“2016,” Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe Write”, “Donald Trump appears to have narrowly won “Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin” while losing the popular vote by 3 million. .
Because the 34 felonies involved falsified business records produced in 2017, Tribe’s claims were logistically impossible. Yet his whitewashing of the former president’s New York conviction echoes similarly convoluted claims by many intelligent and ostensibly well-informed observers. Eager to accept the prosecutors’ dubious “election fraud” claims, they baselessly assert that Trump retroactively secured his 2016 victory by disguising 2017 hush-money reimbursements as legal services.
Shortly before the 2016 presidential election, Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to stop her from speaking out about her sexual harassment scandal during a celebrity golf tournament in July 2006. The story of having sex with Trump at the Lake Hotel. Whatever you think of this misrepresentation, it clearly had no impact on the outcome of the election. Yet tribes and others curiously insist that this is the case.
“Two years shy of the country’s 250th birthday, 12 New York jurors have convicted the former president,” Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley said on CBS on Sunday. Donald Trump is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. The records (11 invoices, 11 checks and 12 ledger entries) date from 2017. February 14 to December 5, 2017. back Trump was elected. You might expect a historian to pay attention to chronological consistency.
You might expect editorials from major newspapers to say the same. But according to reports on May 30 Washington post In the editorial, the jury found Trump “guilty of falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election.” A New York Times An editorial published the same day similarly claimed that a jury found Trump “guilty of falsifying business records to prevent voters from learning about a sexual encounter that he believed was politically damaging.” Of course, barring time travel, nothing Trump did in 2017 could have had an “impact.”[d] 2016 election” or “preventing[ed] Voters were made aware of this “sexual encounter” before voting.
The same timing difficulties were evident in news coverage of the Trump trial. “Prosecutors will try to prove that Trump falsified business records to influence the 2016 election,” Al Jazeera said in April. NPR reported a week later that “Trump faces 34 felony charges accusing him of falsifying New York business records to conceal damaging information to influence the 2016 presidential election.”
Judging by some accounts of the trial’s outcome, prosecutors successfully demonstrated that the 2017 records could be traced back to influence the 2016 election. According to NPR, “Former President Donald Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.” a subtitle era Reports published the day after the verdict said, “The former president was found guilty of 34 felonies for falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his 2016 campaign.” The Associated Press reported, The jury found Trump “guilty on all 34 counts of planning to influence the 2016 election through illegal means.” Hush money paid to porn actors Who said the two had sex.
These confusing features reflect the bait-and-switch at the heart of the Trump case. “We are alleging the falsification of business records in order to keep voters away from information,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in January. “This is a case of election interference.” Chief Prosecutor Matthew Curran In his opening statement, Jello claimed that the case was about “election fraud, pure and simple.”
This case is not “pure” at all and does not involve “election fraud” at all. Although prosecutors have repeatedly suggested that trying to withhold potentially damaging information from voters is inherently criminal, that is not the case. Although they assert that Cohen’s payments to Daniels constituted illegal campaign contributions under the Federal Campaign Act (FECA), the interpretation of that statute remains controversial. In any event, hush-money payments do not constitute “election fraud,” which is generally understood to mean interference with voting, counting, or reporting of votes.
Trump was not charged with violating FECA by soliciting Cohen’s “contribution.” The Justice Department declined to bring the case, possibly because it would be difficult to prove that Trump violated the statute “willfully and knowingly” given the blurred lines between personal and campaign spending. Even if the deadline to prosecute Trump under FECA has not passed, Bragg does not have the authority to enforce the statute. So he resorted to an elaborate workaround that relied on a combination of potentially interacting regulations and questionable assumptions about Trump’s knowledge and intent.
FECA’s claim is just one of three competing theories that treat Trump’s alleged falsification of business records as a felony rather than a misdemeanor. The other two theories do not hinge on the assumption that Daniels’ payment was illegal. Because jurors were told they didn’t have to choose any particular theory, it’s unclear which one they found most compelling. Even if they disagree on this crucial point, a guilty verdict can still be reached.
All of this is quite confusing, so it’s no surprise that many people inaccurately describe the implications of the verdict, especially since Bragg and his subordinates have repeatedly misrepresented the nature of the case. but it yes It’s amazing how so many people who should know better described the verdict in a way that couldn’t possibly be true.
