Cont: Mueller Investigation pt3

[3point14]

I guess Trump isn't a very good judge of character.

It's really difficult to be the victim of unscrupulous people if one is honest and not on the make.

It's very, very difficult to con an honest man, where's the leverage?

Conning a crook though? Much more viable.

 

[Ziggurat]

Of course it was, the risk is that the whole plea agreement could be overturned
and/or declared null and void if the law wasn't followed.

Who the hell is going to overturn it? Third parties have no standing to appeal, and both the prosecution and the defense entered into the deal because they both prefer it to the alternative, so neither the prosecution nor the defense will appeal. The only person who really could have overturned the deal is the judge, but again, he's got no incentive to. Accept the plea, clear the case and be done with it. Cohen's certainly guilty of other stuff, it's not like he'd be saving an innocent man, and his sentence will likely not be overly harsh either.

Plus of course the lawyers on both side could be open to professional malpractice charges and breaches of their professional ethics so could even lose their licence to practice law or worse.

Yeah, right This isn't a case where a totally innocent person is being railroaded. Cohen's certainly guilty of some of the charges. Prosecutors don't generally get punished for overcharging, and the plea deal is probably pretty good for the defense.

Everyone in this matter had a "top priority" to get the law right.

That's a fantasy.

 

[Ziggurat]

Sorry, but that really does not make any sense.

Cohen himself flat-out said that he plead guilty to the charges against him because he is in fact guilty of those charges.

That's frequently a condition of a plea.

 

[Dr. Keith]

It's also an unrealistically high standard of evidence.

The Scooby Doo requirement.

"Oh dang I knew I shouldn't have detailed all my crimes in such a legally unambiguous way on email"

Luckily the judge didn't see it that way

Of course, but even if you use that unreasonably high bar, you can't assume those documents don't exist in Cohen's office.

 

[The Big Dog]

Cohen tells Congress he doesn't know if Trump knew of the Russia meeting.
Someone tells CNN that Cohen said trump did know
CNN calls Lanny and Lanny confirms it

When The Post called Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, at the time to confirm the report, he said as an anonymous source that it was accurate.

But Thursday, Davis, speaking on the record, apologized for confirming something he did not know to be true.

“I regret that I wasn’t clear enough to The Post. I should have been more clear. I could not independently confirm the information in the CNN story,” he said.

Lanny is a LAWYER, ya see folks, and his top priority is to get everything right.

https://nypost.com/2018/08/23/cohen...about-trump-tower-meeting/?platform=hootsuite

 

[Arcade22]

Well, if you are correct, then Trump sure does hire incredibly stupid people.

After all, Cohen is a lawyer himself and if he just plead "guilty" to a crime that he was actually innocent of, then he has got to be the most stupid lawyer in the world.

We're dealing with the deep state here. Even the President of the United States is almost powerless against the jack booted thugs of the Illuminati and Freemasons. They orchestrate false flag mass shootings to justify stealing the peoples liberties... getting a morally upstanding godfearing citizens convicted of bogus crimes is nothing...

 

[Crossbow]

That's frequently a condition of a plea.

Well, ...

If the person who is charged with a crime, actually does admit to doing that crime in writing, and admits orally to doing that crime while in courtroom while under oath, and there other evidence to support his admission guilt, then that almost always means that the person charged with the crime is actually guilty of doing that crime.

I am not sure what else is needed to substantiate things.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

Both Ziggurat and The Big Dog seem to be arguing that he's pleaded guilty to something that's not a crime and which he didn't do anyway, because prosecutors have asked him to.

And he would’ve gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for that meddling porn star!

 

[quadraginta]

Sure. Not certain how that is relevant.

How many examples can you offer of judges accepting guilty pleas for something that wasn't a crime?

As others have noted, this happens frequently among poor defendants who have little choice but to rely on overworked, and underpaid, public defenders for legal advise, and are faced with well-funded and wildly aggressive prosecutors. It helps when you set up society specifically to convince them that they'll likely end up in jail sooner or later regardless.

