Stunning news.
Comments
I am in Paris, France about to go to bed, but it seemed monumental enough to post this.
Based on what I understand to be true, this is a just verdict, but I must admit to still being a bit stunned.
Truly, I must confess that my erudite, well-trained political scientist response is: holy shit.
Discuss.
Mike Bost, the Republican who sits in the US House of Representatives seat for the 12th District in Illinois where I live and a Trump Toady Supreme just issued a statement:
New York’s six-week sham trial against President Trump has eroded the public’s trust in our legal system in a way that will take years to overcome.
Wise up Mike TRUMP IS NOT THE PRESIDENT! HE IS A CONVICTED FELON!
@Kathy: unfortunately, whilst losing Pennsylvania made it much less likely he’d become president in 2020. Being found guilty on 34 charges doesn’t necessarily make it any less likely he’ll becomes president in 2024.
I hope the identity of the jurors remains hidden. There are some crazed MAGAs out there looking for them.
On a related note, it’s time for We the People to elect representatives who will enshrine into law an accountability system for SCOTUS. These unaccountable unelecteds have a reckoning ahead.
@Mister Bluster:
TRUMP IS NOT THE PRESIDENT! HE IS A CONVICTED FELON JUST LIKE TED STEVENS!!!!1!!!
Is the gag order expired or does it last until sentencing or indefinitely?
Four Seasons Total Landscaping continues to bring the humor.
You know the first thing that popped into my mind when the verdict was announced? The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.
It is a damn shame how effective this undermining trust claim can be. Same argument made wrt the electoral system. They share another attribute–it’s easy to undermine public trust when the message is a lie.
It is one thing if trust erodes for a real reason, but another if politicians and commentators actively make erroneous claims with the intention of reducing trust.
Electoral system: widespread, decisive voter fraud vs. the long list of ways the electoral system insulates elected officials from public opinion.
Criminal justice: political persecution/two-tiered justice system vs. economic class and race as determinants of judicial outcomes.
These people’s actions and words intend to erode trust then they point to the distrust of institutions they created as evidence that they were right all along.
It’s maddening.
To repeat myself:
I was in town picking up a spark plug and some gear oil when I heard the news that a verdict had been reached. After 15 or 20 mins when they still hadn’t announced, I said “fuck it” and headed for the parts store. When I came out, they announced, “Guilty guilty guilty guilty Guilty guilty guilty guilty Guilty guilty guilty guilty Guilty guilty guilty guilty Guilty guilty guilty guilty Guilty guilty guilty guilty Guilty guilty guilty guilty Guilty guilty!
I bought popcorn (4 me) and drumsticks (4 my wife).
He’ll never see a day in prison but it is a small measure of justice.
The echoes in the Nutsphere last night were about supposedly tainted jury instructions–that Merchan instructed the jury that the verdict need not be unanimous.
Leave aside that it is a misreading of what the instructions that would make Drake blush. It’s also abundantly unclear how that would actually affect deliberation and the final verdict.
A few legal pundits in short news pieces, have suggested Orangefuhrer may get community service, like picking up trash in the subway.
He’ll never see a day in prison but it is a small measure of justice.
Nor should he for this conviction. Given his age, his first-time offender/conviction status, and the nature of his crime, he (nor anyone else in similar circumstances should see prison). Nor should he (or anyone else) face a trial tax in terms of sentence.
That said, the probation sentence will be an interesting one.
@mattbernius:
Michael Cohen got prison time for the same crime. And he copped.
@mattbernius: Especially since he’ll have a parole officer to decide whether he can leave the state since he’ll have hang out for the sentencing.
@Kathy: I would be happy to see him picking up trash and dirty, used needles. In fact, I think that’s more effective than sending him to prison. Hard to fundraise off of that image.
@CSK: There is a certain irony in the fact that he was elected due to Weiner and convicted due to Pecker. I take it simply as a sign that he’s a real dick.
https://movieweb.com/donald-trump-guilty-verdict-home-alone-2/
@Kurtz:
NPR said something about jury instructions too. But I was kinda out of it and driving so I didn’t hear what they were saying the problem was. I hope they weren’t picking up some rwnj lunacy.
Michael Cohen got prison time for the same crime. And he copped.
No, Michael Cohen pled guilty in *Federal Court* to a wider range of crimes:
Robert Khuzami, Attorney for the United States, Acting Under Authority Conferred by 28 U.S.C. § 515, announced that MICHAEL COHEN was sentenced today to three years in prison for tax evasion, making false statements to a federally insured bank, and campaign finance violations. COHEN pled guilty on August 21, 2018, to an eight-count information before U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III, who imposed today’s sentence. In a separate prosecution brought by the Special Counsel’s Office (“SCO”), COHEN pled guilty on November 29, 2018 to one count of making false statements to the U.S. Congress and was also sentenced on that case today, receiving a two-month concurrent sentence.
source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/michael-cohen-sentenced-3-years-prison
Different crimes. Also, Cohen was at a different point in his life.
(I think you can also argue that Cohen’s sentence was excessive as well.)
@mattbernius: Especially since he’ll have a parole officer to decide whether he can leave the state since he’ll have hang out for the sentencing.
