Trump Election Interference / Falsification of Business Records Criminal Trial (Trump guilty on all 34 Counts) (1 Viewer)

[SteveSBrickNJ]

What will happen now that former President Donald Trump was found guilty (in 34 counts) by the jury?
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Speculation on the judge relating to sentencing?
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Appeals?
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Political Damage?
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Trump found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records. Here's a breakdown.

A New York jury unanimously found Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, a stunning conclusion to the historic trial of the former president.

www.yahoo.com

 

[superchuck500]

Per feed:

• Michael Cohen's former banker Gary Farro continued testimony this morning. He explained that Cohen transferred $131,000 from his home equity line of credit to a new account– which was then used to pay Stormy Daniels. Farro completed testimony before the break.

 

[superchuck500]

The next witness is CSPAN's executive director - the purpose of this witness is to validate the CSPAN archival video of Trump making false statements about Daniels. This is how the prosecution properly gets the video into evidence.

Per feed:

Fourth witness called: Dr. Robert Browning​

The prosecution calls its next witness: Dr. Robert Browning, the executive director of C-SPAN archives.

Browning explains he received a subpoena to testify and is a "little bit" nervous. He is explaining how a network pool works and how that video is then saved into C-SPAN's archives.

The DA's office now plays three videos of Trump. One is from an Oct. 2016 rally in Greensboro, NC, in which Trump tells his supporters, "It's a phony deal, I have no idea who these women are."

The second is an Oct. 2016 rally in Gettysburg, PA, in which Trump says, "They're trying to poison the mind of the American voter." The third is a January 2017 clip of Trump calling Cohen a "very talented lawyer."

Browning validates the videos. After a very brief testimony, Browning steps down from the stand.

 

[superchuck500]

Prosecution has now authenticated the E. Jean Carroll deposition transcript for introduction into evidence.

Fifth witness called: Phillip Thompson​

Prosecutors are moving along and have called their fifth witness to the stand, Phillip Thompson. Thompson works for Esquire Deposition Solutions, a court reporting company.

His company was subpoenaed for Trump's October 2022 deposition in the E. Jean Carroll case. Thompson confirms Esquire complied, producing both a copy of the video and transcript.

 

[MT15]

Trump is refusing to allow these videos to be submitted without this validation, which I’m reading is customary. So the prosecution is having to call all these witnesses to validate the videos. Trump is making the trial longer so he can go out and claim he’s the victim of this lengthy trial.

 

[MT15]

He says it better than I can.

 

[FullMonte]

The defendant asked for an accommodation that the judge declined at the onset, based on court's need to keep to the schedule.

Did the judge decline it? I thought Trump asked for the accommodation and the judge said he would decide later based on how the trial was proceeding.

 

[FullMonte]

Anybody care to guess as to what kind of contest they had that ended with “loser has to go to the trial”? You know, the contest that Eric lost?

 

[superchuck500]

Did the judge decline it? I thought Trump asked for the accommodation and the judge said he would decide later based on how the trial was proceeding.

Same thing - i meant declined to grant it at that time.

 

[superchuck500]

He says it better than I can.

And just for everyone's benefit - he's saying that the prosecution is having to put on these witnesses to authenticate this evidence because Trump wouldn't stipulate to it like most parties do.

So this of course lengthens the trial . . . per Trump's insistance.

 

[MT15]

Made me chuckle

 

[GrandAdmiral]

Hey @superchuck500, can you enlighten if a little more into how the two defenses differ?

Fact check: Trump’s misleading claim about the judge and ‘advice of counsel’ | CNN Politics

Former President Donald Trump continued on Tuesday to criticize the judge presiding over his Manhattan criminal trial, Juan Merchan, this time complaining that Merchan was not allowing him to invoke the advice he claims he was given by lawyers. Criminal defendants sometimes employ an “advice of...

www.cnn.com

 

[efil4]

Hey @superchuck500, can you enlighten if a little more into how the two defenses differ?

Fact check: Trump’s misleading claim about the judge and ‘advice of counsel’ | CNN Politics

Former President Donald Trump continued on Tuesday to criticize the judge presiding over his Manhattan criminal trial, Juan Merchan, this time complaining that Merchan was not allowing him to invoke the advice he claims he was given by lawyers. Criminal defendants sometimes employ an “advice of...

www.cnn.com

Typical Trump.