<snip>

Please note the highlighted phrase.

Yes, I understand that people will plead guilty to crimes they did not commit, and that this is something more frequently encountered among the less well-off.

But Ziggurat began by stating that what Cohen did was not a crime, and then went on to talk about false pleas. I am not aware of a lot of people of any financial or social status pleading guilty to things which aren't crimes to begin with.

How do you charge someone with something which isn't a crime? What statutes do you specify if none exist?

 

[jimbob]

Please note the highlighted phrase.

Yes, I understand that people will plead guilty to crimes they did not commit, and that this is something more frequently encountered among the less well-off.

But Ziggurat began by stating that what Cohen did was not a crime, and then went on to talk about false pleas. I am not aware of a lot of people of any financial or social status pleading guilty to things which aren't crimes to begin with.

How do you charge someone with something which isn't a crime? What statutes do you specify if none exist?

Exactly, which is why I took issue with Emily's Cat's analogy below:

!!! Analogy Warning !!!

Bob is heroin dealer, who is attacked by an armed robber while walking down a dark alley. Bob shoots and kills the robber. The cops have been following Bob because they suspect he's a heroin dealer, and they witness the shooting. The cops snag Bob up after he kills the robber, and take him in for interrogation. During the interrogation, they tell him that he's under suspicion for being a heroin dealer, which carries a sentence of 25 years... but that murder only carries a sentence of 5 years. Bob isn't completely sure how much info the cops have on him with respect to heroin dealing. The cops offer him a deal: plead guilty to murder and flip on his supplier, and they'll drop the case against him related to heroin dealing. The cops tell Bob that if he doesn't take the plea bargain, they will prosecute for heroin dealing.

Bob didn't commit murder - it was clearly self-defense. But he is willing to plead guilty to murder because it carries a shorter sentence than heroin dealing does.

The action can be cast as a crime, and can be plead to as a crime, without actually having been a crime.

That's not the right analogy, of course one could plead guilty to a crime for which you are innocent.

The argument occasionally is that he pleaded guilty to something that wasn't a crime but which he did actually do. Or possibly that he pleaded guilty to something that he didn't do and anyway wasn't a crime.

Which is just a stupid argument.

It is like Bob being charged with dealing in carrots.

 

[pgwenthold]

And he would’ve gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for that meddling porn star!

Or "meddling with the porn star" as the case may be.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

No, WD. Whether Cohen is guilty or innocent of making a campaign contribution by paying Stormy depends entirely upon whether paying Stormy is a campaign contribution. Statistics do not matter for that evaluation.

That explains why, on four separate occasions, you accused others of not understanding statistics.

And again, because you're misrepresenting the debate, the issue here was whether or not judges reject false guilty pleas. It was claimed that the judge's acceptance of the plea was evidence that the plea was correct. But this is wrong. Judges do not generally reject guilty pleas even when the defendant is not guilty. That's all the link was needed for. Nobody has actually contested that.

I erased my post one minute before you submitted your response. I was planning to submit a corrected post, but I guess there's no reason to do so now that you've decided the estimated statistics you cited are irrelevant.

No, WD. You have every single thing in this post wrong, because you don't understand what's actually being argued.

I assume you spotted my error, but were too generous to point it out. Thank you.

 

[Ziggurat]

That explains why, on four separate occasions, you accused others of not understanding statistics.

Yes. Because they tried to apply statistics in invalid ways.

I erased my post one minute before you submitted your response. I was planning to submit a corrected post, but I guess there's no reason to do so now that you've decided the estimated statistics you cited are irrelevant.

They are irrelevant to determining the odds that Cohen would plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit, yes. They are not irrelevant to showing that judges frequently accept guilty pleas from innocent people.

 

[Ziggurat]

How do you charge someone with something which isn't a crime? What statutes do you specify if none exist?

