No. of Recommendations: 17
You’re aware that McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor, right? I think he understands the law just fine.Sure. And Bragg, and all the lawyers in his office, are
current state prosecutors. And Marchan is a
current state criminal court judge. I think they understand the law just fine, too. Again, this is not about credentials, but the strength of the arguments.
McCarthy covered this. There was no intent - required by the statute - to not comply with FECA. No intent, no crime.I was able to bypass the paywall, and McCarthy is simple wrong in his argument here - and he should know better, even when writing as an advocate. Again, you don't have to be familiar with the provisions of a statute in order to commit the crime, or be thinking
of the statute when you take the actions. You just have to intend to do the thing covered in the statute (actus rea), with the malintent specified by the statute (mens rea). You don't have to have any knowledge of the statute at all. Which is how you know that McCarthy is making an
advocacy pitch here, rather than a fair assessment of the legal standards.
And we
know there was intent not to comply with FECA because....why the complicated scheme? We know why Trump wanted to hide the affair....but why
conceal the payments? As you point out, Trump
could have done this legally. He just needs to write a check to Cohen for Cohen to put in his
client account, and then use those funds to pay Daniels. Instead, they decided to falsify the transaction, and pretend that this was money being paid to Cohen
himself, which he commingled with his personal funds and booked as personal income. The
only reason to do it that way - and end up having to pay tens of thousands of dollars in extra taxes - is to
conceal the transaction. Again, not to conceal the sex - to conceal the flow of money.
It's just not plausible that this wasn't done with ill intent. It's not illegal to pay off a porn star, but it is
usually illegal to try to hide the flow of cash. There's tons of laws requiring that there be an honest and accurate record of the source and destination of funds,
especially for candidates for public office. There's no
innocent explanation for the decision to book these funds as personal income to Cohen, rather than client funds - the
only purpose is to conceal something
beyond the sexual dalliance.
That's one of the reasons Trump's defense lost. They don't have an alternative theory of the case, an explanation to the jury why they decided to fake that this was income to Cohen. It's not against the law to pay off someone threatening to disclose a sexual dalliance, but it
is against the law to misrepresent the source and destination of those funds.
You've asked me a lot of questions, so perhaps you can answer this: why do
you think they chose to book this money as earned income to Cohen, rather than what it really was - Cohen making a payment for a client. Why the false arrangement? It can't be to conceal the underlying affair - Trump could have just booked the payment to Cohen as "third party expenses" or something like that, and Cohen could have just deposited it in Trump's client trust account. That way he wouldn't have illegally claimed the funds as income, co-mingled them with his personal funds (a big no-no), and Trump wouldn't have had to "gross up" his payments for an extra five figures to cover the scheme. It doesn't make the transaction any more confidential - Cohen's records are protected by attorney-client privilege, and the Trump Org doesn't have to book the end purpose of the funds.
So why fake that this was a payment to Cohen, and not to Daniels?
https://archive.ph/cw1hx