Privately do one thing, publicly say something totally different.

Unfortunate for him, this is easily debunked ( the idea he is barred from "advice of counsel " defense )

 

[superchuck500]

Hey @superchuck500, can you enlighten if a little more into how the two defenses differ?

Fact check: Trump’s misleading claim about the judge and ‘advice of counsel’ | CNN Politics

Former President Donald Trump continued on Tuesday to criticize the judge presiding over his Manhattan criminal trial, Juan Merchan, this time complaining that Merchan was not allowing him to invoke the advice he claims he was given by lawyers. Criminal defendants sometimes employ an “advice of...

www.cnn.com

Sure - the first one is real and the second one is something Trump and his team made up and the judge said "nah"

 

[fooferdoggie]

And just for everyone's benefit - he's saying that the prosecution is having to put on these witnesses to authenticate this evidence because Trump wouldn't stipulate to it like most parties do.

So this of course lengthens the trial . . . per Trump's insistance.

but it also hammers at the defense. just more shirt from shirt lawyers.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

Sure - the first one is real and the second one is something Trump and his team made up and the judge said "nah"

So on advice of counsel is a valid defense? And the only difference is the status of attorney/client privilege?

 

[FullMonte]

So on advice of counsel is a valid defense? And the only difference is the status of attorney/client privilege?

Basically, yeah. You can claim that you were doing what your attorney's advised you to do, essentially throwing them under the bus. But you can't do that AND claim attorney/client privelege to prevent them from testifying. If you are going to blame them, you have to allow them to defend themselves.

 

[superchuck500]

So on advice of counsel is a valid defense? And the only difference is the status of attorney/client privilege?

Yes, it's a valid defense - intent (in various forms) is an element of most crimes. The 'advice of counsel' defense works to defeat the element of criminal intent when the facts in evidence show that the defendant acted in good faith on the advice of an attorney who had been fully informed by the defendant of the situation and advised the defendant that the conduct in question was legal.

But every one of those elements of the defense must be present and it is the defendant's burden to present evidence of those elements . . . which requires that attorney-client privilege be waived regarding what the defendant told the attorney and what the attorney told the defendant, and that it be subject to cross-examination.

Apparently what Trump was arguing (and his attorneys were basing this argument on an argument that Sam Bankman-Fried had made months before - read from that what you wish) is that there should also be an "involvement of counsel defense" in fraud cases where basically if the defendant (1) involves an attorney, (2) who is present and has opportunity to instruct the defendant that the conduct or plan is actually illegal or fraudulent and (3) does not do so, the jury may infer that the defendant was acting in good faith and lacked intent to commit fraud.

This is not an accepted defense - but new law is developed by parties/attorneys probing arguments and refining their weaknesses. The benefit to the defendant with the "involvement of counsel defense" versus the "advice of counsel defense" is that it doesn't necessarily include what the defendant may have told the attorney or what the attorney may have told the defendant . . . only that the attorney was present, aware of the plan/course-of-action to be taken by the defendant, and did not advise the defendant not to do it. And this allows the defendant to preserve the attorney-client privilege because the specific content of the communications isn't relevant to the defense's elements.

But it isn't a recognized defense and in both cases the court declined to allow it. Judge Merchan called it a "gambit" - where Trump was attempting to still make the argument to the jury (that his criminal intent was vitiated by the fact that his lawyer didn't stop it) without having to waive privilege to allow the prosecution to cross-examine the actual nature of the advice and whether Trump could be said to have been in good-faith reliance upon it.

So yes, in simple terms, the difference is the privilege issue, but more technically there are more detailed differences about what actually has to be shown by the defendant and, of course, there's (again) the primary difference that "advice of counsel" is a defense recognized in criminal court in New York and "involvement of counsel", as argued by Trump, is not.

And so the situation is that the court asked Trump if he planned to invoke the advice of counsel defense and his attorneys said no (for obvious reasons). So the result is that the court instructs the defense and the defendant that they cannot make claims or comments about relying on counsel when the jury is present. Trump, of course, thinks he should still be able to say it because he thinks rules and law don't apply to him - he should get to say whatever he wants.

