No. of Recommendations: 17
The facts show us that
*There was no FECA violation
*There was no illicit campaign payment, so there was no falsification of campaign finance forms, no hiding of anything
*The Daniels payoff is perfectly legal, and even Cohen testified that it was for another purpose
*The judge refused the defense access to witnesses to explain FECA to the jury
*The judge didn't define how the law was to be applied to the jury
*The judge allowed the jury to basically "pick something" (that the state didn't prove) to be the thing to convict Trump over.
Most of that is completely wrong.
*There was a FECA violation. The FEC determined that Cohen, Pecker, and AMI all violated the FECA with this arrangement.
*There was an illicit campaign payment. You can't spend money to help your campaign outside of donating it to the campaign. The payment to Daniels was found by the jury to be a campaign payment that would not have been made but for the campaign.
*This is correct - the Daniels payoff could have been perfectly legal, in general, and the prosecution never argued otherwise. Trump, however, chose to implement the payoff in an illegal way so that he could conceal the money flow. Which is a crime.
*It is not the role of witnesses to explain laws to the jury. The judge explains laws to the jury, after hearing the arguments of counsel and ruling on their motions. The defense was in no way entitled to present a "witness" to provide legal analysis.
*The judge did define how the law was to be applied to the jury. Did you read the jury instructions yet?
*The judge did not allow the jury to basically pick something that the state didn't prove. The jury was instructed that the state had to prove that the falsified records were intended to conceal another crime. They were provided three possible crimes, any one of which (or all three) might have been the intended crime to be covered up. Under NY law (and federal law, BTW), there is no requirement that the jury be unanimous on which predicate crime was intended to be concealed - and so the judge properly gave that instruction.
It's sad that you've been so misinformed about this case, especially when a quick perusal of the actual documents would reveal how wrong some of these arguments are. I strongly suggest you read the jury instructions, so that you can see for yourself how inaccurate several of these claims are.
