This Is Justice?

The New York trial of Donald Trump began this week on criminal charges that he falsified business records in connection with payments to his former attorney Michael Cohen.

Anyone who looks beneath the headlines on these charges can readily see how absurd this case is.

I wrote a blog post almost three years ago where I assessed the possibilities that Trump would be a viable candidate for President in 2024. I listed three factors that would be positives for Trump and three that would harm his prospects.

High on the list of negatives were legal problems for Trump that would cause voters to lose trust in him.

Allegations of wrongdoing by Trump that go beyond what is perceived as more than a witch hunt. Democrats have long claimed that Trump is a crook or has been involved in nefarious activities. However, we have heard this for five years and they have not been able to turn up anything on the man. 

The latest charges involving his company and its CFO by New York state looks to be politically motivated. If there was wrongdoing with the Trump organization's taxes why was this not found by the IRS? Why is a Manhattan Democrat District Attorney involved? Trump has also been out of the active management of the business for over five years. Why now? Perhaps there is something there but it looks like a political hit job to me right now.

There is little question that the Democrats are going to turn over every rock and throw everything they can at Trump and his family the next few years  They clearly live in fear of the man. They may get something that sticks and get people to believe that it is more than political retribution. If they do, Trump will not be viable in 2024 as his political brand will be permanently damaged. Once you lose trust you don't get it back.

I think it is ironic that the fact that the Democrats have weaponized the justice system in their efforts to prevent Trump from regaining office has actually ended up strengthening his electoral prospects. 

In fact, nearly 60% of voters in a Harvard/Harris poll in February stated they believed that Democrats were using the government and legal system in biased ways to take out Trump.

This view was even held by 42% of Democrats!

Source: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/HHP_Feb2024_KeyResults.pdf

Let's look deeper at the New York charges.

The case involves payments that Trump made to his former in-house attorney Michael Cohen that are alleged to have been made to reimburse Cohen for "hush money" payments made to Stormy Daniels regarding a supposed sexual tryst between Trump and the adult film actress. Trump has denied there was a relationship and stated that the payment was made to Daniels to prevent her from speaking about him negatively.

Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in 2016 and later billed Trump that and other amounts (including a tax gross up and a fee to Cohen) for a total of $420,000. The payments was remitted from Trump Organization funds in 2017 (after Trump had been elected and taken office) and classified as legal expenses (which is how Cohen had categorized the charges on his invoice).

The charges in this case are that Trump falsified his business records by listing this payment as a legal expense. This is despite the fact that this is how the invoice from Cohen was characterized.

Falsification of a business record would be considered, at most, a misdemeanor.

In New York the statute of limitations for falsifying a business record is two years. We are more than seven years beyond the alleged falsification charge.

However, in the Trump case the prosecution is trying to make the case that this is a felony because under New York law falsifying s business record when there is intent is to commit another crime or conceal a crime rises beyond a misdemeanor.

However, in this case the DA has produced no evidence of what the other crime is.

It appears that the DA is going to argue that there was some conspiracy involved to promote Trump's election and the falsified business records were used to conceal the crime. However, the so-called falsification of the business records occurred AFTER Trump was already elected and in office.

How could "falsified" business records created after the election have anything to do with a conspiracy to get Trump elected when he had already been elected?

It should also be noted that the statute of limitations on the felony charge is five years. Again, these charges were brought after that five year period expired. However, the DA went ahead and charged Trump on an exception to the five year limit where the defendant can be charged if they have been CONTINUOUSLY out of the state or their whereabouts are unknown during the five year period. 

Trump was living in Washington, DC as President of the United States before establishing a permanent residence in Florida during the five year period. It is true he was not living in New York.

However, he was not continuously out of the state.

Trump visited New York while he was President at least 19 times. For example, just in the last year of his Presidency he visited the states at least four times. He was in New York five times in 2019, four times in 2018 and six times in 2017.

He did so even more regularly after he left office.

As was reported by The New York Times in 2021 (which would have been within the statute of limitations), Trump was visiting  New York City at least once a week to work at Trump Tower. How is it argued he was CONTINUOUSLY out of the state?

