Happy Indictment Day!

[Rideback]

PAL, at last night's rally in MAL Trump was all about only 2 things, his victimhood and incitement. He repeated the veiled threats that Breitbart and Don Jr made against the judge's daughter.

Meanwhile, the 3 judge appeal panel denied Trump's emergency appeal to stop Jack Smith's team from getting testimony from 5 of his aides and minutes after that ruling came down Smith's team brought Ken Cuchinelli back in to testify before the J6 GJ.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/04/politics ... dium=email

[PAL]

I thought Bragg did a good job of laying the indictment out in plain terms when he spoke afterward.
It will be interesting to see if Trump can control himself enough not to say inciteful things. He has been warned.

[Rideback]

Going beyond the 34 felony counts and reading the Statements of Fact filed with the charging papers there's the piece about the Trump Tower doorman who was paid $30,000 to keep quiet about the love child that he was told Trump had with a housekeeper.

https://crooksandliars.com/2023/04/brag ... ence-story

[just-jim]

John King, CNN just reported that Don Jr has posted a picture of the judge's daughter with the comment that she worked for the BIden/Harris campaign.
King said: this is not a game. This is how they operate.
So incredibly dangerous.

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When you have to have your lawyer stand up and say you weren’t threatening a judge, you probably were.
"Because nothing says 'innocent' like threatening a judge's family,", Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-threaten ... ce-1792620

You sort of want the Judge to issue a gag order, to keep this whole circus from becoming worse. Although, you know donnie dumba$$ would ignore it. On the other hand, it’s interesting to have him keep talking - fatso seems to further implicate himself in a crime everytime he opens his pie hole.
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[pasayten]

[just-jim]

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After all the promises of 6+ years ago, it is nice to FINALLY see the SWAMP getting drained!
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[pasayten]

What legal experts say about Donald Trump's indictment
ABC News 3h ago

Several legal experts familiar with the New York criminal justice system say there were "no surprises" in the charges brought against former President Donald Trump Tuesday by the Manhattan district attorney -- but that the expansive nature of the so-called "catch-and-kill" scheme alleged by prosecutors is notable.

Appearing in a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday, Trump entered a plea of not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made in the final days of the 2016 presidential race.

Prosecutors allege that Trump engaged in a "scheme" to boost his 2016 election chances through a series of hush money payments made by others to help his campaign, and then "repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records" to conceal that criminal conduct.

"The theory of the prosecution is exactly as we expected," Michael Bachner, former assistant district attorney in the Rackets Bureau of the Manhattan district attorney's office, told ABC News. "There was a scheme to bury stories through this catch and kill process in order to help Donald Trump get elected, and that these payments were in the campaign contributions which were improperly buried."

"The surprise here is that there were no surprises; at least no surprises that there was a more serious crime being charged," echoed Marc Scholl, who was a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office for nearly 40 years before entering private practice.

Prosecutors said the "catch and kill" efforts began in 2015 with an agreement with the CEO of National Enquirer publisher AMI to suppress damaging information, and included payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, two women who claimed to have had long-denied affairs with Trump, as well as a former Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child Trump had out of wedlock, which was untrue.

"Most people thought it was about Stormy Daniels," Jerry Saland, a former assistant district attorney in the Manhattan DA's office, told ABC News. "Here, however, we see it's also about McDougal, as well as a doorman."

Lance Fletcher, another former assistant district attorney at the Manhattan DA's office, said the alleged use of shell companies and recordings of conversations between Trump and his former attorney, Michael Cohen, appear to show that Trump was aware that the payments were "improper."

Fletcher, however said that prosecutors face a number of hurdles.

"Was Trump's intention truly to defraud or was he relying on bad legal advice? If the money came from his personal account, was this money used to solve a personal problem?" Fletcher asked.

Fletcher also said that the 16-page indictment "discusses an intent to defraud, and an intent to commit another crime, but does not specify what that other crime is."

"This is an important issue because the intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime is what bumps this up from a misdemeanor to a felony, and from a two-year statute of limitations to a five-year statute of limitations, also a one-year maximum jail sentence to a four-year sentence," he said.

Scholl agreed that neither the indictment nor the accompanying statement of facts released by prosecutors cites which specific election laws were violated -- even though the statement of facts talks at length about how the alleged catch and kill scheme was used to influence the 2016 election.

"The statement of facts document is an oddity," Scholl said, questioning why it was not part of the indictment as a conspiracy count. Scholl did, however, say that the district attorney doesn't have to prove anything that's in the statement of facts -- just what's in the indictment.

Asked by reporters following Trump's arraignment what other crimes Trump allegedly committed by falsifying the business records, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the indictment doesn't specify those details "because the law does not so require." But Bragg highlighted several laws he said are potentially applicable to the case, including New York state election law that makes it a crime to conspire to promote a candidacy by unlawful means; laws that prohibit false statements, including statements that were planned to be made to tax authorities; and federal election contribution limits.

Bachner said he expects Trump's defense team to file motions to dismiss the indictment, including by citing statutes of limitations and by claiming that the payments were made for personal purposes, with no intent to interfere with the election.

But Bachner and other legal experts say the timing of the payments -- as well as the timing of meetings related to the payments detailed in the prosecutors' statement of facts -- appear to show that the purpose was campaign-related and not for Trump's personal reasons.

Prosecutors, for example, said in the statement of facts that after Trump was elected, he invited the National Enquirer's owner to the White House for a dinner to "thank him for his help during the campaign."

"These illegal and undisclosed campaign expenditures undermined accountability and denied voters complete and accurate information about how Trump raised and spent money during the 2016 presidential election," said Saurav Ghosh, a former enforcement attorney at the Federal Election Commission and now director of Federal Campaign Finance Reform at the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center.

"While Trump, like any criminal defendant, is entitled to due process of law, it is vital that laws be enforced and that meaningful consequences be imposed when they are broken -- regardless of who the defendant is or how much power or influence they wield," Gosh said.

[Rideback]

I've lost track but someone just told me he's raised $10 million in the last week off of the indictment news.

It's now a pretty sure bet that David Pecker's testimony and insights were what pushed this case to its conclusion. It won't look good on Trump's campaign trail that he concocted this scheme in the Oval Office and wrote checks from personal accounts while in the WH

https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/04/04/d ... onspiracy/

[just-jim]

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Well, THAT didn’t take long!
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Fatso is already selling $47 t-shirts of his (fake) mug-shot and “not guilty” underneath.
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https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/get-yours ... -t-shirts/
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[just-jim]

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Full text of the Indictment, with charges:
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -full-text
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[Rideback]

John King, CNN just reported that Don Jr has posted a picture of the judge's daughter with the comment that she worked for the BIden/Harris campaign.
King said: this is not a game. This is how they operate.
So incredibly dangerous.

MTG of course had to jump in as well. A veiled threat against a sitting Fed'l judge's daughter is not, in anyone's book, a wise move.
https://crooksandliars.com/2023/04/juni ... posts-pics

[Rideback]

Breaking down the laws behind the 34 felony counts
https://www.justsecurity.org/85831/the- ... s-records/

[Rideback]

CNN did a quick rundown of Trump's lawyers. As Anderson Cooper said, you can't make this stuff up.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/202 ... 60-vpx.cnn

[just-jim]

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Cheetos are working, Ray!
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[pasayten]

Looking forward to it!

Instead of eating popcorn while watching the news circus during the event, I think I will snack on Cheetos in honor of the occasion...

[just-jim]

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