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Asked and answered pages ago, multiple times. To get a lighter sentence.

Of course. That's why people flip and tell the truth when they're guilty. He knew he was breaking the law which is why he and his boss, Trump, have lied about it since day one. He's a freaking lawyer. He knows what's a crime and what's not a crime.

You've presented nothing that convinces anyone here that what Cohen and Trump did wasn't a crime. There's good reason for that: it is a crime.

You and TBD go on believing whatever makes you happy. It doesn't make it true. And I've already wasted enough time on this dead as a door nail subject. Toodles!
 
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No. He is arguing based on how he interprets the law...which is contrary to what the prosecution found, to what the defense agreed to, and what the judge accepted.


So...

No, he is explaining how the FEC interprets the law.
 
No, he used one quote from one person. Someone else presented another opposing quote from a former FEC chairman.

As I told Zig, I've wasted enough time on this subject. You believe whatever floats your boat. Toodles!

I decided to let the courts decide.

Turns out they already did.
 
I've got to ask.

What exactly are Cohen, et al going to "flip" on Trump about?

Ten years of an inside look at the Trump family criminal enterprise, I would imagine.

Just skimmed through David Cay Johnston's It's Even Worse Than You Think. It would appear Trump once got a cartel cocaine drug dealer off pulling a few strings, getting the venue changed to his sister's courtroom. She eventually recused herself but the dealer who was a mob contact of Trump's still got off scot free.

Adds a bit more to the speculation about his sniffing during some speeches.
 
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?

This has got to be one if the funniest threads I have read in a long time. :-)

The world you are creating is really bizarre.
 
This has got to be one if the funniest threads I have read in a long time. :-)

The world you are creating is really bizarre.

That's pretty much it. Double jointed ambidextrous game of Twister with just the right amount of bluster and creative reinterpretation. It's a never-ending journey through a hypercube of pretend legal authority to all avoid any hint of a taint of an allusion that The Donald could have done anything even just a shade unsavory or illegal.
 
That's pretty much it. Double jointed ambidextrous game of Twister with just the right amount of bluster and creative reinterpretation..

One of the things that I found funny was thinking of the poor law clerk having to record the guilty plea for a crime that doesn't exist. Granted, I am not familiar with how courts handle things like that, but I doubt they can just make up statutes to cite.
 
I imagine that it’s like an illiterate person signing a contract. Where it says “guilty of crime code # ____________” the clerk just puts an X. It’s not like anyone would ever check. I mean judges and prosecutors do this all the time.
 
That is not addressing what I said, which was addressing what you have been arguing upthread (see the exchange with Smartcooky)- not the moved goalpoasts.

OF COURSE judges, despite their best efforts, will have accepted guilty pleas from people who are actually innocent. Nobody is disputing that.

However that is quite different from a judge accepting a guilty plea to something when their reading of the law is that no crime has been committed.


That's how one's brain tricks itself.


Apparently it's even trickier to find examples of judges who have accepted guilty pleas when there is no evidence that a crime has been committed.

I wonder why that is? Some people seem to think it's remarkably common. That should make it easy to document a few.
 
I imagine that it’s like an illiterate person signing a contract. Where it says “guilty of crime code # ____________” the clerk just puts an X. It’s not like anyone would ever check. I mean judges and prosecutors do this all the time.


Why even bother with such minor details. Once the defendant has offered a guilty plea, nothing else matters anymore. That's the end of it. Right?

The prosecutor has won their case, and the judge doesn't have any business questioning how it was done.

What do they even need a crime for?
 
Apparently it's even trickier to find examples of judges who have accepted guilty pleas when there is no evidence that a crime has been committed.

I wonder why that is? Some people seem to think it's remarkably common. That should make it easy to document a few.

It happens on TV/movies all the time!!
 
Judges hate it when their cases get thrown out by a higher court because of some obvious flaw.
Since this is such a high-profile case, we can be certain that the t's were crossed.
 
imagination

Cohen's statement doesn't mean much, coming as part of a plea deal.

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.
The folks who are promoting increasingly imaginative scenarios in which Donald Trump has done nothing wrong have been amazingly quick to disregard what Cohen said under oath.

In other contexts, these same people have expressed extraordinary fear of the "perjury trap" they see in saying anything at all to a court, a grand jury, the FBI, or a special counsel. It's almost as though they cannot imagine how someone in that position might avoid perjury by telling the truth.

Before I conclude they cannot imagine how they themselves might avoid perjury by telling the truth, I should consider the time and energy they have expended on their defense of a man whose ability to avoid perjury by telling the truth is indeed hard to imagine. Having invested so much of their imagination on normalization of habitual dishonesty, they may have lost their ability to imagine the possibility that someone who is testifying under oath, at risk of being prosecuted for perjury if they lie, might actually tell the truth.

Michael Cohen does not appear to be a person who would tell the truth if he could avoid doing so without consequence. Under the circumstances, however, I'm finding it easier to believe what Michael Cohen said under oath than to believe the Internet non-lawyers who are saying Cohen probably, must have, undoubtedly lied to the court.
 
Trump supporters should be grateful that Cohen didn't get immunity like Pecker or Weisselberg.


Prosecutors don't generally offer immunity when they already have air-tight, irrefutable cases in hand, that's when they go for plea deals if they want more information, or (more likely) testimony against other parties.

Immunity is useful when you have someone you can't nail who can give information you don't have, and testify to it, but whose testimony might get them into their own trouble.
 
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