wifeisafurd said:
It's about time. This s/b a simple case. You can't deduct personal expenses form your corporation for payment to your mistress. it doesn't matter that your accountant drafted the tax return. Americans get tax evasion. My only question is why this took so long?
Wife - this is a bit sloppy. Yes it is likely a crime to deduct a personal expense on a corporate return. But the question is what crime is he being charged with in this case? Not a tax related crime.
Andrew McCarthy has several articles that go into the legal weeds as well as the larger political implications.
In terms of the legal weeds, the NY STATE crime Trump is likely to be charged with is falsifying business records. It is normally a misdemeanor with a 2 year statute of limitations (that has expired). To make it a felony with a 5 year SOL, the prosecution needs to show another crime . . . which they can't do without resorting to some very extreme legal theories (that were rejected by the prior DA, Cyrus Vance who was a partisan dem).
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/imminent-trump-indictment-and-the-statute-of-limitations/https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/progressive-democrat-braggs-motivation-in-nakedly-political-indictment-of-trump/Here is a lengthy excerpt:
"Specifically,
New York law makes falsifying business records felonious if prosecutors can prove that, in committing the fraud, the defendant intended to "conceal the commission" of "another crime." It has been suggested that, in orchestrating the NDA, Trump was violating the campaign-finance laws.
That would be a stretch, to say the least. But let's say, for argument's sake, that he was. The campaign laws in question are
federal. When New York's penal code speaks of concealing "another crime," it must be referring to a crime under
New York law.
Some contend, to the contrary, that because the statute in question doesn't say "another
New York crime," that federal crimes are covered. But what's the limiting principle? Are, say, French crimes covered? How about sharia crimes? Clearly not. In my view, under venerable criminal-law principles, doubts about the coverage of ambiguous statutes are resolved in a defendant's favor. Since the New York penal code covers crimes codified by the New York State legislature, we must presume that when it refers to "another crime" it means another New York State crime; if the legislature wanted to cover federal crimes, it would have said so.
If I'm right, then to convict Trump of a felony, Bragg's prosecutors would have to show that he knowingly and intentionally made false entries in accounting for the reimbursement of Cohen, with the purpose of covering up his commission of some other New York crime. It's not clear what that other New York crime would have been (perhaps a tax offense?), much less that Trump would have had it on his mind.
More to the point, it's not clear that Trump would even have known about how his subordinates booked the reimbursement of Cohen i.e., he may not even have been criminally complicit in the false accounting, much less have acted with the intention of concealing some (potential but unclear) New York crime. More believable is that Trump assuming he was involved in the bookkeeping at all was not trying to conceal a crime; he was trying to conceal an extramarital fling with a porn star (or, at least, a fling that she claims they had). That would be a cover-up of something that is personally humiliating but not criminal. That is, it would be a textbook example of why people and companies execute nondisclosure agreements all the time.
I doubt Bragg has much of a case here, but it doesn't look like that will stop him from bringing it. Only an indictment, it seems, will appease the ambitious DA's progressive Democratic political base. You can say, as many analysts do, that this kind of prosecution will only strengthen Trump. I disagree. Sure, given that Trump practices the populist politics of grievance, the devotion of Trump diehards, who are drawn to such politics, could be intensified if Democrats appear to be abusing their power to persecute him. I doubt, however, that most Republicans will see it that way. Instead, most will see the whole thing as tawdry. Unlike the heady days of 2015 and 2016, Republicans on the whole no longer see Trump as a new and exciting disrupter of a corrupt system; they see him as a relentless pain in the ass who brings many of his problems on himself."
______________________________________
Not stated above - the feds and FEC apparently already concluded there was no chargeable federal campaign "crime" arising from the Stormy payoff. That is the Edwards case which the Feds lost . . . so now the NY DA is making the opposite claim to get his felony. Good luck.
This is the weakest of all of the potential cases that could be brought against Trump. It certainly will strengthen him (at least in the short run) and I think that's the dems intent. They want Trump to be the nominee in 2024.
To the larger point, much like the filibuster and then the Jan 6 committee selection, the dems are being incredibly short sighted. Bringing a weak case - based on a strained/novel legal theory - is bad for the country and no doubt a partisan republican DA somewhere in the country will retaliate.
As an example, HRC's campaign was already found to have violated federal law for how they hid the fees paid for the Trump Russia dossier. Just a fine - no criminal charges. Among other things, they hid the payments as legal fees - not too different to what Trump did with Stormy and the "business records charge".
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/30/politics/clinton-dnc-steele-dossier-fusion-gps/index.htmlNote that a lot of the current people in the Biden circle were involved in that - including Tony Blinken. Imagine a local or state DA bringing these types of criminal charges against Blinken, HRC, her team, and/or the DNC now (after the Feds had declined to prosecute). It would be rightly viewed as outrageous and partisan.
My fervent hope is that Trump will not be the nomination in 2024. If these weak charges are brought, it increases the chances he will be. Particularly if the charges are thrown out which they very well could be. Imagine Trump gloating then.