 

[Optimus Prime]

GSA worked with Trump's transition team before and after he left office. GSA stored massive amounts of records in boxes then informed transition team the boxes needed to be moved.

6 pallets of boxes were transported to Florida in August 2021--2 pallets went to Mar-a-Lago and 4 went to a storage facility in Palm Beach.

There is no question many of these boxes ended up in the MAL storage room. And keep in mind NARA was harassing Trump throughout 2021 for what they insisted were government records apparently WITHOUT contacting GSA to search dozens of boxes in their possession.

On his way into the Manhattan courtroom where he is being tried on 34 felony charges, former president Donald Trump on Tuesday spoke to reporters about another of his indictments, the one obtained by special counsel Jack Smith in Florida related to Trump’s possession of documents with classification markings.

“You probably saw last night that Jack Smith got caught with his hand in the cookie jar,” Trump said as part of a lengthy excoriation of prosecutors and President Biden. “It was released late last night, and it’s a big story. The documents case is a hoax created by them for election interference purposes. And so that one looks like it’s going asunder. A brilliant judge saw some facts and — I haven’t read what was revealed yet, it just came out. But the document hoax is indeed — it is indeed a hoax.”

If there was a big story about the documents case released Monday night, it escaped the notice of much of the traditional media. But there is a rumor rumbling around the right-wing media universe in which Biden and officials in his administration are accused of framing Trump on the Florida allegations. And, as is often the case with rumors that course through that universe, the claim being made is obviously not true.

This one was first elevated by Julie Kelly, a right-wing commentator whose efforts generally focus on defenses of individuals charged with participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. On Saturday morning, she shared a snippet of a court filing on social media.

“WELL WELL WELL I am pretty sure we never heard this part of the ‘classified documents/box’ story!” she wrote. Referring to an image of text, she asserted that an “FBI agent says [General Services Administration] was holding large quantity of Trump’s boxes in VA and then ordered his team to come get them. I am sure NOTHING hanky [sic] happened there …”

The image, which doesn’t identify the speaker, references “six pallets of items, boxes I believe” that the GSA contacted Trump’s post-presidential office about having shipped. In a subsequent post, Kelly posted an image from an interview with someone identified as “Person 10,” in which that individual indicated that they’d seen a pallet with bankers’ boxes — like those featured in photos from Mar-a-Lago.

“So an entire pallet full of boxes that had been held by GSA somewhere outside of DC is dumped at Mar-a-Lago,” Kelly wrote. “Apparently these are the boxes that ended up containing papers with ‘classified markings.’”

Off the allegation went. The right-wing website ZeroHedge picked it up, as did filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. A narrative was born.

Before we assess the validity of the claim, it’s important to point out that even if Kelly’s presentation were accurate, the result would not be to exonerate Trump. The boxes mentioned in Kelly’s post were delivered to Mar-a-Lago in mid-September 2021. It wasn’t until January 2022 that material was shipped back to the National Archives after Trump (according to the indictment) personally went through the material.

Understanding that not everything had been returned, the Justice Department obtained a warrant demanding the return of anything with classification markings, regardless of whether they were still classified. Trump failed to do so. When the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, it found material marked as classified in a storage room and Trump’s office.

None of those subsequent issues are dependent on how the material got to Mar-a-Lago, nor are the issues in the superseding indictment focused on an alleged effort to keep the government from obtaining surveillance footage.

But, again, Kelly’s story is false.

It’s not clear what document she was posting images from; she didn’t link it in her social media posts. There was an excerpt of the interview with Person 10 released last week, but it doesn’t include the discussion of pallets. It does, however, make obvious who was being interviewed: an employee of Trump’s post-presidential office who began working there in July 2021. That employee was at the center of another discovery of documents marked as classified several months after the Mar-a-Lago search.

The interview with Person 10, though, doesn't matter. What matters is why there were pallets of material in Virginia and how they got to Mar-a-Lago. And we already know the answer to that, because The Washington Post reported on it in December 2022...............

MSN

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/30/trump-documents-case-rumor-false/