DiscoPriest
Ken WhiteI’m in Rolling Stone on the indictment
Jeremy@Popehat gotta love a parenthetical that dryly and quietly indicts our entire system of justice.
Danielle@Popehat
Nice piece. Too bad your hat isn’t pictured-- it’s iconic.
Nice piece. Too bad your hat isn’t pictured-- it’s iconic.
Speed demon 🇪🇺 🇳🇴🇺🇦🇵🇸@Popehat 34 counts.
Spike 
@Popehat It's a good analysis, Ken
Nathan Lorenz@davidtoddmccarty Someone else saying we don’t know much of anything.
Saren@Popehat I wonder, what underlying crime/fraud do you think Trump himself thought he was covering up? Because he sure seems to have gone out of his way to hide the nature of the payments and the fact that he was the one responsible for them. It couldn’t have been merely that he was embarrassed because he himself said that he didn’t care if people found out about the affairs after Election Day.
Doctor Biobrain@saren @Popehat I don't think he went out of his way. Cohen or whoever set it all up and all they did was write business checks that sealed his guilt. I think he just wanted the tax deduction.
Had Trump used personal money to buy Bitcoin laundered through a crypto mixer he'd probably be fine.
Or just do nothing. I don't think this scandal would have made any difference for his election and he'd have been much better off if he had lost.
@biobrain @Popehat I disagree with that characterization. Did you read the statement of facts? Trump was much more involved than that, including in the original meeting in 2015 when he asked Pecker and Cohen to catch and kill any stories like this that might hurt his electoral chances. He just was using his usual mob-boss-like approach of trying to keep himself one step removed from any of it. Why would he do that unless he believed he was doing something illegal?
@Popehat I’d be interested to know too why AMI’s general counsel decided AMI should not accept reimbursement from Trump for the $150k for the Karen McDougal story. Sounds to me like the general counsel may have deemed it a legal risk not worth the money. And if so, wouldn’t that have also put Trump on notice that he and Cohen were doing something illegal with the Stormy Daniels payment? Wouldn’t that suggest he had the intent that he was covering up something unlawful?
Zac@Popehat Are they going to correct the missing "years"?
PaulAlanLevy@Popehat Behind a paywall, sadly
Ulrike@paulalanlevy @Popehat
This link worked for me (Firefox on Android).
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/alvin-bragg-trump-case-still-mystery-1234709858/
This link worked for me (Firefox on Android).
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/alvin-bragg-trump-case-still-mystery-1234709858/
John Brewer@Popehat I think I heard somewhere (possibly your podcast) that in New York the prosecution only has to show intent to commit the secondary crime to prove felony falsification of documents. Is that not correct?
@jbrewer_jera Not on Serious Trouble I think. Need to show intent to defraud too.
@Popehat Here’s the source I was thinking of. It covers New York State case law around falsifying documents, and how “intent to defraud” means something very different here than it does in federal law.
https://www.justsecurity.org/85831/the-broad-scope-of-intent-to-defraud-in-the-new-york-crime-of-falsifying-business-records/
https://www.justsecurity.org/85831/the-broad-scope-of-intent-to-defraud-in-the-new-york-crime-of-falsifying-business-records/
@jbrewer_jera Yep. Linked in the article.
@Popehat Oops! Missed it because of the link text.
Thanks as always for your work making this stuff accessible to a lay audience.
Casey Clithero@Popehat Twitter really is a far worse place in the absence of Popehat’s immediate cerebral reactions to damn near everything.
The Doctor
Warren@Popehat very rational piece.
Mushifoot@Popehat rofl at (surprisingly)
William Pietri@Popehat Great to see this part: "As a rule, crimes mostly committed by rich people have daunting intent requirements, crimes mostly committed by poor people are easy to prove."
I imagine you're getting tired of saying it, but I appreciate you mentioning it every time. It's such a subtle stacking of the deck and it took me a while to appreciate how important it was, especially with chaos fountains like Trump.
Roadskater, Ph.D.@williampietri @Popehat Possibly one of the reasons I became more liberal when I was 20 or 21 years old than when was 18 was a college social justice class that I took for distribution credits. One of the texts was written by the prof, and was aptly titled "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison".
CelloMom On Cars@mekkaokereke has things to say about that.
mekka okereke :verified: (@[email protected])
In fact, the more dangerous a criminal is (connected to organized crime, extreme wealth, etc), the more likely they are to be able to afford bail. 🙂🙃 The people least likely to afford bail, are poor people, with no connections to criminal organizations, but high probability of being falsely arrested and charged. If you guessed "poor Black people," give yourself 10 points!
Kris Sargent, MD@Popehat Thank you for again assuming your Official Role as the guy who tells us that all the excitement is bunk and that no one with power is ever going to be held accountable for anything, ever.
I'd be very pleased for you to be wrong about these things sometime, but you rarely are.
John Minnihan@Popehat 34, 35... whatever it takes
Ton Chrysoprase@Popehat Thank you. All I saw thus far were competing hot takes about everybody's pet theories. Happy to see I'm not totally crazy for thinking that most if not all of those assumed facts not in evidence.
Håkon Percs@Popehat Donald Trump needs to be held accountable.
Rhett Derrick
Driftorious CCXL@Popehat rockstar ... you have proof
Winged Hussar@Popehat I've said the same thing over and over about the "intent" comments.
jack the nonabrasive@Popehat Other analyses have been connecting the dots between guilty pleas from Cohen and Wesselberg to the charges and statements of facts. It seems like your complaint is that those connections and the legal reasoning behind them aren’t in the charging documents, and they should be. You wrote in Federal cases the precise chain of reasoning is shown.
Is that just a stylistic difference? Or are there actual consequences to the case? For example, does it make it harder to prepare a defense?
Darryl Ramm@Popehat It’s not OCCA. Yet.