"... represents a dramatic escalation in an inquiry that once appeared to have reached a dead end. Under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney’s office had begun presenting evidence to an earlier grand jury about a case focused on Mr. Trump’s business practices, including whether he fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to secure favorable loans and other benefits. Yet in the early weeks of his tenure last year, Mr. Bragg developed concerns about the strength of that case and decided to abandon the grand jury presentation, prompting the resignations of the two senior prosecutors leading the investigation.... Although he balked at charging Mr. Trump over the asset valuations, this is a different case, and Mr. Bragg is now a bolder prosecutor...."
Write William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich and Hurubie Mekoin "Manhattan Prosecutors Begin Presenting Trump Case to Grand Jury/The Manhattan district attorney’s decision represents a dramatic escalation of the inquiry, and potentially sets the case on a path toward criminal charges against the former president" (NYT).
"Over the course of the investigation into Mr. Trump, the hush money payment was discussed within the district attorney’s office with such regularity that prosecutors came to refer to it as the 'zombie theory' — an idea that just won’t die.... Defense lawyers might also argue that Mr. Trump, who was a first-time presidential candidate, did not know that the payments violated election law...."
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71 comments:
Of course Trump will be indicted.
The mob demands it.
Diverse routes. Impeachment perpetual. Hope and dreams.
When does Hillary go to jail for reporting the fees for fabrication of "the dossier" as legal expenses? Could she go the "I didn't know" route too? Not a problem for her, prosecutors are not there to prosecute Democrats.
If it comes down to intent, though, a NYC jury will be happy to ratify a little fiction that Trump could somehow be proven to have acted with intent to violate the law, and send Trump to jail, just like the DC juror who admitted that Sussman broke the law going after Trump, but that it didn't matter, because what he was doing was important.
The America I pledged allegiance to in the '60s is long gone. It no longer aspires to be a better place, but it is rather on the long march to making the same mistakes the Soviets made all over again.
And the "migrants" at the NY hotels thought they had escaped the third world. Embrace the decline.
so that means all the monies paid to the FBI, CIA, team Mueller, and the rest of the deep state are election law violations
"Hush money"? Simply shorthand, or rhetorical anchoring?
They aren't EVER going to stop harassing him. EVER. He is the MOST investigated person on earth.
When do Twitter executives go to jail for "hushing" the Hunter Biden laptop and not reporting the effort as a campaign contribution?
When does Mark Zuckerberg to to jail for giving 200 million dollars to election officials in swing states to turn out the vote, but only in heavily Democratic districts? Why was that not declared a political contribution? We all know the answer.
Oh yeah, and Zuckerberg's employees had read/write access to official voter rolls.
Send Trump to jail. Just fucking do it already. Democrats über alles
And while we are at it, that verse in the Star Spangled Banner about "hirelings and slaves" referred to the British practice around Maryland in the War of 1812, of freeing the slaves from plantations and giving them guns to fight the Americans. Americans did not like this practice.
I'm so old, I remember when a judge complained that it was Trump abusing the courts to seek revenge against his political enemies.
do democrats Not Care, how this persecution looks? Or, do they LIKE how it looks?
"...Mr. Trump, who was a first-time presidential candidate, did not know that the payments violated election law...."
If DJT had been a more experienced politician, he could have pimped out our national security for tens of Tens of Millions in personal gain, ruined the national economy, wasted the national defense, allowed hundreds of sleeper foreign agents and sabateurs into the country.
So we’re going to pretend NDAs are illegal now? But Trump, they say!
Jamie said..."Hush money"? Simply shorthand, or rhetorical anchoring?
That first thing, of course. As the prosecutors well know, non-disclosure agreements are perfectly legal. Paying people to sign them are perfectly legal as well. The only way they can "prove" that he had an illegal purpose in paying someone to not tell his wife he was having an affair is if they stack the jury pool. Which they no doubt intend to do.
Inflated values for collateral? Isn't it the lender's job to do their due diligence on these matters?
A crime - who knew.
Defense lawyers might also argue that Mr. Trump, who was a first-time presidential candidate, did not know that the payments violated election law...
Or a victim of Avenatti's pattern of extortion?
Ha, the fraudulent valuations case disappears. So try another.
Considering that Stormy Daniels did not keep quiet about the affair, she owes Donald Trump $130,000, adjusted for inflation and with interest compounded at 6% annually, dating from the time she went public.
Trump is anti-war. He tried to stop the CIA instigated war in Ukraine and the money laundering scams both parties are running there. He didn’t start any new wars to pour money into the weapons industry.