Are you honestly this clueless? How can you get something so obvious some completely wrong?

Nobody is claiming there is no statute being referred to. My claim is that Cohen's actions in paying Stormy don't actually meet the criteria of that statute.

 

[Crossbow]

Both Ziggurat and The Big Dog seem to be arguing that he's pleaded guilty to something that's not a crime and which he didn't do anyway, because prosecutors have asked him to.

I think that you are quite correct, but their logic still fails me.

After all, if both 'Ziggurat' and 'The Big Dog' are correct in stating that somehow Cohen was forced to plead guilty to a crime that he was innocent of, then that would mean that:

First, Cohen, the Cohen legal team, and everyone on prosecution are terrible liars.

And second, that the judge overseeing this case is total idiot for not seeing these liars himself.

Therefore, everyone involved in this case is either incredibly dishonest and/or incredibly stupid.

As for me, I know that the legal system is far from perfect, but I hardly believe that the legal system could possibly be this broken especially when one considers this case to involve a sitting president.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I would not hold impeachment proceedings against Trump over this. Not his affairs, not his hush money, not this illegal campaign contributions. But if he paid Cohen legal fees or the porn stars with the Trump foundation accounts, it's a very different ball game.

Far more troubling to me has been his abuse of power. The blatant obstruction of justice and jury tampering.

My guess is that there will be other crimes uncovered.

Abuse of power, cheating to get elected, pathologic narcissism, family criminal enterprise soon to be further exposed...

Trump's world is crumbling around him, hold on to your hats.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

OK, I'm about to blow your mind with a paradox:

Large fonts don't convince people.

Let's see you get out of that one.

Neither do unconvincing arguments.

 

[Stacyhs]

Let's see.

Michael Cohen is a lawyer.
Lanny Davis is a lawyer.
The prosecutors are lawyers.
The judge is a lawyer.

Zig is not.

Now out of that group, who I wonder understands the law?


Hmmmm.

The depth of denial among a couple posters in this thread is mind boggling. It's like still claiming a sample is the victim's blood even though it tested negative for blood and contained no DNA of the victim. But, hell's bells, it's still blood for some people.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Once again, that isn't how the private use exception works. It doesn't suffice for the expense to benefit the campaign.

Have you posted the paragraph in FEC regulations which spells this out?

It sounds like something you made up.

Not that this makes one iota of difference in this case.

Cohen admitted the payoff was for the campaign. Cohen admitted under oath he intended to violate FEC regs. Cohen had a tape backing up his claim Trump knew it as well. It's not up to you to imagine it was a personal expense because you and Giuliani made that excuse up after the fact.

 

[jimbob]

Yes. Because they tried to apply statistics in invalid ways.



They are irrelevant to determining the odds that Cohen would plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit, yes. They are not irrelevant to showing that judges frequently accept guilty pleas from innocent people.

Why are they invalid?

If one links to a study estimating that 2-8% of guilty pleas are innocent, then presumably one is arguing that the percentage is a factor.

Otherwise one could just point out the obvious fact that false confessions and guilty pleas are known.

If one accepts these statistics, then one can presumably in the absence of any other information about a person who has pleaded guilty, say that overall there'd be a 2-8% chance that they had pleaded guilty when innocent.

However in this case we do have additional information that makes this far less likely than that. If the US is anything like the UK. then some of these cases will involve obvious miscarriages of justice, with no evidence beyond the guilty verdict, and people with inadequate representation. If you then remove those from this population, you are left asking - how many guilty verdicts are there where there is a massive paper trail, and eyewitness testimony agreeing with the defendant that they are guilty?

Even in the public domain, there was enough to assess that Cohen was very likely guilty.

The case is rather high profile, and will be subjected to a lot of scrutiny - which means that the judge is under pressure to get the judgement right. That does not include accepting guilty pleas for something that isn't a crime.