W.D.Clinger
Philosopher
The highlighted isn't true:
Note that "includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof" speaks of "another crime", which does not necessarily have to be a felony crime. The defense tried to get the judge to tell the jury that other crime had to be a felony, but the judge would have none of it, asking Blanche whether § 175.10 actually says "felony" instead of crime. Blanche admitted that is not what the law said, and Judge Merchan said he wasn't going to misrepresent the law when giving instructions to the jury.
That is not at all true. According to the prosecution, that other crime consisted of a conspiracy to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election. One of the several things that were unlawful about that conspiracy was the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels made by Michael Cohen (which amounted to a donation to Trump's campaign that exceeded legal limitations on the size of such donations, regardless of whether you choose to think of it as Cohen making the donation or the Trump Org making the donation via its share of the reimbursement). The decision to disguise reimbursement of that illegal campaign donation as legal expenses was also unlawful (for several reasons).
This was all documented within the prosecution's summation and argued about during several sidebars preceding the judge's charge to the jury.
(I apologize for providing links to such lengthy transcripts, most of which seem not to be electronically searchable. I had the luxury of following these proceedings in near real time by watching and listening to extensive television coverage, but I'm not going to read hundreds of pages of transcript to find specific passages on behalf of people who make spurious allegations despite their inattention to what actually happened in the trial.)
Sherkeu said:
Sherkeu is confused. The felony part of falsifying records is the fact that it was done with intent to commit or to conceal another crime. That other crime does not have to be a felony.
acbytesla said:
The prosecution believed all of those examples were present in this case, but argued that a guilty verdict would be appropriate even if only one were present. The defense wanted to have the judge tell the jury that every juror would have to agree on which of those illegal activities were present, but the judge ruled (correctly) that the law doesn't insist upon that, just as the law doesn't insist that all jurors must agree on one particular motive for a murder before returning a verdict of guilty.