This is the cause of the vendetta against him.
The judicial system is hopelessly corrupted in the US. We truly are a banana republic now.
I fully expect that after Trump dies, the Democratic Party is going to dig him up and put his head on a pike outside the Capitol.
We know for a fact that the Far Left---composed of the true believers and the power mad---is ascendant in these times. Those people WANT complete devastation of civilization so they can build anew. Year Zero. With them in charge of course, this time it will work.
With that in mind, is it crazy to think that this overt persecution of Trump is intended to push us closer to civil war?
This is what happens when the media is forced to report that Biden keeps classified docs in his garage...
Next step: disbarring any attorney who agrees to defend Trump in court.
Did Gary Hart go to jail for this? Not that I can recall. It seems that it was determined that it was more of a theory than an actual law.
Rob Reiner says Trump is going to jail for this, Rob Schneider says "No Way!"
"This is what happens when the media is forced to report that Biden keeps classified docs in his garage.."
This is what happens when a DA runs for election on the promise of finding a crime in order to put a specific person in jail.
Politically motivated, politically unethical prosecution that never stops against Trump. Lawfare. If the Judges or Polticians were ethical they'd put a stop to it. But the republican establishment is the controlled opposition. Notice how Bush II, who always pretended to care about the "Instution of the Presidency" and "The separate and balance of Governmental powers", never speaks up against all the norm busting overreach by congress and Biden against Trump.
That's because Bush II, is just a globalist who doesn't believe in anything except the Uniparty, and making $$.
Melania didn't want to know.
Is there any evidence tha trump ever had sex with stormy Daniel's?
John Henry
Andrew Weissman, in his book Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation, tells how the investigation of the Stormy Daniels issue began.
By the time the Mueller investigation began, the public had been informed that the Steele Dossier claimed that Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen had met with some Kremlin officials in Prague in the fall of 2016 to discuss the imaginary Trump-Putin collusion.
When Weissmann was hired into the Mueller investigation, another lawyer -- who had collaborated with Weissman in a previous, unrelated case -- sent Weissmann a bank's Suspicious-Activity Report (SAR) about Cohen's bank account. The SAR said that some money from Russian "oligarch" Viktor Vekselberg had been deposited into Cohen's account and that some money from Cohen's account had been deposited into Stormy Daniels' account.
When Weissman studied this SAR, he suspected that Cohen perhaps was an intermediary between Vekselberg and Daniels. In other words, the Russian "oligarch" had helped Trump to win the 2016 election by providing hush money indirectly to Daniels.
Weissmann took this information to Robert "The FBI Whitewasher" Mueller, but Mueller was afraid that his own Special Counsel investigation might turn into a sexual circus, similar to what happened with Monica Lewinsky in the investigation of President Clinton.
Therefore, Mueller passed the investigation of Cohen to the FBI's Southern District of New York (SDNY), instead of his Special Counsel doing the initial investigation of Cohen.
As expected, the SDNY prosecuted Cohen on some process crimes and tax crimes and then returned the Cohen case to Mueller's Special Counsel staff. The idea was that Mueller's staff would promise Cohen leniency in return for Cohen's telling all his secret knowledge of the imaginary Trump-Putin collusion.
By that time, Cohen hated Trump and was willing to provide any information that would enable the FBI to cause trouble to President Trump. However, Cohen did not know anything at all about the imaginary collusion. Therefore, Cohen did not get any leniency on his process crimes or his tax crimes, and so Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison.
If the pattern holds, a "hush money" scandal involving Joe Biden will soon emerge. Of course that will be different.
Trump should've just told Stormy to put some ice on that.
Trump is anti-war. He tried to stop the CIA instigated war in Ukraine and the money laundering scams
He ended Obama's Iraq war, a premature withdrawal, the "second Iraq war", and the World War Spring series, financed through overriding claims against the Iranian regime and carried out by his Persian proxy. All's fair in lust and abortion, I suppose.
Is there any evidence tha trump ever had sex with stormy Daniel's?
Whaddya mean...like spuz on a dress or something?
the fraudulent valuations case disappears
Another #MeToo movement that hit too close to home.
Send in the FBIeee! Send in Lerner! Send Levine right over. A Schiff, perhaps.
Q: So, were do you see yourself in five years?
A: Well...
tim in vermont: "Rob Reiner says Trump is going to jail for this, Rob Schneider says "No Way!"
It's as though Demosthenes and Aristotle were reincarnated.
