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 ...
Like, it’s crazy to me that anyone would assert that the charges are baseless or that they’re solid before the charges have even been announced. How do you know they’re baseless?
I agree that the number of charges doesn’t make a point one way or another, about the strength of the charges.
I’m asking how someone can be absolutely certain in their speculation about those charges.
Is the NYT saying the charges are particularly strong, or are they saying the charges are particularly weak? I haven’t seen that from them, but if they are then I have the same questions.
I’m not holding anyone here to a higher level of scrutiny than the NYT. I merely asked where someone’s confidence came from.
The New York Times thinks this is a huge mistake.
But, like, no one has answered the question I asked. How did you become confident that the allegations are baseless without seeing the allegations? That’s crazy to me.
You’re welcome to do it. It’s a free country, after all. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s rational in some way I don’t understand, or just baseless and overstated speculation.
It seems inherently irrational to me to state the strength of the allegations before we’ve seen the allegations (either meritorious or without merit), but I’ve been wrong before.
So far no one has stepped up and offered an answer to that question though.
> The New York Times thinks this is a huge mistake.
“Is it a mistake” is an entirely different question from “are the charges meritorious”?
Personally, I think they should be the same question, but lots of people think he shouldn’t be indicted even if he committed a crime, or that he should be indicted even if he didn’t. I think both are wrong, and the only mistake is giving him special treatment. He should be charged if, and only if, the facts and law demonstrate that he broke the law.
So, for me “is it a mistake” is a question that we can only start to address once the indictment is unsealed (and fully resolve once evidence by both sides is presented).
Braggs is case is being criticized heavily from the LEFT and the RIGHT. It is unprecedented and to most of the world similar with banana republics and like reeks of a setup.
You got the New York Post, the New York Times, The Rolling Stone, ABC, Fortune, Slate, The Hill, NBC, National Review, Daily Beast, Politico and more saying this is a bad idea. Don't you wonder why people more familiar with politics who are democrats AND republicans than you think that is ?
So you make America look horrible in the face of - your allies in the elite political circles - your allies internationally - your core base
All the while selling Trump on his ultimate brand as the "Rebel", of which he sells T-shirts off.
You cannot ignore the context around all of this, which weakens America significantly in already trying time as countries around the world are dropping the reserve currency USD and also belief in American Ideals.
Your appeal to the authorities of political figures falls on deaf ears for me. I do not give a single flying shit about the political calculus. That’s what makes it a banana republic decision. Nothing about the decision to charge or not charge should be based on politics. So, fuck the Democrats, fuck the Republicans, and fuck Politico. I don’t give a shit about any of their opinions.
Frankly, the appeal to people who know more “about politics” on this topic is anathema to me.
Show me the charges, show me the evidence, and show me the law. Everything else is for the birds.
Like... What? Rule of law is completely not considered, at all, Trump should be above the law because he's just too big of a popular figure. That's simply absurd to read.
You seem to be using "special treatment" differently between your sentences. Almost all crimes that get committed do not result in any indictments. Committing to indict if a law was broken is extremely unusual. Observing that a law was broken and then not indicting is the second-most-common case, behind only to failing to observe that a law was broken and then not indicting. Why is the normal case "special treatment" while the very rare case isn't?
- lots of people want to see Trump indicted come hell or high water. That's special treatment.
- lots of people think Trump shouldn't be indicted, even if he committed a crime, because he's a former President. That's special treatment.
- lots of people think Trump shouldn't be indicted, because it would inflame his base. That's special treatment.
Throw all of that out. Let's deal with the facts and the law.
If the prosecutor thinks they have enough evidence to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed a crime, then he should be charged.
If the prosecutor doesn't have the facts, or evidence, or law to support a charge beyond a reasonable doubt, then he shouldn't be charged.
Throw all the politics and "special reasoning" around Trump out. Charge based on the facts, evidence, and law. A declination even if the prosecutor thinks Trump is guilty, but they don't have the evidence to convince a jury isn't special treatment. That's—as you note—a routine declination. But a declination because you're afraid of the political ramifications of an indictment is wrong. Similarly, charging a weak case because you're afraid of the political ramifications of a declination is wrong.
That is not done in other cases. Why is it not "special treatment" to do it to Trump?
