Maybe it’s the trial of the decade, but the first witness is Pecker, David Pecker.
It’s still about falsifying business records.
In the official record, the case is known as the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, and, for now, the people have the stronger hand: They have insider witnesses, a favorable jury pool and a lurid set of facts about a presidential candidate, a payoff and a porn star.
On Monday, the prosecutors will formally introduce the case to 12 all-important jurors, embarking on the first prosecution of an American president. The trial, which could brand Mr. Trump a felon as he mounts another White House run, will reverberate throughout the nation and test the durability of the justice system that Mr. Trump attacks as no other defendant could.
Though the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has assembled a mountain of evidence, a conviction is hardly assured. Over the next six weeks, Mr. Trump’s lawyers will seize on three apparent weak points: a key witness’s credibility, a president’s culpability and the case’s legal complexity.
Prosecutors will seek to maneuver around those vulnerabilities, dazzling the jury with a tale that mixes politics and sex, as they confront a shrewd defendant with a decades-long track record of skirting legal consequences. They will also seek to bolster the credibility of that key witness, Michael D. Cohen, a former fixer to Mr. Trump who previously pleaded guilty to federal crimes for paying the porn star, Stormy Daniels.
www.nytimes.com/...
The prosecution’s theory of the case (at this point) seems to be this:
Trump conspired (and intended) to interfere unlawfully with the 2016 election by concealing information that the voters might have considered. To do so, he repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.
Bragg offered this chart to show the prosecution’s theory of the case: The first two frames illustrate the alleged crime. The last frame shows that this crime is often charged, obviously to rebut accusations that the prosecution is politically motivated.
The prosecution’s theory of the case has the advantages of being compelling and establishing a motive.
The problem is that it fails to show how the facts meet the elements of the crime. Specifically, we are not shown facts that establish that Trump’s role in the underlying hush money scheme was illegal, and if it was illegal, that he knew it was illegal.
Because the chart and the theory of the case fail to explain how the facts satisfy the elements of the crime, I suspect this chart (and theory) was for public consumption.
In this chart, and in a public statement shortly after Trump’s arraignment, Bragg said that the concealed records scheme “violated New York election law, which makes it a crime to conspire to promote a candidacy by unlawful means.” But New York election law is not mentioned at all in the indictment or the accompanying statement of facts.
terikanefield.com/...
Donald Trump is picking up his fundraising pace even as he fights criminal charges in four cases and appeals a nearly half-billion dollar civil fraud judgment against him in New York. But his legal expenses continue to be a tremendous burden on his campaign and its allied groups, the latest campaign finance records show, accounting for 26 percent of the spending in March by his political committees.
New Federal Election Commission filings released Saturday show that Save America leadership PAC, a Trump-aligned group he has used to pay some of his lawyers, took in $5 million during March and racked up $4.6 million in legal bills for Trump and some of his associates. Throughout this election cycle, Save America has spent the most on legal bills among the groups in Trump’s orbit.
Trump’s political committees have spent at least $16.7 million on legal bills so far this year, and owe another $900,000 to various firms as of the end of March, bringing his overall legal fees since starting his campaign to around $86 million.
Those costs have continued to siphon money away from the main super PAC supporting Trump, MAGA Inc., which agreed to refund $60 million to Save America last year. They transferred $52.25 million in “contribution refunds” back to the leadership PAC in 12 installments that began last May. MAGA Inc. made another transfer of $5 million back to the leadership PAC in March, accounting for almost all of Save America’s money flowing in, new reports show.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
