Cont: Mueller Investigation pt3

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Ziggurat said:
Cohen's statement doesn't mean much, coming as part of a plea deal.
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If Cohen lies as part of his plea deal, the deal is voided and he's eligible for prosecution at higher stakes, which now includes perjury. He has a vested interest in not lying to the court and prosecutors.
 
Upchurch said:
If Cohen lies as part of his plea deal, the deal is voided and he's eligible for prosecution at higher stakes, which now includes perjury. He has a vested interest in not lying to the court and prosecutors.
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This is a very good point.

In general, prosecutors rarely rely on just what a "turned" defendant says. They almost always have documentary evidence as well, and this acts as a check to make sure that the defendant is telling the truth. The whole rationale for turning a witness to testify in a document trial is to have that witness give context to the documents when the prosecutors publish the documents to the jury; they then have a person who knows what the documents mean, testifying to what they mean.

In this case, Cohen knows he must not lie, because he knows what the FBI seized when they raided his home, his office and his hotel. If he lies, prosecutors will know it, they will know he is unreliable, the plea deal will be revoked, and Cohen, (and perhaps his wife) will go to jail for a very long time.
 
Ziggurat said:
In principle, the plea agreement could be at risk, but in practice, from whom? Not the defendant. The defendant doesn't want the plea agreement nullified. And the judge has no reason to care.
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So, it is your belief that there is no judicial oversight of federal judges and that judges are not bound to any code of conduct? Hmm.
 
Stacyhs said:
What about David Pecker? Do you think he was give immunity because all he had to say was "The payments had nothing to do with the election. They were all "personal"?
The timing doesn't "suggest" that the benefit to the campaign was a consideration; it screams it was the reason.
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Ziggurat said:
First, there can be multiple reasons. One of the reasons being to benefit the campaign doesn't suffice. Second, in regards to Pecker, I don't know what he testified about, but it may well have been more about the tax evasion stuff. In terms of nailing Cohen, the other charges are much more significant.
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I doubt Cohan would have pled guilty if he did not know the Feds had ironclad evidence against him. Pecker's flipping was part of that evidence as he told the Feds that Trump knew about the pay offs and had the details of those payments. Pecker wasn't involved in Trump's tax finances at all. That would be Weisselberg. He would know about any tax evasion.
 
Dear FSM. This is such a painful and long-winded way to dump a President who is clearly utterly unfit to hold office. Where are the adults whose job it should be to control this rampaging, petulant child who's been in the grip of an 18-month-long tantrum? One that's getting worse by the day?
 
WilliamSeger said:
It would, however, take the reins of power away from someone who is mentally unstable and whose malignant narcissism is doing considerable deliberate damage to our democracy. Anyway, this scandal is just a microcosm of the appalling dishonesty that is the Trump administration, so impeaching him for this would be like getting Al Capone for tax evasion.
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For the record, I'm not against impeaching Trump, should there be a reasonable likelihood of success and valid grounds. I'm just saying that I don't consider hush money payments about affairs to be decent grounds to do it on. Mental instability and malignant narcissism, on the other hand, I would consider to be better grounds (much as that would be better addressed by him being declared unfit), though not likely to succeed. If he was illegally working with the Russians to win, as seems very likely, that would be firm grounds to impeach... and hard to tell if it could succeed, given how protective the current controlling Republicans seem to be of the criminals among them and how worried they likely are about the possibility of his entire Presidency being declared to have been illegitimate in such a case, with the ensuing utter mess and general craziness that that would cause.

smartcooky said:
Why didn't he pay her in 2011 then? Answer, because back then, he didn't much care whether she said anything.
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That begs the question, of course, of whether she came looking for a payment then and was refused? I haven't heard of such an event, but I could have missed it. Without a case of that happening, this particular line of counterargument is a bad one to address the argument. Well, unless, for some strange reason, Trump/Cohen specifically sought her out to just preemptively give her the money without her saying anything first?

GlennB said:
Dear FSM. This is such a painful and long-winded way to dump a President who is clearly utterly unfit to hold office. Where are the adults whose job it should be to control this rampaging, petulant child who's been in the grip of an 18-month-long tantrum? One that's getting worse by the day?
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You already know where the Congressional Republicans are and what they've been doing, do you not? I'm reminded quite a bit of the concept of face, when it comes to their actions.
 
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Fudbucker said:
You know what would put this to rest? A trial.
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Ninja'd :p




jimbob said:
I've got an easier idea. Let's look and see if there is a case where a judge has accepted guilty pleas for such a set of actions and if they have, then we can agree that that judge's legal opinion was that a crime had been committed.


Can anyone suggest any suitable cases?
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jimbob said:
I've got an easier idea. Let's look and see if there is a case where a judge has accepted guilty pleas for such a set of actions and if they have, then we can agree that that judge's legal opinion was that a crime had been committed.


Can anyone suggest any suitable cases?
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How about US v Cohen?
 
By Jove, I think that's a stonking idea.

Any idea whether the judge accepted the plea?
 
jadebox said:
So, it is your belief that there is no judicial oversight of federal judges and that judges are not bound to any code of conduct? Hmm.
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Judges don’t get in trouble just for being wrong, and if my argument is right, you still can’t say the judge did anything worse than be wrong.

What oversight do you imagine would prevent this?
 
Upchurch said:
If Cohen lies as part of his plea deal, the deal is voided and he's eligible for prosecution at higher stakes, which now includes perjury. He has a vested interest in not lying to the court and prosecutors.
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You’re going to prosecute someone for pleading guilty to a charge to DA leveled against him? Yeah, no. Never going to happen, that’s just stupid. I doubt it even can happen. You can’t charge someone with perjury for pleading innocent if they are found guilty either. To say nothing of the problem of proving belief necessary to sustain a perjury claim.
 
GlennB said:
Dear FSM. This is such a painful and long-winded way to dump a President who is clearly utterly unfit to hold office. Where are the adults whose job it should be to control this rampaging, petulant child who's been in the grip of an 18-month-long tantrum? One that's getting worse by the day?
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Ramen
 
Ziggurat said:
I’m sure they do, for other charges he pled to.
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As he did for that charge. Why? Because they had him dead to rights and he knew it.

Sorry, but your claim that what he and Trump did is not a crime is simply not based on the facts. You can argue it twelve ways to Sunday (and you have) but it does not change the facts.
 
Stacyhs said:
As he did for that charge. Why? Because they had him dead to rights and he knew it.

Sorry, but your claim that what he and Trump did is not a crime is simply not based on the facts. You can argue it twelve ways to Sunday (and you have) but it does not change the facts.
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Well he is arguing based on the law.

So...
 
Ziggurat said:
You’re going to prosecute someone for pleading guilty to a charge to DA leveled against him? Yeah, no. Never going to happen, that’s just stupid. I doubt it even can happen. You can’t charge someone with perjury for pleading innocent if they are found guilty either. To say nothing of the problem of proving belief necessary to sustain a perjury claim.
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You literally have no idea how plea bargains and flipping are related, so you?
 
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