Cont: Mueller Investigation pt3

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Ziggurat said:
Your reading of the thread has been quite shallow. Note this post:

Edwards was accused of multiple things. One of them is circumventing campaign donation limits by having donors give money to Hunter outside the campaign. That is the legal parallel to Trump and Stormy. But that isn't what I suggested Edwards might be guilty of. I suggested he might have paid Hunter directly with campaign cash without her having done actual work for the campaign. And that IS NOT a parallel to the Trump case.
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Ah, so that's how you want to play it. What you had been referring to all along was this payment for no actual work (rather than the multiple other alleged wrongdoings). Man, it's good thing ponderingturtle specifically asked why it's wrong to put one's girlfriend on the payroll otherwise I might've gotten the totally unfair impression that you're a raging hypocrite and semantic wanker. Thanks for clarifying my shallow reading.
 
LSSBB said:
I see, you are hanging your hat on 2 - 8 %.
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And the circumstances described are very different. The plea bargains in these cases aren't millionaires and their expensive lawyers.

It's destitute single moms who can't leave their kids at home alone while they rot in jail for six months pending their turn with an underpaid public defender.

SPLC has been on this for decades.
 
The Big Dog said:
Actually, there is a 100% chance he is right, if there was a 100% chance that Cohen (and maybe his wife) were going down on the tax charges, and the deal was on the table only if he pleaded to the tax charges AND the other charges
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What it really hinges on is whether I'm right about paying Stormy not being a campaign expenditure. I think my argument on that point is pretty strong. If I'm right that it's not an expenditure, then it doesn't really matter why Cohen pled guilty to it, but I've given a very plausible explanation for why he might.

But suppose I'm wrong, and he's truly guilty on that count. The incentive for him to plead guilty is still the same. In neither case is his plea itself evidence that the action was or was not a crime. In both cases, his incentive to plead guilty has nothing to do with the truth, and everything to do with reducing his sentence.
 
Ziggurat said:
You say that like the number is low. It isn't. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the percentage of cases where an innocent person plead guilty have that plea accepted by the judge is quite high. In only a minority of such cases will a judge reject the plea. And in this specific case, the judge would have little reason to reject the plea, since accepting it doesn't do any injustice to Cohen.
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It is low, when estimating the chances of a single case, vs. whether there are large scale injustices, as the intent if the article was aiming for.

And yes, I really understand statistics.
 
blutoski said:
And the circumstances described are very different. The plea bargains in these cases aren't millionaires and their expensive lawyers.

It's destitute single moms who can't leave their kids at home alone while they rot in jail for six months pending their turn with an underpaid public defender.
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Which is why it should be more important for judges in those cases to reject such false pleas. But they don't.

So why would you expect the judge to reject this plea? Do you think the judge will feel that Cohen, with his own extensive legal experience plus the advice of a highly paid lawyer representing him, needs additional protected from the prosecution?
 
Ziggurat said:
What it really hinges on is whether I'm right about paying Stormy not being a campaign expenditure. I think my argument on that point is pretty strong. If I'm right that it's not an expenditure, then it doesn't really matter why Cohen pled guilty to it, but I've given a very plausible explanation for why he might.

But suppose I'm wrong, and he's truly guilty on that count. The incentive for him to plead guilty is still the same. In neither case is his plea itself evidence that the action was or was not a crime. In both cases, his incentive to plead guilty has nothing to do with the truth, and everything to do with reducing his sentence.
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"If"

Good luck. The only statistics you cite show 2 - 8%. And as ably pointed out by blutoski, that very well could be optimistic.
 
Ziggurat said:
What it really hinges on is whether I'm right about paying Stormy not being a campaign expenditure. I think my argument on that point is pretty strong. If I'm right that it's not an expenditure, then it doesn't really matter why Cohen pled guilty to it, but I've given a very plausible explanation for why he might.

But suppose I'm wrong, and he's truly guilty on that count. The incentive for him to plead guilty is still the same. In neither case is his plea itself evidence that the action was or was not a crime. In both cases, his incentive to plead guilty has nothing to do with the truth, and everything to do with reducing his sentence.
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You are indeed quite correct
 
LSSBB said:
It is low, when estimating the chances of a single case, vs. whether there are large scale injustices, as the intent if the article was aiming for.

And yes, I really understand statistics.
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If you really understand statistics, then why are you applying them incorrectly here? This isn't a randomly selected case.
 
