More reationary projection. It's racist scum such as NRA-fellating Tennessee "legislators" that are making us go banana.

Reactionary? That one is as old as Trotsky. What term of abuse will you use next, "Running dog of Imperialism?"

Gunning trog of kill kids with my Wesson.

So, CML... bringing charges before a jury where even what's in the statement of facts (i.e. agreed by both sides) shows criminal behaviour now constitutes being a banana republic? OK, so what AIUI the DA has done is a bit contrived to raise the stakes to make a definite misdemeanour a higher-stakes felony by tying in something that again actually happened..

I would have thought that true "banana republic" behaviour would be letting a former leader get away with crimes they have on-air admitted to committing, not taking it to a jury trial.

By criminal behaviour, are you talking about something that was reviewed by authorities whose jurisdiction was more pertinent to the "offense" (Federal Election Commission) .. and decided there was nothing there. And how can there be a crime if the DA cant or wont cite a pertinent statute that was violated. And yet this lunatic of a DA has somehow created some 44 "violations" of a statute to be named later with total penalties of up to 144 years. No one in the Angloshere has seen anything this absurd since the the Magna Carta was signed In the meantime he gives criminals who have pushed people onto subway tracks a slap on the wrist ... Actual Banana Republics in Latin America (ie, Honduras) are mocking the USA for this.

Ah, the joy of non-overlapping magisteria: FEC didn't look at misreporting of payments. That is now in the public domain, is undeniable and happened. These payments were also used to cover up a scandal in the run up to the election, again inarguable - the lawyer who actually made those payments has done jail time for them, so it's hard to argue that no crime was committed. So trying to argue that it's absurd is disingenuous; whether or not the DA's use of tying an illegal (though minorly so) method of repayment to the election offence is valid is something I'm not qualified to comment on. But taking it to court, to be argued in front of the jury is not the action of a banana republic, quite the reverse, surely?

Everybody so hung up on the money transfer they don't give two toots about Karen McDougal. :(

@Libby - why should one give too toots about her? She had an affair with Trump, then sold her story to the Enquirer, which buried it - neither thing shows her to be a person of particularly good judgment or morals :-) ...more importantly, neither are currently being litigated.

I think Phil may well have been a barrister in a former life. He certainly knows the three strategic choices used by lawyers ..... If you have the facts, you pound the facts; If you have the Law, you pound the law; If you have neither, you pound the table ... You dont have the facts, as the key witness has shown himself to be a pathological liar and is completely discredited. You dont have "The Law" because there is no law! What particular statute has been violated? There is none in the indictment! Even a moot court competition in a day care center requires that the toddler-at-law specify a particular law that has been violated. You cant just say "We'll tell you three months from now." This is the most farcical indictment ever.

What's actually at issue here is that Trump's bookkeepers dint spill their guts when entering the hush money payments in Trumps accounts ... as was the case with all the other trillions of bookkeeping entries made in in NYC, the Capitol of Word Finance for the past 100 years, which were ALL above board. ...... So, is that a crime? Only if these entries were made with intend to defraud auditors as to the true nature of the enterprises financial situation .. or, in this case, to violate Campaign Finance Laws. It has been already determined these payments did not violate campaign financial disclosure laws. So there is no violation of any law. The only violation of law here is Trump's violation of the laws of Reason in having anything to do with this piece of jailbait

The payments to Daniels (and McDougal) did violate campaign finance laws: both parties who paid them directly have been sanctioned, one with jail time and the other with a six-figure fine. So you cannot argue that no crime was committed; the person on whose behalf those crimes were committed reimbursed the criminal & literally paid for the crime while lying to the taxman about the reason for those payments. I'm pounding facts here.

So your position is that it's ok for someone to fund crime and cover it up while benefiting from the outcome?

Or do you deny that this actually happened? You think that Michael Cohen is a wronged innocent who should never have gone to prison?

