DA Alvin Bragg had to be able to prove Class E, First Degree felonies to get Donald Trump remanded to custody on conviction. That’s based in part on Trump being a flight risk: $8 million banked in China plus a Boeing 757 at hand. That’s the law in the state of New York. Bragg also has to get convictions. Thing is, Bragg seems certain of success and with Trump bound to the Defense table for a trial beginning March 25th.
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SDNY & MDA are going to let Trump get nominated. CBS says to push it to July.
Content goes to National Enquirer Catch-And-Kill schemes by the dozens.
Whether this is 172 pages or 30,000, Republicans still get stuck with Trump.
P.S. Three months delay = this trial overlaps the Republican Convention
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So let’s look at the structure of prior prosecutions — Allen Weisselberg for openers — and how those trials impact strategy going forward.
The prior trials reflected cover-ups and tax frauds related to three bribery events. Two women were paid to suppress information about extramarital sexual encounters and one Trump Tower doorman related to a Trump bastard. $130,000, $150,000, and $30,000 respectively:
— Stephanie Clifford (a.k.a. “Stormy Daniels”)
— Karen McDougal
— Dino Sajudin
The paths for these payments started with Michael Cohen, Esq. He signed the first check. (Now in evidence.)
What the payments bought were Catch-And-Kill deals between those three and American Media Inc (now A360 Media, LLC) on behalf of AMI’s National Enquirer tabloid publication. Former Publisher David Pecker is a cooperating witness, as he was for the grand jury that indicted the former president in March, 2023.
Bragg’s three principal witnesses:
— Michael Cohen
— Allen Weisselberg
— David Pecker
Support includes some number of worker bees. People who negotiate deals and handle paper.
Which gets us to paper. Of course the checks that made the pay-offs were retrieved. Also the dozens of Trump Org checks that repaid Michael Cohen. And the hundreds of communications, here posted as documents.
The total comes to 336 listed documents going to trial. Quite the stack.
And against all this, Trump and his attorneys go in to a third round of protesting Statute of Limitations and that the initial bribes were not illegal.
They have failed.
The three schemes were concealed for years, each of them. And though the conspiracy felony is not charged here, SOL calculations start when concealments fail.
Similarly the three Catch-And-Kill briberies are not charged. Likely not illegal, indeed.
Irrelevant = Of course
The pay-offs through Cohen were arranged to avoid public scrutiny — based on emails -- and to perpetrate state and federal tax frauds. At the time in 2017 it worked out perfectly. But then Trump and Cohen suffered a major falling out. Cohen knew everything and he held the receipts.
So we have the 34 indictments going to trial on March 25th. Trump’s defense will consist of ad hominem attacks on Cohen, Weisselberg, and Pecker. No documents. No alternative explanations of events.
“Next time the fire” arrives on the second Monday from today with convictions and incarceration following some time in May. Which will leave two months time before July, when the Republicans schedule their 2024 National Convention. And no judge is going to let Trump hop a flight to China. Certainly not Judge Juan Marchan who holds the whip hand running this show.
Wish the Republicans luck. What *are* they going to do without Trump ?
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Further, be prepared for what follows in Comments.
Fully half of the posts reflect a belief that Trump cannot be imprisoned.
This has been said so many hundreds of times, it has become a Truth.
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