Yup. And his out-of-state residency also makes things more complex for serving the sentence as well.
@DeD: IMO the best lin from the article you linked to:
We’re seeing here the latest operation of a foundational rule of the Trump era: If you’re a Trump supporter, you will sooner or later be called to jettison any and every principle you ever purported to hold.
@Paul L.: Why, are you standing by to find out who the jurors are?
@SenyorDave:
Indeed. We’ve been watching that operation since 2016.
Today, Trump won a popular vote for the first time.
I enjoy the sweet, sweet tears of the MAGA crowd. Every prison is full of people claiming to be innocent.
All the people who complain about these felony convictions never meant a scintilla of their claiming to be in favor of “Law And Order” — indeed, the authorities can and will [and should] come after you when you falsify business documents.
Today is a day when the language asserts the presence of an All-Powerful Enemy; I’m sure tomorrow Democrats will be referred to as effete soy-boys.
@Beth:
I saw it on NBC News before the verdict came down.
Several conservative news personalities, including some affiliated with Fox News, falsely claimed that Judge Juan Merchan, as one Fox News anchor put it in a viral post on X, “told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict” Trump.
That’s not true. Merchan instructed the jury on Wednesday that they “must conclude unanimously that a defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means,” adding that they “need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were.”
That means that jurors have to agree unanimously that Trump committed a crime by engaging in a criminal conspiracy to falsify records with the intent to commit one or more other crimes in order to convict him. But jurors can choose from three options about what those other crimes were: violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act; the falsification of other business records; or the violation of tax laws. Those “unlawful means” aren’t charges themselves and would not result in separate convictions, so jurors do not have to unanimously agree on them.
The jury instruction was complex and nuanced and some right-wing accounts ran with false reports.
Nor should he for this conviction.
my understanding is that the rationale for reducing sentencing is that the defendant admits his error, and is deemed unlikely to commit the crime again. How does that apply here?
@Beth:
Here is some more. I don’t know why NBC News didn’t identify the Fox News anchor, but whatever. It was John Roberts. To his credit, he explained in a subsequent post on X that the situation is more nuanced than that.
Of course that did not stop the Nutsphere from complaining the instructions were unfair. Nor did it stop Trump from claiming the same.
Turley called the point of contention “troubling,” but I didn’t see that first hand. Marco Rubio also apparently ran with it. These two, in particular, are…uh…troubling, because one is a law professor* and the other is a US Senator with a JD**.
*Nominally. At this point, it seems as if he is a pundit who moonlights as a law professor rather than the other way around.
**Of course, Rubio launched his political career two years after receiving his law degree, so it is arguable that his sheepskin contains dead letters.
@Gavin:
Today, Trump won a popular vote for the first time.
You win the internet today.
@Kurtz:
It gets a lot worse if you think about it for two seconds.
1) Wouldn’t Orangefuhrer’s lawyers have objected to the judge giving illegal instructions to the jury? And wouldn’t they have implemented any and all legal remedies available at once? And di we hear a peep from these lawyers about that part of the instructions?
2) Regardless of point 1), if Merchan had done what the deplorables claim, wouldn’t it make for the easiest appeal to win? Not to mention Merchan would be disbarred, and subject to whatever sanctions the state of New York has in the books.
At some point you wonder what the MAGAts use for brains.
@Michael Reynolds:
@Matt Bernius:
I think the pertinent question here is what happens when Orangefuhrer, if given probation, inevitably violates the terms of said probation. For instance, if he’s given X hours of community service, and refuses to perform any of it. Or if he travels without authorization.
@Kathy:..if given probation, inevitably violates the terms of said probation.
Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up!
Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up!
Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up!
Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up!
Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up!
Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up!
(I think that’s 34)
The lesson here is that a legal streetfight against someone like Trump is easy to win if you have them to dead to rights on lying and fraud about money, which Bragg did. Not to be a downer, but imagine what would be happening if Biden would have appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Clarence Thomas and his lies about money.
@CSK:
“I am a very innocent man,” he proclaimed.
Many people are saying he is the most innocent convicted felon in history.
(a) Hardly anybody understands what crimes Trump committed; most think (partly thanks to lazy journalists who implied it, and partly to Trump propagandists’ deliberate disinformation) he was indicted for paying hush money; and (b) whether misunderstood or not, his crimes were “victimless”. Consequently I expect all the excitement will have been forgotten by the conventions, as other events hit the front pages. People who voted for Trump despite his blatant university fraud, the Access Hollywood tapes and his fines for misusing funds in his own charity aren’t going to be turned off because he did some dodgy book-keeping.
@Kathy:
At some point you wonder what the MAGAts use for brains.
Oh, Kathy, that cue-up is too easy:
MIERDA!!! MIERDA TIENEN EN LA CABEZA!!!
@Kurtz:
If that’s all there is to the jury instruction claim, why the hell did NPR launder it? That seems stupid.
@Paul L:
Geezus, Paul. Drunk again?
@DeD: I’m getting somewhat confident that the gibberish is intentional. And that’s my last comment regarding that subject; it was funny for awhile but now I just skip those posts.
@CSK: Sounds like one hell of a fundraiser.
