Cont: Mueller Investigation pt3

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BobTheCoward said:
They have had whole trials against things that were not crimes. In mcdonnell v United states they tried the wrong interpretation of the law.
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Can we keep the goal post where it stood when I posted my post? Not talking about a trial at all - we're talking about a "guilty" plea. Now I don't know "mcdonnell v United states", and consider it your burden to cite the relevant facts, since you brought it up, but did anybody in there plead guilty to a case they considered to be not a crime, or that their lawyer considered to be not a crime, or that the prosecution considered to be not a crime, or that the judge considered to be not a crime?
 
LSSBB said:
"We"? Zig does. It's his argument, unless you'd like to collaborate with him. Or do an impartial research project... which is what is really needed, instead of making pronouncements based on squat and ridiculing any opposition.
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This "we" is the friendly, compassionate "you" as in "did we have trouble passing poo this morning, or why are we so indisposed?"
 
Oystein said:
Can we keep the goal post where it stood when I posted my post? Not talking about a trial at all - we're talking about a "guilty" plea. Now I don't know "mcdonnell v United states", and consider it your burden to cite the relevant facts, since you brought it up, but did anybody in there plead guilty to a case they considered to be not a crime, or that their lawyer considered to be not a crime, or that the prosecution considered to be not a crime, or that the judge considered to be not a crime?
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They didn't plead, but the defense attorney went to trial over something they didn't think was a crime. And going to trial and pleading guilty are merely two different strategies if a lawyer for representing the defendant.
 
Border Reiver said:
Because it is a law.

Laws of the sort being discussed here deal with human behaviour, which is not reducible to mathematical principles.
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As I said, however much I would like to debate that point, it wouldn't be in service to anything. I don't understand what zig and TBD are asserting.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Why is a law not a mathematical truth?
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"2 + 2 = 4" is a mathematical statement that has exactly one, unambiguous meaning that is either provable or disprovable. What possibly similarity do you see between that and descriptions of behavior deemed illegal, written in often ambiguous English and dependent on a body of principles not directly stated in each law?
 
BobTheCoward said:
Why is a law not a mathematical truth?
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Laws arise from multiple, but individual perceptions of sociological, psychological, anthropological observations, and seek to be beneficial to some segment of society (ideally, but not often, the whole of society) according to some judgements of morality, utility, or other subjective considerations. A law is thus an inherently subjective thing, even though experts of legal theory and practice try their best to lay them down in a formalized, as objective as possiblle langauge.

Mathematics arises out of formal axioms, upon which formal rules of deduction are applied - this is an inherently objective process, even though mathematicians often apply subjective judgement to direct mathematics towards subjectively useful applications.

Hence mathematical and legal laws both fall on their own, separate stretches along some perfectly objective<->prefectly subjctive continuum. These domains may overlap somewhat on that scale, but with only a few outlier laws being comparable to laws in the other domain.
 
WilliamSeger said:
"2 + 2 = 4" is a mathematical statement that has exactly one, unambiguous meaning that is either provable or disprovable. What possibly similarity do you see between that and descriptions of behavior deemed illegal, written in often ambiguous English and dependent on a body of principles not directly stated in each law?
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I have an answer, but it i a derail. My on topic point is that these arguments are interesting, but don't address anything Cohen is facing.
 
BobTheCoward said:
I have an answer, but it i a derail. My on topic point is that these arguments are interesting, but don't address anything Cohen is facing.
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In one way though, they do. See, in the example of the teacher, if they have graded in error the student cannot directly appeal to a mathematician. However, should Cohen feel at some point he was pressured into confessing to something he was not guilty of, he can appeal to a higher court. Ultimately, the capricious inhabitant of the White House can wave his magic hands and pardon him, should it suit his purposes
 
LSSBB said:
In one way though, they do. See, in the example of the teacher, if they have graded in error the student cannot directly appeal to a mathematician. However, should Cohen feel at some point he was pressured into confessing to something he was not guilty of, he can appeal to a higher court. Ultimately, the capricious inhabitant of the White House can wave his magic hands and pardon him, should it suit his purposes
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You don't appeal in sciences. You engage in the scientific method. That is different than courts, rendering their judgement rather meaningless as matters of correctness.
 
