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While Donald Trump launches verbal attacks against the prosecutor and judge overseeing his criminal charges in connection with hush money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, an attorney for the former US president has said his main focus is on legal maneuvers aiming to get the case dismissed long before a trial jury is ever seated.

Jim Trusty appeared on Sunday on ABCs This Week and argued that theres a lot to play with when examining whether New York state prosecutors waited too long to secure an indictment against Trump and if the ex-president intended to commit any crimes with the payments at the center of the case.

The payments were made at the height of the 2016 White House race which Trump won, and Trusty also reiterated questions that his side has previously asked about whether the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, should be able to apply federal election law into a New York case.

The motions to dismiss have to be a priority because they amputate this miscarriage of justice early on, Trusty said to show host Jonathan Karl. And I think youll see some very robust motions.

In his remarks to Karl, Trusty also doubled down on questions already floated by his side about whether Trump could get a fair trial in Manhattan. The New York City borough voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Democrat who defeated Trustys client in the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden, after all.

However, though Trusty said Manhattan is a real stronghold of liberalism, of activism, and that infects the whole process, he suggested pre-trial dismissal motions citing statutes of limitation and an alleged lack of criminal intent are almost certain to come before one that might seek a change of trial venue.

A state grand jury in Manhattan on 30 March handed up 34 felony charges of falsifying business records to cover up $130,000 in payments meant to keep Daniels quiet about claims of an extramarital sexual encounter in what Braggs office maintains was a conspiracy to influence the race Trump won over Hillary Clinton. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges on Tuesday.

The Daniels payments have already led to one conviction, in federal court: that of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen, in that case, said he paid Daniels at the behest of Trump and was reimbursed by the then president during his time in the Oval Office. Prosecutors alleged that those payments were falsely classified as legal expenses as part of a conspiracy for Trump to get around state and federal election laws or to deceive tax authorities.

Cohen pleaded guilty to federal crimes stemming from the hush money payments, resulting in a three-year prison sentence as well as the loss of his law license.

Trusty on Sunday called Cohen a convicted perjurer with an ax to grind but said it would be ineffective to attack his credibility in a motion at this stage. He also suggested that Trumps political rhetoric about Bragg being a failed district attorney and a criminal and about the judge to whom the case was allotted, Juan Merchan, being a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife was unlikely to be reflected in some of his sides upcoming legalese.

It was pointing [out] that they have a bias, that they have a political interest that is contrary to President Trump, Trusty said about comments that prompted Merchan to issue a warning against any statements that were likely to incite violence or civil unrest.

Trusty added: Theres kind of a political lane and a legal lane. Im in the legal lane. Im not going to worry too much or be able to control the politics of the moment.

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While Trusty didnt elaborate on his statute of limitation mention, New York law gives prosecutors five years to charge felony falsification of business records. The last alleged false record in the indictment is from December 2017, more than five years before Bragg obtained the charges against Trump.

Its unclear how Braggs office might try to defend against such a line of attack. But in other settings, lawyers confronted with a motion to dismiss based on a statute of limitation often argue that steps taken to conceal the alleged wrongdoing should result in prolonging if not entirely suspending any relevant charging or filing deadlines.

Meanwhile, Trustys comment about applying federal election law into a New York case seemed to refer to Braggs decision to indict the former president over payments during a federal election although the US justice department prosecutors who secured Cohens conviction passed on charging Trump. The justice departments decision against charging Trump does not amount to a finding of innocence for the former president, though it remains to be seen whether Braggs office has enough evidence to eventually secure a conviction.

Trumps next court date in the case that made him the first former US president to be criminally charged is 4 December. But Trusty said the public should not be surprised if some of the possible motions that he discussed were filed well ahead of that date.

If Trump were to eventually be found guilty as accused, it is possible that he would face up to four years in prison, the director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvanias Annenberg Public Policy Center recently told the resource website factcheck.org. Yet it is also possible that Trump would not be at risk for anything more than probation, fines and community service because he was charged as a first-time offender, Columbia University law school professor John C Coffee Jr said to factcheck.org.

Despite the case in Merchans courtroom, Trump is widely considered to be the frontrunner to land the Republican presidential nomination for the 2024 election.

