The Hush Money Trial

We all know that Trump is a terrible person who belongs in jail. But that doesn’t mean he’s guilty of everything he’s accused of. What about the hush money case currently on trial?

The Case

As far as I understand it (which may not be very far; someone please correct me if you see any errors), the allegations are these (see Alvin Bragg’s statement of facts):

1. That Trump paid off (or caused to be paid off) two women (Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal) to keep quiet stories about extramarital affairs he had with them. He did this before the 2016 election, to prevent the stories from harming his electoral chances. This by itself would be legal.

2. Then he mischaracterized the payments as legal fees in his company’s internal books. This is illegal. However, the statute of limitations for this crime, on its own, would have expired by now (so it would be too late to bring this case). However, if the mischaracterization was done to cover up another crime, then the mischaracterization becomes a felony, and then the statute of limitations hasn’t expired. So the prosecutor (Alvin Bragg) has to claim that Trump was covering up another crime. What other crime?

3. Campaign finance violation: Michael Cohen (then Trump’s lawyer and fixer) initially paid the $130,000 to Stormy Daniels from his own money. The prosecutors are regarding this as a “contribution” by Michael Cohen to the Trump campaign, because it was done for the sake of furthering Trump’s electoral prospects. This would be illegal because there is a $2700 legal limit on individual contributions to a political campaign. Notes:

   1. Michael Cohen pled guilty to this, so he’s officially convicted of it.

   2. This was part of a plea deal on a set of charges that included some non-Trump-related crimes. It is therefore possible that Cohen wasn’t guilty of that charge but was guilty of the other charges (or, more to the point, would have been convicted), and that’s why he took the plea deal.

   3. Trump reimbursed Cohen for this payment. In fact, Trump repaid Cohen much more than the amount Cohen paid out (partly to cover Cohen’s taxes on the “income”).

   4. So, allegedly, Trump mischaracterized the reimbursement as legal fees, in part to cover up the fact that Cohen had committed this campaign finance violation, and that Trump had illegally accepted the contribution.

4. The National Enquirer people paid the $150k to Karen McDougal. I can’t tell whether Trump ever reimbursed them for that.

Bragg’s Motives

Of course, Trump says the case is politically motivated, unfair, blah blah blah. He always says that.

But this time, it might be true. But not in the way people are saying. People are saying that Bragg is motivated to stop Trump from being reelected because Bragg is a Democratic operative, possibly being directed by Biden.

I don’t believe this, because I don’t believe this case hurts Trump, and I don’t think Joe Biden would have wanted this case to go forward. That’s because (a) the case is liable to seem bogus to most viewers, regardless of its outcome, and (b) Trump is likely to be acquitted. So I think the case helps Trump’s electoral prospects.

NY Prosecutor Alvin Bragg

So how could Bragg be politically motivated? Perhaps because he is foolish and has made a political miscalculation?

Maybe. But here’s a better story: It doesn’t matter whether the case helps Trump. Either way, it helps Alvin Bragg. You can see that when you remember that (i) Alvin Bragg is an elected official, and (ii) Trump is very unpopular in New York. By prosecuting Trump, Bragg ensures his own reelection in 2025. Even if Trump is acquitted, voters will not blame Bragg for that; they will assume he did his best and will probably blame the jurors.

However, that being said, that is all irrelevant to the case. Alvin Bragg could be the next Hitler, and his prosecution could still be correct. If Trump violated a (just) law, he should be punished, whether or not the prosecutor is an asshole.

Evaluation of the Case

So, is Trump guilty?

I’m sorry, but this case just seems totally bogus to me. I have no doubt that Trump paid off the two women (plus a doorman with another salacious story) as stated. I also have no doubt that he mischaracterized it as “legal fees” instead of “reimbursement of hush money payments” in his company’s accounts. But, as explained above, the prosecution’s case depends on the claim that Trump did this to cover up another crime. I can’t see the other crime.

The campaign finance charge depends on a bizarre interpretation of the law. There are two dubious points to this interpretation:

1. That paying hush money to silence a story counts as a “campaign contribution”. It’s not ridiculous to view it that way, but it’s certainly not a paradigm example of making a campaign contribution. It’s not like Michael Cohen just wrote a $130k check to the Trump campaign.

2. More importantly, that temporarily paying some money with the expectation of reimbursement counts as “making a contribution”. This one strikes me as clearly wrong. Compare: What if Trump handed Michael Cohen a suitcase of money to give to Stormy Daniels, and Cohen passed that on: Would you then say that Michael Cohen was “donating” that suitcase of money “to the Trump Campaign”? That would be ridiculous. But the time order doesn’t really matter, does it? If Cohen handed over the money first, knowing that Trump was going to give him that same amount of money, that’s still not Michael Cohen donating to the campaign.

Caveat: I haven’t seen all the evidence, I’m not a lawyer, etc. So it’s possible that Bragg has some better theories and a stronger case than appears to me, from my superficial research. Prosecutors usually do not bring weak cases; that’s why something close to 90% of trials end in convictions. So just based on base rates, you’d expect that this case is probably stronger than it looks and would probably get a conviction.

But maybe (as it now appears to me) this case is an exception — maybe Bragg made the calculation that this was one case worth prosecuting and losing.

Sleepy Don

The Media Coverage

I’ve seen a bit of the mainstream media coverage of the case. It looks to me like

(a) The media people either do not know what the case is actually about, or they don’t want viewers to know, because they never explain it. They repeatedly say that Trump paid hush money, that he made false business records, and that this was to cover up a campaign finance violation. But they basically never say how there was a campaign finance violation. Maybe they don’t know, or maybe they decide not to cover that information, because it is the weak point in the case.

(b) Mainstream media elites all cover it as though Trump is clearly guilty and going to be convicted. I think that’s just because they dislike Trump (understandably).

Consequences

This is all bad news for America. Trump is guilty in all the other cases against him, but this one — the one case where the charges are actually super-dubious and politically motivated — is probably going to be the only one that gets resolved before the election.

Alvin Bragg and the media are playing into Trump’s hands, just as they did in 2016 and during Trump’s first term with the Russia collusion case, etc. If and when he gets acquitted on this one, it’s going to strengthen Trump’s electoral chances. Low-information voters are going to take this as a sign that all the cases are bogus political persecution. It will fuel resentment against the Democrats and may well cost them the election. By the way, it will probably also further erode trust in the media, among viewers who aren’t left-leaning ideologues.

Wtf is wrong with this country’s legal system? Trump actually tried to steal the election, made fraudulent election certificates, tried to get Georgia to falsify its vote count, and all of this is perfectly well known, there’s no doubt about it. Yet we can’t manage to bring him to trial for any of that for four years? And the only case we can manage to get to trial is the one for some stupid porn star payment eight years ago?

Did prosecutors fall asleep on the job because they didn’t want to prosecute a former President, and one who had lots of scary followers? And then when they found out Trump was actually running again, they suddenly started scrambling to get these cases to trial? If so, this is a case study in stupidity. They should have started the cases immediately, as soon as they knew what Trump did.