BobTheCoward said:
They didn't plead, but the defense attorney went to trial over something they didn't think was a crime. And going to trial and pleading guilty are merely two different strategies if a lawyer for representing the defendant.
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I don't think this can be adequately described as a "strategy" by the defense attorney - it's not like he positively moved to have his client tried, despite feeling no crime was committed.
If my personal lawyer amberked on a strategy to go with me to trial over my having had a cheese sandwich for breakfast, I'd be rather surprised, and even more pissed. Oh well.

But thanks for clarifying that this case is NOT the precedent for someone pleading guilty for something akin to having had a cheese sandwich for breakfast (i.e. something that they consider to be not a crime).


Also, I think it is rather the exception than the rule that prosecution, trial judge, sentencing judge and appeals judge ALL think the action was crime, and to have them overturned by the SCOTUS. After all, only a small minority of criminal cases go to SCOTUS, and only a portion of them are found to be not a crime. So the a priori likelihood for Zig and TBD to know better than all involved in the current Cohen case is extremely slim - and not helped by their not being lawyers.
 
BobTheCoward said:
I have an answer, but it i a derail. My on topic point is that these arguments are interesting, but don't address anything Cohen is facing.
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Even in cases where the language of the law is completely unambiguous and the legal principles are not in dispute, the fact that most laws require a judgement of the unknowable intent of the accused means that they can't be reduced to axioms.
 
WilliamSeger said:
Even in cases where the language of the law is completely unambiguous and the legal principles are not in dispute, the fact that most laws require a judgement of the unknowable intent of the accused means that they can't be reduced to axioms.
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Why are we entertaining this off topic question? Establishing if there exists a realm for debating the truth of the law outside the rulings of judges and that zig can argue that zigs position carries equal weight, that still doesn't get us anywhere to that having any consequence.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Why are we entertaining this off topic question? Establishing if there exists a realm for debating the truth of the law outside the rulings of judges and that zig can argue that zigs position carries equal weight, that still doesn't get us anywhere to that having any consequence.
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I don't believe that you really understand what part intent plays in the law, and this is a case where it's vital to Zig's argument: Why did Cohen and Trump make the hush money payment?
 
WilliamSeger said:
I don't believe that you really understand what part intent plays in the law, and this is a case where it's vital to Zig's argument: Why did Cohen and Trump make the hush money payment?
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There are two things vital for zig's argument. That is one. The other is this whole notion of pleading guilty to something parties don't think is a crime. I don't really have an opinion on the former. My arguing about the latter is the answer doesn't seem to actually advance any goal of zig's.
 
WilliamSeger said:
I don't believe that you really understand what part intent plays in the law, and this is a case where it's vital to Zig's argument: Why did Cohen and Trump make the hush money payment?
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Irrelevant. Paying hush money isn't illegal.

The illegal part has to do with how it got moved. The damning part is moving it in ways that tried to obfuscate what they were doing, even with warnings of potential legal liabilities made known (which does a lot of the heavy lifting on proving intent, rather nice of them).

I'm rather glad this is getting plead, because the biggest hurdle I saw in the trial was getting 12 people (well, at least 6 on average anyways) to not think "porn star" long enough to follow a boring discussion about financial transactions.
 
Delphic Oracle said:
Irrelevant. Paying hush money isn't illegal.

The illegal part has to do with how it got moved. The damning part is moving it in ways that tried to obfuscate what they were doing, even with warnings of potential legal liabilities made known (which does a lot of the heavy lifting on proving intent, rather nice of them).

I'm rather glad this is getting plead, because the biggest hurdle I saw in the trial was getting 12 people (well, at least 6 on average anyways) to not think "porn star" long enough to follow a boring discussion about financial transactions.
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I believe it is relevant, because if the intent of making hush money payments was really to protect Trump's campaign rather than his marriage or his personal reputation (ha ha), that's what would make them illegal. If they were just a personal expense, then the campaign finance laws don't apply.
 
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