Pike Bishop : There was a man named Harrigan. Used to have a way of doin' things. I made him change his ways. A hell of a lot of people, Dutch, just can't stand to be wrong.
Dutch Engstrom : Pride.
Pike Bishop : And they can't forget it... that pride... being wrong. Or learn by it
"Show me the man and I will show you a crime." L Beria.
Who would have thought that we would turn into the Soviet Union ?
The Fascist security state has taken over the country. When did that begin ? 2001? The Clintons? Obama?
I've begun a search for my next job, and I've told my executive recruiter not to show me any positions in New York, even though I'm in commuting distance. District Attorney Alvin Bragg's soft-on-crime policies and his politicization of justice contribute to that decision. I want no part in contributing to New York's corrupt system.
It is interesting how Trump has suspended prosecutorial ethics and decency. It would be interesting to know how many campaign law violations have been prosecuted by the Manhattan DA and how they settled. Moreover, there is the matter of decency. In preTrump days prosecutors were unlikely to announce the commencement of a simple investigation, leak the evidence, suspend the investigation, then commence it again with great fanfare two years down the road in the face of clear political motivation.
It is at least bad form to drag a chickenshit investigation out for years.
I am reminded of the wisdom of Tuco in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."
The walls are cloding in!
Again.
"Next step: disbarring any attorney who agrees to defend Trump in court."
In Pakistan, Muslims murder lawyers who defend Christians against bogus blasphemy charges.
That may be prophetic for the likes of the California Bar Association and Merrick Garland.
Inflated values for collateral? Isn't it the lender's job to do their due diligence on these matters?
Bingo.
The left would have you believe....
Trump is a liar, he lies about everything.
But banks are so inept that they just accept Trump's grossly inflated valuation claims.
I do not, to my knowledge, have a reputation for lying anywhere close to that of Trump.
So I could go to my bank for a HELOC, tell them my house is worth $10,000,000,000.
Cash the check and depart for some topical island w/o extradition.
Is that right, lefties?
Bob Boyd,
I mean anything beyond Daniel's sayso.
I know we are supposed to "believe all women"(tm) but she does not seem particularly trustworthy
John Henry
"The Fascist security state has taken over the country. When did that begin ? 2001? The Clintons? Obama?"
It began with America's decision at the end of WWII, when all other major world powers had been laid waste by the war, to do everything necessary to obtain control over the rest of the world.
"He ended Obama's Iraq war, a premature withdrawal...."
Ahem. Was Obama secretly the president in 2003 when we illegally invaded Iraq on false claims? Obama is rightly condemned for continuing the wars initiated by Bush/Cheney, and for joining the ranks of war criminals in his expanded drone war in Iraq, but let's not ascribe parentage to the step-father, a man who followed the original architects and perpetrators of the war.
but it is rather on the long march to making the same mistakes the Soviets made all over again.
These aren't mistakes.
gahrie said...
I fully expect that after Trump dies, the Democratic Party is going to dig him up and put his head on a pike outside the Capitol.
There is precedent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod#:~:text=The%20Cadaver%20Synod%20is%20the%20name%20commonly%20given,the%20end%20of%20the%20trial%2C%20Formosus%20was%20pronounce
Old Joe messed up their classified document dreams to they thrashed about for some "zombie" theory to use in the media against Trump.
In Pakistan, Muslims murder lawyers who defend Christians against bogus blasphemy charges.
That may be prophetic for the likes of the California Bar Association and Merrick Garland.
They've tried to disbar attorneys working for Trump, Kari Lake, etc., harassed their firms, and generally tried to deny people on the right any real legal representation.
The left would have you believe....
Trump is a liar, he lies about everything.
But banks are so inept that they just accept Trump's grossly inflated valuation claims.
They believe it because they do it. I'd bet that a lot of Congress and the political class have gotten away with grossly inflated valuation claims in the past, because it's a way for banks to give a kickback to the political class.
The DOJ is out of control. Is it time for tar and feathers yet??
Julie Kelly 🇺🇸
@julie_kelly2
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Vengeful, inhumane DOJ strikes again.
Doctor who attempted to treat Ashli Babbitt gunshot wound just arrested and charged with 4 misdemeanors.
Meanwhile, the Corrupt president of Ukraine is protecting Hunter Biden too. And you wonder WHY we are sending him billions of OUR money?? Bunch of bull shit.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/zelensky-sent-government-decree-destroy-information-hunter-bidens-metabiota-company-day-russian-invasion-including-hunter-documents-metabiota/
Jamie said..."Hush money"? Simply shorthand, or rhetorical anchoring?
