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.
... because there is a law on the books that says "it's a crime to do this thing" and this person pretty clearly did that thing.
Like, from a political perspective, I'm in the boat of "uggggh, I wish it wasn't this thing that is the first thing he is charged for". But from a legal perspective ... this is a thing you're not allowed to do ... which he did ... so ...
Whatever he told them, along with whatever other evidence was presented, it was sufficient for them to indict.
The Grand Jury indicted Trump, not Alvin Bragg.
I'll be waiting with my popcorn, because one way or another, this is gonna be good.
They got Michael Cohen for this, and Trump was mentioned in his proceedings as “individual one”.
We still don't know the specifics or the extent of Trump's legal issues, as the Grand jury is still ongoing for this case and others.
Perhaps he had some sort of defense. I hear that's how courts work. Along with dealing in findings of fact and law, rather than speculation about whether it's vaguely fair or vaguely unfair.
I'd imagine a billionaire who is also a former President of the United States also has the resources to muster a defense as effective as a non-billionaire former Senator, if there's an effective defense to be made.
I honestly wouldn't put any faith in a jury choosing to indict. As famously once said, you can convince a jury to indict a ham sandwich. I'm waiting to see what the charges actually are and the evidence for them.
(1985 quote)
> In a bid to make prosecutors more accountable for their actions, Chief Judge Sol Wachtler has proposed that the state scrap the grand jury system of bringing criminal indictments.
> Wachtler, who became the state’s top judge earlier this month, said district attorneys now have so much influence on grand juries that “by and large” they could get them to “indict a ham sandwich.”
If you pronounce it a joke or predict the disbarment of Bragg now, you aren’t doing it based on the merits of the case.
It’s often difficult to disconnect the actual crimes from wanting Justice generally for a person’s net life behaviour… which isn’t how this works IRL nor how it should work. Whether other crimes and social taboos should be better enforced is another matter entirely.
They are targeting the record keeping.
When the story rolled around the first time, people did indeed make the argument that the payment itself was illegal.
The campaign finance laws require expenditures that help your electoral chances to be declared as campaign expenditures.
They also prohibit declaring any expenditures that help you in your personal life.
This leads to the obviously terrible result that while you're campaigning for office, it's illegal to pay for anything that simultaneously helps you electorally ("the voters will never hear about my affair with a stripper!") and in your personal life ("my wife will never hear about my affair with a stripper!"). If you don't declare the campaign expense, you're violating the disclosure laws. If you do declare it, you're embezzling from the campaign.