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-tower-work-travels-new-jersey-nyc-summer-2021-6

The New York City DA had numerous opportunities to indict and arrest Trump within the five year statute of limitations if it was really warranted.

Why was it not done? It was decided to file criminal charges against Trump only when it was clear that he was running for President again. This charge was intended to keep Trump from becoming President. If he was not running for President you can be sure that he would not have been charged.

What does that say?

It is also important to understand that this payment was not made from Trump's campaign funds. It came from his personal funds.

The Federal Election Commission already looked at this case in 2017 and found no wrongdoing. Thus, there was no federal crime that the DA could point to that was connected to the business records.

Contrast this case with Hillary Clinton's campaign reimbursing her outside law firm for payments to those who perpetrated the Russian collusion narrative and the creation of the Steele dossier that were also recorded as legal expenses.

Of course, no charges of any kind were brought by any legal authority on that apparent case of fraud and election interference by Clinton and her campaign.

It is just one more example of a two-tiered justice system when it comes to Trump compared to Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or other Democrats.

Looking beyond the facts of the case is the question of whether it is even possible for Trump to get a fair trial in New York City on these charges.

The 6th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that a defendant be given an impartial jury.

How is it possible for Trump to get a fair trial in New York City where 88% voted against him in Manhattan where the jury pool in this case was drawn from?

This is a New York State indictment not a New York City indictment

Why was a change of venue to another county in the state which had an electorate that was more balanced not approved?

The obvious bias in the case extends to the judge---Justice Juan Merchan.

His daughter, Loren, is President of a Chicago-based political consulting firm, Authentic Campaigns, that works to promote progressive leftists candidates such as Adam Schiff from California.

The firm has raised $93 million off the case according to this story in The New York Post.

Source: https://nypost.com/2024/03/30/us-news/dem-clients-of-daughter-of-judge-in-trump-trial-raised-90m-off-case/

Can you imagine the hue and cry if the judge in this case had a son and daughter who was working to promote conservative candidates such as Marjorie Taylor-Greene or Matt Gaetz?

You can get a sense of the degree to which bias might be involved in the judge's decision in this case by looking at how jury selection in this case unfolded.

Jury selection in criminal cases involving high profile celebrity defendants is very difficult as it is incumbent on the judge to insure a fair and unbiased jury. You could not have a higher profile celebrity defendant than Trump. You also could not have a defendant in which more people would have inherent biases one way or the other.

Consider the following.

It took 11 weeks to seat a jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial of two people.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-12-09-mn-7036-story.html

O.J. was well-known but not as famous as Trump. He did not elicit the strong feelings that Trump does. In fact, before being charged with the murder of his ex-wife and her friend, Simpson was very popular with most of the American public.

It took 11 weeks just to seat a jury in the O.J. trial.

Trump's jury selection took 3.5 days!

What does that say?

Did Judge Merchan really work hard to insure that there would be a fair and impartial jury to hear the Trump case?

These are the 12 jurors in the Trump trial as identified by NBC News.

My guess is that there is a 98% chance that Trump will be convicted by this jury given the obvious electoral bias of Manhattan voters.

There is a 0% chance he will be acquitted. Of course, we know that was the verdict in the O;J. trial.

There is a 2% chance that the trial will end with a hung jury. That was the result with respect to the most serious charges in the John Edwards trial.

It will require that at least one juror refuses to vote for a conviction and be able to stand up against the wrath of 11 other jurors to arrive at a hung jury in this trial.

Trump's best hope for that occurring may rest with Juror #2.

Below are the answers to a questionnaire given to the Trump jurors on where they get their daily news.

Note that the very liberal and Trump hating New York Times is the most cited news source by a large margin.

Only one juror states that they read the more conservative New York Post. Only one juror states that they watch Fox News. However, both of those jurors also read The New York Times.

Juror #2 is the outlier. He doesn't read The New York Times or watch MSNBC or CNN.

He gets his news from X and Truth Social.

Juror #2 may be the only person standing in the way of perhaps the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of the United States.

It is incredible to see all of this happening before our very eyes and a large portion of the country views this as "justice".

This is justice?