That first thing, of course. As the prosecutors well know, non-disclosure agreements are perfectly legal. Paying people to sign them are perfectly legal as well.
Which is why I was implying that I think it is rhetorical anchoring.
"Ahem. Was Obama secretly the president in 2003"
No, he just spelled Syria and Ukraine wrong.
"It began with America's decision at the end of WWII, when all other major world powers had been laid waste by the war, to do everything necessary to obtain control over the rest of the world."
Yes, which is why we picked a fight with Russia over who was going to rule over a region of ethnic Russians inside the border of the former Soviet Union.
There is precedent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod#:~:text=The%20Cadaver%20Synod%20is%20the%20name%20commonly%20given,the%20end%20of%20the%20trial%2C%20Formosus%20was%20pronounce
I was actually thinking of Oliver Cromwell and King Charles II.
It began with America's decision at the end of WWII, when all other major world powers had been laid waste by the war, to do everything necessary to obtain control over the rest of the world.
Sane people, unlike Comrade Marvin, describe that as: America's decision at the end of WWII, when all other major world powers had been laid waste by the war, to do everything necessary to defend the rest of the world from the Soviet Union's goal to obtain control of the rest of the world.
"Barack Obama's presidential campaign has been fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for violating federal disclosure laws, Politico reports.
An FEC audit of Obama for America's 2008 records found the committee failed to disclose millions of dollars in contributions and dragged its feet in refunding millions more in excess contributions."
Remember when they used to just fine campaigns for election code violations?
Cook: "Ahem. Was Obama secretly the president in 2003 when we illegally invaded Iraq on false claims?"
Perhaps the same dynamic is at work as when your ilk referred to Viet Nam as Nixon's War when he had nothing to do with starting it and, in fact, ended it.
Julie: "Doctor who attempted to treat Ashli Babbitt gunshot wound just arrested and charged with 4 misdemeanors"
Back when prosecutors were decent human beings misdemeanants who were not arrested at the scene were brought into court with a summons, not arrested after the fact.
I sometimes imagine having access to a time machine that will take me to one place in the past and then return me to present time. One place and one time only. My initial impulse would be to go back and give a "special" hello to one or the other of the Dulles boys. But which one? I'd probably pick Allen Dulles. But the other brother, John Foster was also a snake in the grass. Looking a bit more deeply, instead of the Dulles boys how about Teddy Roosevelt? Woodrow Wilson? Or FDR? Or LBJ? Or perhaps it wouldn't matter at all. That's more likely.
Didn't Edwards have this kind of trouble? Included a kid, if I recall.
Meanwhile, Joe, Hunter and the brother - are still international money grubbing crooks who used VP Biden's name to line their pockets with pay to play money to the tune of millions.
Criminal.
Cook: "Ahem. Was Obama secretly the president in 2003 when we illegally invaded Iraq on false claims?"
False claim, singular, perhaps. There were multiple claims to justify ending the first Iraq war, not the least of which was possession and development of WMD.
The first Iraq war started with Bush I, was sustained under Clinton, and ended with Bush II.
The second Iraq war was started with Obama.
The second Iraq war ended with Trump. In fact, Obama's World War Spring series, including the overthrow of the government in Ukraine, were at risk during the Trump administration, if not for Schumer, Pelosi, and not a few Republicans.
"It began with America's decision at the end of WWII, when all other major world powers had been laid waste by the war, to do everything necessary to obtain control over the rest of the world."
Not what happened. US demobilized 90% of its armed forces and looked for peace and collective security through the UN. Reinstituting Selective Service and passing the National Security Act several years later signaled a change of strategy. One can debate the causes of the Cold War, but cannot ignore the postwar chronology, 1945-48.
>>There is precedent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod#:~:text=The%20Cadaver%20Synod%20is%20the%20name%20commonly%20given,the%20end%20of%20the%20trial%2C%20Formosus%20was%20pronounce
I had exactly the same thought.
--gpm
If anything happened, it happened in 2016. Is there no applicable statute of limitations?
Also I remember things the way Mike Sylvester (and apparently Andrew Weissman) remembers them. I also recall that they were loudly proclaiming that they had the goods because Cohen was in Prague (or somewhere) at the same time as the Russian; but it turned out they had the wrong Michael Cohen.
Cohen was cravenly and openly seeking to give them whatever he possibly could, to try and stay out of prison (for his own stuff). If he had anything to tell, he told it.
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