Ziggurat said:
Which is why it should be more important for judges in those cases to reject such false pleas. But they don't.

So why would you expect the judge to reject this plea? Do you think the judge will feel that Cohen, with his own extensive legal experience plus the advice of a highly paid lawyer representing him, needs additional protected from the prosecution?
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Now you are arguing from incredulity.
 
Acbytesla said:
My GOD!! I can't believe this. I agree with The Big Dog...and hell hasn't froze over!

For the average person, it's ******* easy. For Donald Trump telling the truth is a rainbows-and-unicorns fantasy.
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Boom!!!
 
Now what we have not been discussing in connection with this is Cohen's "expensive lawyers," and in this case, Lanny Davis. It might but should not surprise you to know that he might not be on the up and up and might not have had Cohen's best interests in mind....
 
Ziggurat said:
If you really understand statistics, then why are you applying them incorrectly here? This isn't a randomly selected case.
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Exactly, it is the sort of case where 2% is far too high an estimate.
 
This kind of seems like a catch-22, which bothers me some. As I understand it, it boils down to Trump paying money for something that is considered a campaign expense... which makes it a campaign violation because he used undeclared contributions for it, and they're considered undeclared contributions because it was a campaign expense, so any money spent on it is by definition campaign money?

If that's the case (and I haven't completely slaughtered this, which is completely likely), then couldn't this have just as easily gone the other way too? Given the nature of the payment being made, if he had paid out of official campaign finances, wouldn't it be just as easy to claim that he had used campaign money for personal expenditures?

I mean, the whole hush-money thing is both campaign related (to avoid negative PR) and personal (it was a personal interaction from prior to his candidacy). Which makes this seem like there's no possible way for this to be done that doesn't leave Trump open to a claim of breaking a campaign law... even though if he weren't a candidate, none of it is at all illegal in any way.

Or have I missed something material in there? I confess I find the situation confusing.
 
LSSBB said:
Now you are arguing from incredulity.
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You have that backwards. The argument from incredulity here is the claim that a judge wouldn't accept a false plea. But of course, they would and they do.
 
Ziggurat said:
Which is why it should be more important for judges in those cases to reject such false pleas. But they don't.

So why would you expect the judge to reject this plea? Do you think the judge will feel that Cohen, with his own extensive legal experience plus the advice of a highly paid lawyer representing him, needs additional protected from the prosecution?
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Couple of differences. Usually there's no judge involved in these plea bargains. It's a backwater DA and an unrepresented accused who waives her rights entirely and has no idea there's another option. The DA is long gone to his next ladder in a political career by the time SPLC pulls the data.

The attraction for the DA is that nobody will ever know. It doesn't happen in high profile cases like this, because the judge knows he'll have to explain it.

In any case, as mentioned, the evidence docket looks like it would be no contest. Sure, he could have plead guilty to something he didn't do. Could have been aliens, too. Let's go with probabilities here.
 
Stacko said:
There already is evidence.


Here's a link to the full transcript of the Cohen plea hearing. The part detailing the types evidence they are planning to present appears page 26.
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Yup, pointed this out twice in the part 2 days (last night). It needs repeated every time some hack makes it out like all we have is the word of Cohen.

They are not going where the evidence leads us. The prosecutors have extensive evidence. The only way to contend that it's only actually Cohen's coerced words is to assert that the prosecutors were lying in open court to the judge.
 
Emily's Cat said:
This kind of seems like a catch-22, which bothers me some. As I understand it, it boils down to Trump paying money for something that is considered a campaign expense... which makes it a campaign violation because he used undeclared contributions for it, and they're considered undeclared contributions because it was a campaign expense, so any money spent on it is by definition campaign money?

If that's the case (and I haven't completely slaughtered this, which is completely likely), then couldn't this have just as easily gone the other way too? Given the nature of the payment being made, if he had paid out of official campaign finances, wouldn't it be just as easy to claim that he had used campaign money for personal expenditures?

I mean, the whole hush-money thing is both campaign related (to avoid negative PR) and personal (it was a personal interaction from prior to his candidacy). Which makes this seem like there's no possible way for this to be done that doesn't leave Trump open to a claim of breaking a campaign law... even though if he weren't a candidate, none of it is at all illegal in any way.

Or have I missed something material in there? I confess I find the situation confusing.
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Already discussed above. From what I have read and understand, he would not be guilty of campaign finance violations had he declared the expense.

The catch-22 is that he would then have to reveal the affair. But that is the fate of the wicked.
 
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