Subject: Re: Guilty on all counts
I can't get to McCarthy's article, since it's behind a paywall, but there's just so much wrong here. I'll respond to your comments:

What are the odds the 3 of them are even thinking about FECA in 2016? Or how about 2017 when Trump was already President? That's one of the stupidities of all this.

What does the FECA law state? It states that the defendants have to violate the law willfully. Did Bragg ever prove that? No.

So this is wrong, because of one of the more fundamental precepts of the law: Ignorance of the law is no excuse. The intent element of a crime does not require that the defendant be aware of the actual statute, or be thinking about it at the time - it only requires that the person intend to perform that actions that are forbidden (and to do them for the forbidden purpose, if it's a specific intent crime). To say nothing of the fact that knowledge of the law will be imputed in many situations - it's long been the law that willful ignorance will satisfy the intent requirements of a crime. That's why, for example, a CEO can't just shut their eyes and never learn about Sarbannes-Oxley as a way of getting out of the obligations of that statute. So (to address a point you made again down below) it doesn't matter whether Trump had ever heard of the specific FECA law - if he breaks that law, it's still a crime.

So yes, Bragg proved they violated the law willfully. There was ample evidence that the payments were made, that they exceeded the campaign limits, that some of them were made by corporate entities (a big no-no), and that the defendant and his accomplices took steps to hide it.

BTW, that's the biggest weakness in the defense's case - they never came up with an explanation of why Trump tried to conceal the payments. Not conceal the sex - those reasons are obvious. But what was the reason why he tried to present this as income to Cohen, rather than as client funds for payment of a settlement? There's no reason for that, except if he was trying to hide the illegal contribution.

So Merchan allows a lot of supposed "evidence" into his jury instructions that's...not really evidence at all. Stormy's testimony? Cohen's legal history? Irrelevant to Trump's guilt or innocence.

The first is entirely the fault of the Trump defense team (presumably at Trump's direction). Because Trump denied he ever had sex with Daniels, admitting her testimony was relevant to allow the prosecution to prove that it happened. Because Trump's team attacked Cohen's credibility, evidence on that point is relevant as well. I'm sure that the defense would have objected if Cohen's legal history was omitted from being mentioned in the instructions.

Then we get to the payment. Trump's payoff to Daniels was not illegal. There are many reasons why one would pay somebody off that aren't campaign expenditures - Cohen's own testimony said he did it to protect Melania.

But the jury never heard any of that, because Merchan refused to allow the defense's witness to testify to any of the particulars of the law.

Of course they heard of that. I assume that McCarthy didn't bother to actually read the jury instructions, because Merchan specifically instructed the jury on this point. It's on page 32 of the attached instructions, but here's the key excerpt:

"Under federal law, a third party's payment of a candidate's expenses is deemed to be a contribution to the candidate unless the payment would have been made irrespective of the candidacy.

If the payment would have been made even in the absence of the candidacy, the payment should not be treated as a contribution."

https://static01.nyt.com/newsg...

McCarthy is just flat-out wrong (or lying) when he asserts that the jury never heard any of that. They were instructed on it! And of course the judge isn't going to let a witness give legal statements to the jury - that's the judge's job.

Plenty of reasonable people can look at this farce and conclude that Alvin Bragg - a man who charges crime victims for defending themselves and routinely downplays real felonies - engaged in lawfare to bring down the Bad Orange Man.

Yes, because people like McCarthy are making these kinds of ridiculous pronouncements about the trial, when they clearly haven't bothered to learn or research some basic concepts of criminal law, and apparently haven't bothered to read even the key documents in the trial - like the jury instructions.