Or, Trump committed the crime alone and subsequently used his lawyer to obscure that crime coming to light. That's possible too.
It’s amazing what a cult it is Another Trump acolyte who has seen ZERO evidence and is happy to become the rear end of the Trump human centipede. pic.twitter.com/5HVdA0Fijv— Brian J. Karem (@BrianKarem) March 22, 2023
Possibly, but this is next level stuff. The stuff M.Cohen engaged in is small potatoes compared with knowingly obstructing the return of what we know is the highest possible level of security classification of government documents.
This is the most likely scenario as opposed to the attorney being a knowing participant in any crime. What the feds probably want is evidence that he knowingly lied to his lawyer about issues and the lawyer conveyed that info to the court, assuming (stupidly because of who he's dealing with) it to be true and accurate. It's a way to show intent.
Tinfoil hat time: Any chance the delay in Bragg indicting Trump on the hush money stuff is related to the recent developments on the federal case? I wonder if the special prosecutor back channeled this, asked for some extra time and is now making his move to indict Trump first? I think the NY stuff is more politically motivated than the federal case. So, if they can lead with federal charges first, there might be less clamor at those being politically motivated than if they roll the federal charges right after the NY charges? Maybe I'm grasping at straws here.
Do federal & state prosecutors communicate on big cases? Would think the docs case wins over hush payments esp. if Dumpy was possibly sharing secrets
It depends, but it's not uncommon, especially if they want to alert the other to avoid things that will harm a case.
Leak of state charges a smoke screen for the federal stuff? Not sure why it would need a smoke screen though.
Trying to get the cult and the sycophants in Congress (e.g. McCarthy) to overreact to the state charges and then slap him with federal charges while the cult is focused on lower Manhattan?
Follow (or actually don't) follow the Republicon outrage. Bragg, crime in NYC, George Soros. They know the docs smuggling is 1 million times worse & but aren't attacking the special prosecutor.
Not so much a smoke screen as perhaps the state case was proceeding regardless. But, public opinion on both cases are very different. For the most part, I don't think people care about the hush money payment stuff anymore (except those on the margins). In some ways, I think it will be easier to drum up support for him on the NY case. But, he's screwed on the federal case. It's probably better to drop those charges on him when he's not in the limelight as much and certainly when he doesn't have public support rallied behind him.
I wonder if Trump’s plan was to say he was going to be arrested, thinking his cult would protest en masse and scare Bragg and everyone else into avoiding arresting him. If so, it was a Baldrick level cunning plan.
No? One of the things I saw is that Trump's lawyers are presenting a different defense than was expected, so they switched up who they were going to have testify. Folks, on the NY GJ, it seems likely that Robert Costello didn't present the case they expected--that Trump thinks all he has to do is discredit Cohen and he wins.— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 22, 2023
More likely that the Manhattan DA notified Trump's lawyers that they were about to wrap up their grand jury and to expect an indictment and Trump is an idiot and thought that meant he was going to be arrested immediately so he picked up his phone and started typing.
Now all we need is for Georgia to sneak in and file their indictment while everyone's looking at NY and DC. "Mah god, King, that's the DA of Fulton County's music! Fani Willis is running to the ring with a steel chair!"
Don't forget Special Prosecutor Smith also has the J6 investigation still ongoing as well. Lord knows where that ones at as its been pretty quiet on the DOJ front with that one.
Also he spotted the opportunity to dominate a media cycle and raise money Amazing how much elite GOP rallied around the flag
America is weird to me as far as discipline goes but for e.g in the UK if you did this, you'd likely be struck off, as you've just indicated you maybe did some light crime-ing. (Not that the UK has the 5th)
IIRC something like this is alleged earlier on Especially that Trump lied to his lawyers to cause them to give incorrect responses to FBI/DOJ who were trying to get the documents back.
I remember Preet talking about this some years back when he had on as his guest a guy who was a boss at the 'rivals' (they were good friends) As US Attorney for SDNY he'd coordinate with NY State prosecutors office, and also I think a prosecutors office for Manhattan or the City of New York or something? I don't recall exactly but there were 3 with overlapping jurisdictions. We know SDNY has some kind of investigation into Trump.
I am still mystified at how all the Trumpers and GOP elites denied all this happened, but now admit it happened This was cheating in the '16 election! Is it because everyone always knew Trump was guilty so it's just priced in? An all-time classic. Rudy giving up the goods while slurring his words, and Hannity unable to stop him. https://t.co/IyoqMhTvhl— George Conway (@gtconway3d) March 23, 2023 This lack of table stakes is why I am no longer going to engage with any modern GOP voters. It's always bad faith. They've settled on "payoffs are legal" after 7 years of claiming it was a conspiracy
What's hilarious in all this is that Trump his entire life in NYC, greasing palms, working the the room cultivating ally in all the corridors of power to avoid getting indicted -- and it pretty much worked. They were willing to look past the criming because hey, "It's just Donald." But then he had to go and be President where he took his criming national and didn't have any clue about how to scale up his corruption. Oh, he scaled up the actual corruption, just not the supporting cast -- in fact, all the toads he brought on board turned out to be more inept on a national scale than Trump himself. His real amateur move was to relocate to Florida -- where, according to him and quite ironically -- crime is higher than New York. Probably thinking in his tiny brain it will protect him from NY coming after him. Well Donald, you fvcked up, see? All of your criming is coming home to roost. Time to face the music -- or borrow a glock from one of your secret service agents and do the honorable thing.
But there’s no actual “delay” in the NY case, right? It’s all based on Trump saying he’d be arrested on Tuesday but, to say the least, he’s a less than credible source. Personally, I’d prefer the first indictment out of the gate not be linked to a porn star/hush money theme that (regardless of how serious the indictments end up being in reality) can be spun by Trump’s enablers as being strictly political, a personal issue, not really illegal, etc. IMHO, as legitimate as the Manhattan indict(s) may end up being, it doesn’t crack the Top 10 in terms of “shit he did as president that he should be locked up for.” At least for me. Attempts to overturn a state election, or the Jan. 6 insurrection, those are the real deal. Not just for Trump, but for his band of crazy traitors, like Giuliani, and the GOP,in general.