Mar.07

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Trump's Lawyer's Are Grasping at Straws

Donald Trump's financial problems just keep getting worse. Every 9 days he owes another $1 million to New York State in interest and a smaller amount to E. Jean Carroll. Maybe Elon Musk will bail him out (see above), but maybe not, and in any event, Musk will drive a hard bargain (e.g., a huge loan at an equally huge interest rate). So what has Trump done? He has ordered his lawyers to throw one Hail Mary pass after another. Here are two of them from yesterday alone.

• Hush money case: Of the four cases against Trump, the weakest and hardest to understand is the one in which he paid $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and then claimed it as a business expense. Falsifying business records is a crime in New York. It is a felony if it was done to hide an underlying crime, which is true in this case. The underlying crime is violating election law because Daniels' contribution-in-kind to his campaign (apparently worth $130,000) exceeded the allowable limit. Nevertheless, that one will go to trial first, starting March 25.
  
  Trump is trying to win this case by excluding a key witness, Michael Cohen. He was the go-between who arranged everything and knows all the details and what Trump was trying to accomplish. Trump asked him to pay Daniels out of his own pocket and then reimbursed Cohen, booking that payment as for "legal services rendered." Cohen is indeed a lawyer, but paying off a porn star does not require a J.D. Even a high school dropout can be trained to pay off a porn star. With a little practice, anyone can do it. Reporting the payment as for legal services is false record keeping, a crime in New York.
  
  Cohen would be a powerful witness against Trump because he knows everything, so Trump wants him excluded because yada, yada, yada. Cohen is a convicted felon for perjury, but in criminal cases, it is very common that witnesses are other criminals because they are the ones who were there when the crime the accused is charged with was committed. Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg wants Cohen to testify precisely because he can testify firsthand to what happened and what Trump was trying to accomplish. It will be up to Judge Juan Merchan to decide if Cohen can testify. We can't think of any conceivable reason for a direct witness to a crime to be barred from telling the jury what he saw.
  
  
• E. Jean Carroll case: In this case, the Hail Mary has even less chance to succeed. Here Trump is asking Judge Lewis Kaplan to either: (1) greatly reduce the $83 million award the jury decided on or (2) give him a whole new trial. Good luck with either of those. There is no reason the judge would want to reduce the award. After all, Trump had previously defamed Carroll and she was given a more modest $5 million payment as compensation. Then before the second trial (for comments he made while president), he went out and defamed her again. He should have known better by then and did it anyway. It seems very unlikely the judge will interfere, especially since Trump claims to be worth $10 billion, in which case an award of less than 1% of his net worth is hardly a severe punishment. One of the arguments Trump's lawyers are using is that $83 million is completely out of bounds. Of course, the judge is surely aware of the $148 million payment Rudy Giuliani was socked with for defaming two Georgia election workers. Contrasted with that, $83 million seems pretty reasonable.
  
  As to a whole new trial, Trump's lawyers are going to have to show what was wrong with the first one. Since there was nothing wrong with the first one, there is no reason for the judge to grant a new one. And even if he does, the award could conceivably be greater than $83 million if the members of the new jury are tired of Trump's shenanigans.
  

Trump's lawyers, at least the ones not named Alina Habba, undoubtedly know none of the motions Trump wants have a chance. But they also know they get paid by the hour, so if he wants them to put in more billable hours, fine with them. Trump himself probably knows the motions have no chance, but his goal isn't to win, merely to stall. If he becomes president again, he may be able to drag this out until he's dead, and then it will be someone else's money. (V)