Endnu en uge er gået i New Yorks sag mod Trump om den bogføring, der fulgte Michael Cohens pengeoverførsel til pornostjernen Stormy Daniels. Byron York prøver at fatte “vanviddet i hjertet af sagen”

Perhaps the weirdest, and by far the most unjust, thing about former President Donald Trump’s trial in New York is that we do not know precisely what crime Trump is charged with committing. We’re in the middle of the trial, with Trump facing a maximum of more than 100 years in prison, and we don’t even know what the charges are! It’s a surreal situation.

Yes, we know that Trump is charged with falsifying business records of payments made to the porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 and 2017. But falsifying business records is a misdemeanor with a two-year statute of limitations, meaning prosecutors would be prohibited from charging Trump with that crime after 2019, which was five years ago. They obviously missed that deadline by a mile.

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Trump was indicted in 2023. How did that happen? Because of COVID-19, when New York extended its statute of limitations by a year. That allowed prosecutors to slip the charges in right before the new, one-time-only, six-year extended statute of limitations expired.

But here’s the thing. What was the “intent to commit another crime or aid and conceal the commission thereof” that prosecutors used to raise falsification of business records from a misdemeanor to a felony? In nearly every case of alleged falsification of records that has been charged as a felony in New York, the defendant was charged with another crime — that is, prosecutors made it clear what the other crime was. In Trump’s case, the indictment did not specify any other crime. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the law did not require him to specify the other crime.

“If Trump is convicted on all 34 felony counts against him, the maximum sentence he would face is 136 years in prison.” skriver York og formaner “it is not funny”. Det er det heller ikke for den altid velskrivende Jonathan Turley, der indleder sin artikel med en hommage til Joe Biden “A disbarred, serial perjurer walks into a courtroom and asks to take an oath . . . No, seriously, this is not a joke.”

Michael Cohen will soon appear in a Manhattan courtroom in what is sure to be one of the most bizarre moments in legal history.

Cohen nearly comprises the prosecution’s entire case against former President Donald Trump under a criminal theory that still has many of us baffled. It is not clear what crime Trump was supposedly trying to conceal by making “hush-money” payments to former porn actress Stormy Daniels.

What is clear is that none of the witnesses called in recent weeks has had any direct involvement with Trump on the payments.

The witnesses had a lot to say about Cohen, and most of it was not good. They described an unprofessional, self-proclaimed “fix-it man” who created a shell corporation to buy out Daniels with his own money. The money was later paid back by Trump after the election, with other legal expenses.

So Cohen will now make the pitch to the jury that they should put his former client in jail for following his own legal advice.

Det vil være en svær øvelse, selv hvis man var kompetent og hæderlig advokat, skriver Turley og tilføjer “Just weeks ago, another judge denounced [Cohen] as a serial perjurer who was still gaming the system.” Som det er min kæphest er dette et udtryk for at Bragg og Cohen og dommer Merchant er freaks, for kun freaks vil opføre sig således. De er, som Cohen, omvandrende beviser for Trumps uskyld og Sumpens forgrenede korruption.

Freaks er for eksempel en af Braggs tidligere statsanklagere, Mark Pomerantz. Da han under vidneansvar blev spurgt om han med vilje – og vigtigheden af ‘med vilje’ kan ikke understreges nok – brød loven, da han efterforskede Donald Trump, svarede ‘ingen kommentarer’

Turley gennemgår mange eksempler på Cohens mened og noterer at Justitsministeriet ikke var interesseret i at retsforfølge ham, for “Cohen was now useful (…) he was willing to deliver Trump.” Og det er hvem de har, en freak. De andre vidner, som Alvin Braggs team, hvori en højtstående leder fra Justitsministeriet indgår, har kørt frem her ikke gavnet Cohen eller Braggs sag, tværtimod, fortæller Turley

When Keith Davidson took the stand — the attorney who represented both Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — he recounted how Cohen was furious about not being offered a job in the White House. That directly contradicts Cohen’s congressional testimony. Davidson said that Cohen believed he might be named attorney general.

The account, if true, shows that Cohen is not only unethical, but also delusional. Cohen was found incapable of being an attorney, let alone an attorney general.

As prosecutors set the table for the grand arrival of their star witness, the testimony only got worse. David Pecker, the former owner of the National Enquirer, said charitably that Cohen was “prone to exaggeration.” 

Davidson described Cohen’s profane and unprofessional conduct, stating that “the moral of the story is nobody wanted to talk to Cohen.” That may be the first time the word “moral” was used in the same line with Cohen.

Former Trump associate Hope Hicks mocked Cohen on the stand. She said that he constantly tried to insinuate himself into the campaign, without success, and that he “used to like to call himself Mister Fix It, but it was only because he first broke it.”

Mind you, these were his fellow prosecution witnesses, not the defense.

These witnesses also contradicted the basis for the prosecution. Pecker said that he killed stories for various celebrities for years, and that he did so for Trump for over a decade before he ran for office. Davidson testified that he did not consider the deal to be “hush money” but simply “consideration” to kill bad press. 

Hicks testified that she believed Trump wanted to kill the stories in significant part to protect his family from embarrassment.

Cohen bruger sine vågne timer på at svine Donald Trump til fra sin podcast, mens dommeren har givet Trump mundkurv på, i forhold til vidner, dommere, anklagere, medlemmer af Juryen samt dommerens datter, der står til en økonomisk gevinst hvis Trump findes skyldig. Imens svælger medierne sig i historier om, at Trump, grundet ælde, er ved at segne af træthed under de endeløse retsmøder, en historie Trump imødegik på meget Trumps facon

Contrary to the fake news media, I don’t fall asleep during the crooked D.A.’s witch hunt, especially not today. I simply close my beautiful blue eyes, sometimes, listen intently, and take it all in!!!

Det hele falder fra hinanden, for Demokraterne og den overlejrede magt. Mens Højesteret tænker over, hvorfor en præsident ikke har immunitet for beslutninger han træffer som præsident, Georgias anklager Fani Willis forsvarer sig imod korruptionsanklager, begynder der at tegne sig et billede af, at det var justitsministeriet, der prakkede Trump en masse kasser med “fortrolige” dokumenter på, som de siden kunne ‘erobre’ tilbage under stor dramatik.