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The Unproven Felony
Trump has just been convicted of a felony without specification of what the crime really was.
How to manipulate the jurors. That Trump committed a misdemeanor by falsifying records is beyond doubt.
But that misdemeanor has expired. Only as a “conspiracy” could the falsification of records become a felony. The DA (prosecutor) served the jury 3 possible conspiracies, but proved none of them.
The jury agreed on the falsification of records, and a conviction for felony was pronounced by the judge by skipping the necessary intermediate evidence for a conspiracy.
For background, a ”misdemeanor” is a minor crime with no more than one year of prison – a felony is a grave crime of more than one year of prison.
A misdemeanor in the form of falsification of records is clear, but that misdemeanor has since long expired. Therefore, the prosecutor’s problem was to present evidence for a graver crime, a felony, in order to achieve something. These two issues have to be separated – the proof of incorrect book-keeping (minor misdemeanor, too late for jail-time), and the allegation for felony, claiming that the misdemeanor intended to conceal a graver (jail-carrying) crime. The latter, proving intent to conceal a much graver crime, was not achieved.
Normally a felony conviction would be politically fatal for a candidate appearing on the ballot in five months. But normally a prosecutor wouldn’t have brought this case. Mr. Bragg, an elected Democrat, ran for office as the man ready to take on Mr. Trump.
By the time Mr. Bragg showed up on the scene, the Stormy business was old enough that Mr. Trump couldn’t be hit with misdemeanor falsification of records, because the statute of limitations had expired. To elevate these counts into felonies, the DA said Mr. Trump cooked the books with an intent to commit or cover up a second offense.
What crime was that? At first Mr. Bragg was cagey. He eventually settled on a New York election law, rarely enforced, that prohibits conspiracies to promote political candidates “by unlawful means.”
Yet what “unlawful means” did this alleged conspiracy use? The DA’s argument was that there were three:
First, the hush money was effectively an illegally large donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Second, more business filings were falsified, including bank records for Mr. Cohen’s wire transfer to Ms. Daniels.
Third, false statements were made to tax authorities, since Mr. Trump’s repayment of Mr. Cohen was structured as income and “grossed up” to cover the taxes he would need to pay on it.
In some ways this Russian nesting doll structure, to use another analogy, defies logic.
Did Mr. Trump falsify business records in 2017 to cover up an illegal conspiracy to elect him in 2016, whose unlawful means included false information in Mr. Cohen’s tax return for 2017?
There was hardly any direct evidence about Mr. Trump’s state of mind. Federal prosecutors squeezed a guilty plea out of Mr. Cohen but notably didn’t pursue Mr. Trump. One news report said the feds worried that his “lack of basic knowledge of campaign finance laws would make it hard to prove intent.”
A help to Mr. Bragg’s prosecution is that the jurors were instructed that as long as they were unanimous that Mr. Trump was guilty of falsifying business records to aid or cover up an illegal conspiracy to get him elected, they didn’t all have to agree about which theory of the “unlawful means” they found persuasive.
Mr. Trump may be a cad, this conviction isn’t disqualifying for a second term in the White House.
The conviction sets a precedent of using legal cases, no matter how sketchy, to try to knock out political opponents, including former Presidents. Mr. Trump has already vowed to return the favor. See this.
The conviction of Trump for felony hangs upon whether Trump with his book-keeping intended to commit or cover up a felony, a larger crime – a list of no less than 3 possible felony crimes were presented by the DA (prosecutor) to the jurors. And the judge instructed the jurors that they did not have to agree on any of them, just that the book-keeping (for which itself he cannot be convicted) was not correct. A procedure, which probably goes against US federal law, which requires jurors to agree on all key elements of a possible crime.
You just cannot lawfully say that Mr. X intended to commit one of three suggested crimes, we cannot prove which, but pick your choice, even if all of you disagree.
The New York Times, the Party-paper and mother of Democrat opinion, however, has no problem with such an unlawful conviction for an unknown crime out of 3 suggested and unproven crimes, and tells the World that this is perfectly okay. The Democrats just enjoy themselves in their solarium-sun.
Reckoning Coming to Democrats
But this rigged conviction of Trump will have a reckoning, which the Democrats will not want.
First of all, Trump will probably still get elected, and the Democrats may themselves have transformed Trump to their own worst fears.
But not only Trump is upset by the Democrats’ blatant rigging of the US justice system, where the custody of secret papers is only a crime if Trump does it, but not if Biden does the same, and where contact about Biden family-members’ involvement in corruption in Ukraine in the same way is only illegal, if Trump talks with the Ukrainian president, but not if Biden talks with the Ukrainian president in the same object just from the Biden-family’s side.
Republican Tulsi Gabbard, who is not a “MAGA” follower, has condemned Biden for abusing the US justice system in the following stark words:
Joe Biden has turned this country into a banana republic.
A country, where those in power use the legal powers and the law enforcement against their opponents.
Far worse are the consequences outlines by US TV-star Megyn Kelly – who says the only way to teach Democrats about their crimes of abusing the legal and justice system is that Republicans must do to Democrats what they themselves have done to Republicans.
The only thing to do is to do the same to them:
Order every Republican DA (prosecutor) to go after every Democrat.
Civil war has just broken out in the USA.
The last civil war was the bloodiest war in US history – even compared to the world wars.
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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from countercurrents.org