> A declination even if the prosecutor thinks Trump is guilty, but they don't have the evidence to convince a jury isn't special treatment. That's—as you note—a routine declination.
That's not what I'm noting. Failing to prosecute is the ordinary case for almost all crimes. It is absolutely routine for nonviolent crimes. So we have a prosecutor that thinks that Donald Trump really is guilty of whatever the charge is, and it's easy to prove it in court.
And the same prosecutor also knows that everyone in the government within three levels of the president really is guilty of very similar crimes, and those would all also be easy to prove in court.
Then he charges Trump and moves on with his life. That's not special treatment?
I think your hypothetical would be partially special treatment, but I don't think your hypothetical is accurate.
The one way in which it _wouldn't_ be special treatment, is I generally think it's most appropriate to charge top-down. That is, let's say at a company you know three people were all involved in the commission of a crime (maybe embezzlement, that's a popular white collar crime): The CEO, a mid-level manager, and a low-level employee. Assuming all three cases are the same difficulty to charge, and each person has approximately equal responsibility for the criminal acts, but you only have the resources to charge a single case, then I'd think the CEO would be the most appropriate person to charge.
But, assuming the prosecutor _had_ the resources to charge everyone, and only chose to single out one person, then I'd agree that is inappropriate special treatment.
> And the same prosecutor also knows that everyone in the government within three levels of the president really is guilty of very similar crimes, and those would all also be easy to prove in court.
I just...don't think this part is true. Especially the part around "would all also be easy to prove in court." I don't think it's particularly likely that the prosecutor thinks that. Especially given that this is a NY state prosecution, so most people within three levels of the President probably wouldn't have a nexus to NY or be subject to NY state laws.
So, I mostly concede that your hypothetical would be special treatment, but your hypothetical doesn't strike me as particularly likely (note, that it's not impossible, and if you convinced me it was accurate, I'd say we should bring the other charges).
That's why we have grand juries, to make sure a crime is truly serious before revealing in public the alleged crime.
In all due time, the charge will be public and we will see the evidence ourselves. The news event is that the prosecutors have crossed one of the major hurdles of a typical criminal court case and have convinced a grand jury to proceed.
I’m also generally much more skeptical of state level pre-indictment processes which generally aren’t quite as buttoned down as federal pre-indictment processes (though, that’s a pretty broad generalization).
But, the indictments will come out soon, and the evidence supporting them eventually, so time will certainly tell.
It’s funny, Republicans used to often wax in about the sanctity of the rule of law. For some reason, the entrancing powers of Mr. Trump led many to throw that away to stand behind the demagogue.
We should demand better. I live in New York. 2/4 most recent governors left office as part of a deal to avoid prosecution. Prominent legislative leaders were convicted and removed from office.
Regardless of party, there needs to be a standard. Breaking the law and laundering money to buy the silence of a sexual dalliance is a serious crime. Former NY Governor Spitzer was facing federal charges for money transfer violations of his own money to solicit an escort.
Mr Trump seeks to make this a political matter because that distracts from the heart of the matter — his actions. The people who in good faith donated to his campaign wanted to “make America great again”, not pay hush money to porn actresses.
As New York Judge Sol Wachtler said in 1985, “If a district attorney wanted, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.”
Explanation at https://abovethelaw.com/2016/02/criminally-yours-indicting-a...
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.
> JOHN MILLER: I am told by my sources that this is 34 counts of falsification of business records, which is probably a lot of charges involving each document,, each thing that was submitted as a separate count and a couple of matters.
Trump has a long, long, long history of illegal accounting incidents many of which he's gotten in trouble for in civil court. This is just the first time it's been in criminal court.
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.
It’s a very bizarre legal theory, and also I believe entirely untested and hugely problematic as you say.
Edwards used actual campaign donations to payoff his mistress to the tune of $1mm and they brought charges and he was found not guilty by the jury.
Here we have a long-standing “fixer” for Trump doing something he had always done and had a history of doing for Trump, with or without a campaign ongoing.
Calling it a campaign finance violation for a business partner to do the legal things that they always did is absurd on its face, besides the fact that such a law would put every politician everywhere in legal jeopardy, and yet surprisingly this theory seems to only be trotted out against Trump!