Creating false business records is a serious crime.
Trump is complaining about it. He should have expected to be investigated.
He was stupid. He documented his own crime.
False business records are a crime because that is how most frauds are carried out.
False business records crashed the economy in the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. White collar crime steals more money than does armed robbery. A false business record could be the electric company falsifying your electric meter reading or an embezzler giving his employer fake bank statements. It is how people underpay their taxes. In the build-up to the Great Financial Crisis, mortgage companies made false business documents to create "liar loans" which investment banks presented to ratings agencies who pretended they were AAA quality. There was false documentation at every level.
"Fraud" can involve a chain of actions that only become deceitful when combined. It can be hard to point to any one thing to show fraudulent intent. New York state, the center of the American financial industry, addressed that problem by defining "false business records" as a crime so there can be clear-cut provable elements of dishonesty. It may be hard to show what a Bernie Madoff intended but easy to show that Madoff created the false account statements that made his fraud possible.
Donald Trump created false records in the form of tax-deductible legal fees when his payments were in fact the personal expense of secretly paying hush money through an intermediary. The false documents are a provable crime.
Trump wasn't picked on. He was careless and he got caught.
Trump was running for president. I repeat my good advice for readers considering running for office: Don't be having an affair. Don't be cheating on your taxes. Don't be doing illegal drugs.
Trump was astonishingly careless. He did something sneaky and illegal, and he created a paper record of it. I am no expert on money laundering, but he could have paid hush money without leaving a guilty-looking and improbable trail of $30,000 checks. Trump owed Stormy Daniels $130,000. He could have given Michael Cohen, his attorney fixer, $160,000 and told him to buy gold coins worth at least $135,000, plus another $25,000 for some nice piece of gold jewelry. Cohen need not declare this as taxable income for himself, since the money is not for him. He would be a purchasing agent for his long-time client. Trump could instruct Cohen to give the $135,000 in gold coins to Stormy Daniels, with the extra to cover the nuisance of her turning them into cash, and bring a $25,000 gold bauble back to Trump, which he can present to Melania as a surprise gift. If Trump bought it himself, the purchase might attract attention and not be a surprise for Melania, so it was an errand handled by Cohen -- a plausible story if this ever came to light.
Instead, Trump wrote checks documenting tax and election fraud.
Trump should not be angry at District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Bragg was just doing what people in politics do, look to see if a political opponent has some embarrassing secret and expose it. Trump saw what happened to Bill Clinton, Jonathan Edwards, Gary Hart, Bob Livingston, and Denny Hastert. The GOP was in the midst of exposing Hunter Biden. Trump knew the risks of running for election when he had secrets to hide.
My suggestion for Democrats is to respond to Trump's complaints about his crime being prosecuted not with a defense of the legal system. Voters apparently don't care that he had sex with Stormy Daniels and committed fraud to cover it up. Voters know he is a lawbreaker. What they like about Trump is that he breaks the law and wins anyway. Democrats should make this about Trump's competence. Belittle the "very stable genius" by asking what kind of nincompoop covers up a nasty dalliance with a porn star by creating a paper trail of obviously phony checks. Of course you were going to be investigated, you idiot! You were running for president! And you covered it up by writing checks. Double idiot! What an incompetent buffoon.
Trump cares more about looking smart than he does about looking honest.
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11 comments:
Trump breaks the law because he knows he CAN. If it's to his advantage, why not? Nothing will happen to him. I think that's an asset to his brand that MAGA's like. Impregnable. Tough. Nothing you can do about it. FU
Peter C., I had a dream last night on this issue. I was grappling with inmates attempting to work on criminal thinking errors of which Trump has many. I was trying to present it was not in their interest to continue to think and act like a criminal even though it seems to be beneficial for Trump to do so. My frustrated argument was that maybe it works if you’re really rich, but you guys aren’t so you will end up in jail. In my dream, the inmates seemed to accept that reality.
Trump’s criminality is no secret. The porn star conviction, as sleazy as it may be, is the least of his crimes. As for stupidity, just a couple of recent examples were accusing immigrants of eating our pets and blaming an act of domestic terrorism on illegal aliens. He has normalized the ignorance, anger and hatred that used to be considered lunatic fringe.
Trump has responded to the unimaginable suffering in LA not with aid and comfort, but by blaming Gov. “Newscum” and threatening to withhold federal aid. He hasn’t even taken office yet, but it’s already obvious what the next four years have in store for us. It’s always been obvious that he’s a despicable madman. Those who voted for him anyway don’t care because they’re as crazy as he is.
Good point. For example: Rudy. He was in the orbit of someone who “gets away with” anything, but he can’t, and didn’t and now he’s bankrupt and heading to jail.
Give that there was no attempt to defraud anyone, the business documents case more appropriately could’ve and should’ve been charged as a misdemeanor.
Charging it as a felony was so blatantly political that it invalidated the entire case, cast a “lawfare” shadow on the other cases against Trump, and proved conclusively that Alvin Bragg is a clueless tool who is likely to be voted out of office at the earliest opportunity.
I don’t even like Donald Trump, but there are occasions when I like his opponents even less.
Trump sentenced yesterday. He's not a stable genius.
Given that this happened after the election, that horse has already left the barn.
As I've said before, if it weren't for Trump's supporters, he'd just be another common criminal - they're the ones who have given him power. So, in their own way they are as bad as he is and those who make lame excuses for them aren't much better.
Someone's been watching too much Fox Noise.
And someone else is apparently hooked on MSNBC.
For the record, I have probably watched a total of 10 minutes of Fox News in the last year. When it comes to TV, I mainly watch the PBS NewsHour.
For the record, I don't even get MSNBC.
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