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Trump lawyer says he aims to get hush money case dismissed ... - The Guardian US

As the polarization in the U.S. grows ever deeper, a hot debate rages over whether the media are helping or worsening the divide. In Transcending the Echo Chamber: Polarization and the Media, distinguished alumni and Cornell faculty will explore the medias role and what can be done.

The panel, on Wednesday, April 19, 7 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawling Auditorium in Klarman Hall, is free and the public is invited. It will be preceded by a public reception from 6-7 p.m. in the Groos Family Atrium in Klarman Hall.

Register for the event here.

The event is hosted by the Distinguished Visiting Journalist (DVJ) program in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The panelists include:

As political debate collides with a 24/7 news cycle, the public is often left wondering whether they can trust the news media, said Morse, who organized the panel. Its never been more important for Americas news organizations to cut through the noise and ensure the public can separate fact from fiction.

Morse is a former senior leader at CNN, Bloomberg and ABC News, and was recently appointed president and publisher of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to lead the digital transformation of the Souths largest newspaper.

Cupp was formerly a panelist on CNNs Crossfire, and has written for numerous outlets, including the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the American Spectator, Slate and Politico. She has been a frequent guest on Fox News and MSNBC.

Hiltziks company specializes in corporate communications,crisis management andlitigation support, media relations, digital and social media strategy, message development, research and analysis, content creation and storytelling. He has worked with political figures ranging from Hillary Clinton to Ivanka Trump.

Cirones research interests also include democratization and party systems in new democracies and multi-level governance in European politics. Her most recent paper is Asymmetric Flooding as a Tool for Foreign Influence on Social Media, which explores the influence of Russian trolls.

Linda B. Glaser is news and media relations manager for the College of Arts and Sciences.

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Panel to explore political polarization and media | Cornell Chronicle - Cornell Chronicle

No one is above the law. That should be an obvious, irrefutable principle in a democratic country.

And in many countries, it is. In recent days, as the historic criminal prosecution of former President Trump has moved forward in Manhattan, plenty of examples have been offered of nations that have put that principle to the test trying, convicting and in some cases incarcerating their top leaders for corruption, theft, bribery and other crimes.

Surely a rules-based democracy like the United States can be as principled as those other countries and bring a successful criminal case against a former head of state who has broken the law. Yet before 10 days ago, no current or former U.S. president had ever been indicted or charged, much less convicted. Many Americans apparently believe that prosecuting a president is improper or beyond the pale. (When Richard Nixon came close to being charged, he was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, to preserve national tranquility.)

Opinion Columnist

Nicholas Goldberg

Nicholas Goldberg served 11 years as editor of the editorial page and is a former editor of the Op-Ed page and Sunday Opinion section.

By contrast, consider France, where both Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac were tried for corruption and convicted in recent years. It may be no great testament to French democracy that they needed to be prosecuted, but it is to their nations credit that they were.

In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, who served three terms as prime minister, was convicted of tax fraud in 2012.

In South Africa, former President Jacob Zuma was charged in 2021 with taking bribes; he faces 15 years in prison.

In South Korea, three former presidents have been convicted of corruption.

In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu is serving as prime minister and, at the same time, standing trial for bribery and fraud.

Good for those countries for holding or at least attempting to hold their top leaders accountable for criminal misbehavior. When done right, it can build faith in government and the law, and serve the cause of equality and justice.

But whats been less often discussed in recent days, and which complicates the picture, is that there are also countries where the law is wielded like a weapon by powerful politicians against their enemies. This is the example that Trump and his Republican allies are implicitly pointing to when they insist that his prosecution has been corrupted by politics.

Consider Pakistan, where rival politicians, often from family dynasties, routinely seek to use the the countrys judicial system against one another. As the dynasties gain, lose and retake power, the courts are used to punish, weaken or sideline those who challenge them.

Again and again, Pakistani politicians have been hit with criminal charges after leaving office, including allegations of corruption, treason and money laundering. At the moment, former Prime Minister Imran Khan faces dozens of charges that he says were instigated by the government of his successor, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

Now, the United States is not Pakistan or anything like it. But Trump wants us to believe it is.

It is not helpful to Manhattan Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg that the crimes charged in the Trump indictment 34 felony counts of falsifying business records sound to the layperson like bookkeeping offenses and not terribly serious violations of the law. Whats more, theyre being prosecuted by a Democratic district attorney.

