as the presumption is that Trump is innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof lies with the prosecution.
Four: I'm going to paraphrase the judge in my case slightly, but "beyond an unreasonable doubt does not mean beyond any possible doubt. There is always going to be some shred of doubt. Beyond an unreasonable doubt means that you have a moral conviction that the defendant committed the alleged crimes."
> it sounds very technical
That's totally expected, as is the case for even the most mundane-seeming laws. The jury is not expected to have a legal background. The judge will instruct them regarding the points of the law (along with definitions of legal terms), and in particular provide criteria that must be met (sometimes with alternatives, e.g. direct vs constructive possession) in order to find the defendant guilty of a crime. https://nycourts.gov/judges/cji/2-PenalLaw/175/175.10.pdf is probably pretty similar to what the jury might expect to see.
As for intent being hard to prove: you are approximately never going to have direct evidence regarding intent. The prosecution can try to establish intent through circumstantial evidence from which the jury can make a reasonable inference. Again, paraphrasing the judge: if you see someone come into the courtroom with wet clothes and shaking water off an umbrella, you can infer that it was raining. Similarly, if the prosecution establishes that Trump took specific actions that could not be reasonably interpreted in a different way other than being made intentionally, or that there were too many of these unlikely occurrences for it to be coincidental, then the jury may use that to establish intent. Further, note that ignorance of the law is not a defense.
You can bet that the prosecution's case is going to center around providing evidence to directly prove those points, regardless of any narrative the lawyers on either side want to spin. At least in our case, we were instructed only to use evidence as presented in exhibits and per witness testimony. Any of the words of the lawyers (questioning, or even opening statements / closing arguments) were not allowed to be considered. The closing arguments are essentially suggestions re: how to view the evidence.
One last note: you cited that a class E felony in NY has a mandatory minimum of 1 year. Even if Trump is convicted of 30 class E felonies, those can be served concurrently, so theoretically the judge could hand down a sentence of 1 year prison time if he so desired. I think that's highly unlikely, but it is possible.
Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump
#710Earlier quoted context omitted.
My knowledge of political events is sparse because I haven't dedicated the time it takes to acquire the prerequisite knowledge. However, I'd be interested in learning more from those here who do have that knowledge and are willing to share perspective on these sort of events. In general, I think it's valuable to be curious about things you're not necessarily interested in.
Everything you say can be true and it doesn't change the fact the HN would be worse because of it. HN is a place I come to escape the rest of the internet. I hope it doesn't get ruined by politics, like everything else in the world seems to have been.