CML - it seems that you're thinking that because the FEC decided Trump hadn't directly broken campaign law, any payment to Cohen is therefore above board & the mischaracterization of the payments in the accounts is so minor it can be overlooked.

But the charge as I understand it: "falsifying business records with intent to conceal another crime" - that isn't saying that his payments to Cohen were breaching campaign law, but that it was intended to hide that the money had been used to reimburse for something that was a crime - it doesn't have to be a crime that Trump personally committed, and Cohen spent time behind bars for it, so even you can't argue that it was not criminal. The difficulty will come with proving "intent", that there was money Cohen was paid which was for the express purpose of repaying what he paid to Daniels.

While Cohen may not be a reliable witness in this, Trump himself has said in interview that he repaid Cohen "plus some so he could make a bit of a profit" (this is why I never bought that Trump was a knowing colluder with the Russians - he would have bragged about it if he were).

So it boils down to: if the state can show that the money paid to Cohen was intended to reimburse for the campaign-finance-law-breaking hush-money payments to Daniels, then Trump has committed a felony in NY law. Putting that to a jury is very much not the actions of a banana republic, quite the reverse.

Incidentally - Trump is still denying that the affair ever happened: do you think he's being honest about that?

3 parts to the whole thing, CML & Phil (which is why I mentioned McDougal) https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-stormy-daniels-karen-mcdougal-payoffs-40dd9d1f3590dfcd5c494b1815e9eaa2 . "Luis Prima", haha.

I guess I'll have to bring out my heavy hitter on the law .. Alan Dershowitz. This is someone who had been a Proffessor of Criminal and Con Law at Harvard Law for fifty years. In his last 20 years of teaching he was the Felix Franfurter Proffessor of Law ... Need I say more? the FELIX FREAKING FRANFURTER Proffesor of Law. Know what that means? That means he was the top dog at Harvard (cue rim shot) .......... All kidding aside, that DOES mean he was the most distinguished law proffessor at the top law school in the country. He also never voted for Trump, which I would argue makes him an unimpeachable source ........... So what does he have to say about Bragg indictment? Thats its the most laughable bit of legalistic drivel to ever disgrace a sheet of legal stationary. Accd to Dersh, there isnt even a misdemeanor in failing to disclose the hush money. AD says he has challenged Bragg to show one time when anyone in NYC was ever prosecuted for this. Thats because these are so common you'd paralyze the NY court system if you tried. And there is, accd to AD, no violation of election law. The only possible felony in this whole scenario is attempted extortion by Stormy Daniels

> Accd to Dersh, there isnt even a misdemeanor in failing to disclose the hush money
er.. no, but "failure to disclose hush money" isn't what's on the sheet: it's misreporting as "legal expenses" which presumably would have been legal if reported appropriately. Hmm... Dershowitz's banging the table about "nobody has ever disclosed in their accounts that this was a hush money payment" is a very good example of distraction - he sounds very much like a defence solicitor rather than an impartial voice. Maybe after defending Trump once, he's angling for the job again?

Do you have any examples of Dershowitz talking about the charges *after* they were released? As in what the charges actually are, rather than his pre-indictment strawmanning - because he is talking a lot about how ridiculous a bunch of charges would be that weren't actually brought. First page of google links all come up with what he was saying before the specific charges came out, making (inaccurate, as it turns out) predictions of what was going to be on the charge sheet. *Very* widely shared on right-wing sites, because I guess that's exactly what their viewers (including you, it seems) want to hear.

So, to summarize: yes, he's a distinguished lawyer, and while you mention he "never voted for Trump", he has defended Trump in the past so he is not the impartial source you claim him to be. You quote him from before the indictment was released talking about charges which might have been laid, but weren't. And he is banging the table *a lot*, which from your own logic suggests that the facts and the law are not as much on Trump's side as you would like to think.

..and you didn't answer the question: do you think Trump is telling the truth when he denies the affair with Daniels?