Thus they give oxygen to the argument that a politically motivated prosecutor was out fishing for charges, no matter how obscure, technical or tangential. That it was a witch hunt, as Trump likes to say. (He has pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts.)

But it turns out thats not true; in fact, theres nothing at all unusual about the case Bragg brought. His office charges people with falsifying records on a regular, bread-and-butter basis, he said. According to lawyers Karen Friedman Agnifilo and Norman Eisen, Trump is the 30th defendant to be indicted on false records charges since Bragg took over a year ago.

Politically speaking, it would undoubtedly have been better for the country if Trump had been indicted first for his bigger, broader, more obviously outrageous offense of seeking to subvert the 2020 election, rather than for falsifying hush money payments to a porn actress.

It would have gotten more clearly to the heart of whats worst and most dangerous about Trump. It might have been more persuasive to skeptics. But that case may yet be brought. The district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is still investigating Trumps demand that local officials find him 11,780 votes. And the Justice Departments special counsel Jack Smith continues to probe Trumps post-election lies and machinations, including his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Of course its ironic that Trump insists hes being persecuted by politically motivated enemies. The fact is, there is no one more willing to politicize the legal system (and the countrys democratic institutions generally) than Trump himself. I firmly believe he would turn us into Pakistan overnight if it would gain him a hundred votes or a hundred dollars.

As president, he repeatedly called into question the legitimacy of judges who challenged him and court rulings he disagreed with.

He demanded the arrest of political adversaries, including President Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden. He was especially vocal in 2016 about his opponent, Hillary Clinton, who he said has to go to jail for accessing her official email on a private server, which he insisted at campaign rallies was the biggest political scandal since Watergate.

All Americans should agree that it is wrong to use the justice system to punish ones enemies. But at the same time, it is absolutely essential that we hold powerful people to account for true crimes.

The ongoing investigations against Trump must, of course, be conducted fairly and without prejudice. He should be presumed innocent and treated no better or worse than any other defendant.

But he doesnt deserve special protection, either, just because he was once the president and hopes to be again.

@Nick_Goldberg

Originally posted here:
Opinion: What other countries can teach the U.S. about how to ... - Los Angeles Times

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Excerpt from:
Rising: March 27, 2023 The Hill - The Hill

Pay no attention to the man behind the Twitter handle.

Thats the defense that lawyers floated for the anti-Hillary Clinton Twitter troll Douglas Mackey, who is currently on trial for tricking voters into thinking they could text their ballots in the 2016 presidential election for the former first lady.

The governments key witness, who was identified only by his social media handle Microchip, testified that he observed Mackey posting actively on group chats like War Room and Mad Men about the effort to undermine Clintons presidential bid with whatever dirty tricks could be mustered.

Douglass Mackey, who the feds say went by the Twitter name Ricky Vaughan, was allegedly a prominent anonymous anti-Semite, racist and Trump-booster online before the 2016 election.

Microchip pleaded guilty to the same charge that Mackey now faces conspiracy against rights in regard to election interference.

Mackeys defense lawyer Andrew Frisch called his clients behavior s--tposting and insisted that the two internet trolls never worked together.

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But Mr. Microchip and Mr. Mackey never had a phone call, a message, Frisch told the jury. The government charged and must prove a conspiracy. Without Mr. Microchip, there is no conspiracy. Without Mr. Microchip, all these people on the internet and in chatrooms are just people on the internet and in chatrooms.

Prosecutors showed realistic tweets that promised Clinton supporters could save time by texting their votes.

Avoid the line. Vote from home. Text Hillary to 59925, one Twitter post read.

Frisch said that the government couldnt produce any witnesses that testified that they were tricked by the ruse, but the U.S. Attorneys office in Brooklyn said that 4,900 people texted to the number.

The defense attorney also accused the government of prosecuting Mackey because of his political leanings.

This case is not about free speech, it is not about political speech, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Gulotta said in a rebuttal.

Theres no speech, he added. You cant use your words to commit fraud You cant use your words to trick people out of their right to vote. Imagine a country where that was legal.

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Anti-Hillary Clinton Twitter troll never conspired to interfere with 2016 presidential election, defense lawyer says - New York Daily News