Trump Indicted by Manhattan District Attorney

[N.E. Brigand]

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, was drowned out at a pro-Trump rally in New York this morning. She blamed liberals for sending "henchmen down here to commit assault against people by making loud noises," but the noise from the small crowd seemed to come mostly from Trump fans, some of whom apparently didn't even realize she was talking. When a reporter asked one of them why he was handing out whistles to the crowd, he said, "I'm here to make a noise. This is not a place to speak right now."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

A couple reports from independent journalists about recent posts to Donald Trump's social media network:





Surreal indeed!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Apparently, Eric Trump and Marjorie Taylor-Green also posted photo's of Judge Merchan's daughter. Utterly disgusting.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here is the indictment

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/ ... ctment.pdf

Here is the statement of facts:

https://www.manhattanda.org/wp-content/ ... mp-SOF.pdf

[N.E. Brigand]

I'm not seeing the word "conspiracy" in either of those documents.

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Edited to add: That said, the second paragraph in the statement of facts does say:

"From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects. In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York. The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The reports about their being a conspiracy charge were false. ETA: Probably based on that exact statement that you edited into your post.

The Defendant directed Lawyer A to delay making a payment to Woman 2 as long as possible. He instructed Lawyer A that if they could delay the payment until after the election, they could avoid paying altogether, because at that point it would not matter if the story became public. As reflected in emails and text messages between and among Lawyer A, Lawyer B, and the AMI Editor-in-Chief, Lawyer A attempted to delay making payment as long as possible

So much for it being all about protecting Melania.

[N.E. Brigand]

The uncharged conspiracy apparently started in August 2015, when: "the Defendant met with Lawyer A and AMI’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (the 'AMI CEO') at Trump Tower in New York County. At the meeting, the AMI CEO agreed to help with the Defendant’s campaign, saying that he would act as the 'eyes and ears' for the campaign by looking out for negative stories about the Defendant and alerting Lawyer A before the stories were published. The AMI CEO also agreed to publish negative stories about the Defendant’s competitors for the election."

Surprised to see that the story about a doorman who claimed Donald Trump had secretly fathered a child made it into the statement of facts.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Of the 34 counts, four relate to the first payment, and then three relate to each of the additional ten payments. The indictment doesn't specify what the "another crime" is for each charge. I wonder if the extra crime for the first payment is the conspiracy.

[N.E. Brigand]

If Elie Mystal is right about how Bragg's office calculated the statute of limitations, then these charges were filed just under the wire: five years would be Saturday.

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Here are some comments from a former New York prosecutor about why Bragg's office put so much information into the statement of facts rather than issue a "speaking" indictment.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Lawyer C = Robert Costello

Lawyer D = Rudy Giuliani.

[N.E. Brigand]

Apparently, Eric Trump and Marjorie Taylor-Green also posted photo's of Judge Merchan's daughter. Utterly disgusting.

I'm reading that the Assistant District Attorney actually noted these posts in court today.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Bragg references NY state law against conspiring to illegally impact an election. Maybe that is where the false notion that there was a conspiracy charge in the indictment came from.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

George Conway observes some symmetry:

[RoseMorninStar]

I was horrified and embarrassed when Trump shoved the PM of Montenegro out of the way in such a self-important way. Who does that?

[N.E. Brigand]

Obviously it's very early, but my guess is that in the end, Trump pleads this one out.

[N.E. Brigand]

Ironically, Stormy Daniels lost a court decision to Donald Trump today, when "a commissioner for the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Trump's attorneys 'reasonably spent' more than 183 hours on an appeal of the case but denied a request for another $5,150 in other fees because it wasn't itemized," adding $122,000 to what Daniels has to pay Trump in legal fees, which now totals about $600,000. This all stems from Daniels' apparently ill-advised decision to sue Trump for defamation in 2018. Daniels had long maintained that when she first considered going public about her one-night stand with Trump more than ten years ago, she was threatened by a thug. In 2018, she described the goon to a sketch artist, and the drawing was shared publicly. Trump responded by mocked Daniels's claim of having been threatened, and he added that the image produced by the sketch artist resembled Daniels's ex-husband. She sued him for defamation.

A lower court judge tossed Daniels's suit and found that it was subject to rules against frivolous lawsuits that are filed to stifle public speech, meaning she had to pay Trump's legal costs. In oral arguments, an appeals court appeared to entertain the very obvious counterargument, but as I recall, their actual decision, which upheld the lower court's ruling, never addressed that point.

And that point is this: Donald Trump is one of the very few people in a position to know whether or not he sent a lackey to threaten Stormy Daniels.

If he did (I happen to think it's pretty likely), then when he said she made the incident up, he was in fact defaming her.