Have you been following the news about former President Trump’s indictment in New York? Here’s the 30 second overhead on it from the Associated Press:
Read that here.The grand jury in Manhattan had been probing hush money payments at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign to two women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, one of the witnesses who testified, says he orchestrated payments totaling $280,000 to porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to violating federal campaign finance law in connection with the payments. Federal prosecutors said the payments amounted to illegal, unreported assistance to Trump’s campaign. But they declined to file charges against Trump himself.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office appeared to be investigating whether anyone committed crimes in arranging the payments, or in the way they accounted for them internally at the Trump Organization. But the specific charges remained under seal late Thursday.
From everything ‘m hearing about it, the misreporting of the funds might be a misdemeanor, unless they can tie it to another crime. Here’s where they’re stretching, as from reports, they’re trying to tie the state charge to a federal violation.
To me, trying to twist this into a felony seems to be a stretch in the case of the popular ex-president. If his detractors wanted to hang their hat on something to go after him, I don’t think this dog is going to hunt.
But that’s just my opinion. The floor is yours.
if this nation is ever going to test “no-one-is-above-the-law” on a former president, i can’t think of a better one to start with. ford denied us the chance to go there with nixon.
i greatly admire melania and am sorry and angry he puts her through the same torment he puts the whole republican party through.
the late great abraham lincoln, no one later, no one greater, everyone tells me this, lincoln would totally see the house-divided built by trump. i look forward to hannity’s first interview with trump from the quaint dining room of a minimum security farm.
Like bill Clinton….right
Like Edward’s ….right
Like Hillary Clinton….right
Biden and brother and son inc right…..
2 tiered justice is alive and well through selective prosecution of the law.
😂
things have to start somewhere. let it be here with this guy. justice has hardly ever been just. i’m just tired of seeing this clown slice and dice the gop for his own ambitions like hillary used to do to the democrats until they finally had enough.
The left’s penchant for focusing on Trump will result only in increasing his popularity. He will likely win the nomination and the presidency in 2024 based on the stupidity of the left. The left’s “no one is above the law”, rings very hollow in light of the FBI and DOJ’s reluctance to investigate and charge Hunter or the Biden family.
If Hunter Biden broke the law, he should be charged. I think he will be. But for those who scream for his head, and yell “lock her up” about Hillary… well… you could try to be a little more consistent.
Consistent….something you could try yourself.
trump was elected in 2016 because of ‘insiders vs outsiders’ politics, which was the prevalent driver of his majority, just like it was the major driver of the initial tea party surge of millions of voters in 2009. trump won because hillary was a known quantity and trump was a mysterious more-attractive gamble.
in 2009 people saw arch conservatives rise up and deign to grab leadership of the new tea party majority, and just as quickly people got to know them and the movement shrank back to its powerless size. similarly, the 2016 trump voter majority got to know trump, and it shrank as expected in 2020.
there is a cluster of support for trump, just like there’s a cluster of active tea party membership across the country. but in both cases, there is no malleable mass of variable voters at play, waiting for the right alchemy to enable their return to the tea parties or return to donald trump’s side. they know things now which drove their exit, and they don’t exist as a group any more.
our sd tea parties certainly have learned there’s no return to those heady early weeks of 2009. that’s why they’re carefully reading alinsky now for ideas. the quicker we all accept the irreversible descent of trump the better things will be.
modern politics isn’t right vs left, so much as insider vs outsider and we need to pivot together and figure out the real battle to fight. we shouldn’t have time or headspace to worry if donald trump will gain from martyrdom. i’d bet not.
John it is not just the left. There are plenty of Republicans that cannot stand Trump and the effect he had on their party. With the further radicalization and opportunist narcissists that have been taking over the party will it splinter off into other political parties? Will new parties emerge? Meanwhile the extreme left and right who have more in common then they may realize are cheering each other on as they take over the two major legacy parties.
He is ON TAPE demanding the Georgia Secretary of State find him the votes to win the state. “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes…” He accuses everyone else of fraud, but HE is the biggest election cheat since Nixon.
I would prefer he be charged for something of that magnitude. Or for January 6th. But… if he did pay $130,000 in hush money, in order to win the 2016 election, shouldn’t he be charged for that as well? Or, is he above the law?
they caught capone on a tax error after all. whatever gets the job done.
Not the America I want to live in where the courts are used “whatever gets the job done.” The federal election law violation wasn’t pursued because John Edwards was not convicted with stronger facts.
Unfortunately, I think this indictment and McConnell blasting the release of the entire Jan. 6 tapes of January 6th not only will result in his being the nominee but also the next President.
You people with Trump Derangement Syndrome are responsible for the rehabilitation of Trump. I hope you are pleased with yourself because I’m not.
Side note: With the release of the tapes, the Qanon shaman was released and many of the other’s convicted maybe as well. Pretty hard to get Trump on Jan. 6 when the tapes don’t show an insurrection, little damage, and mostly trespassing.
Agreed
I don’t think they will get anywhere with that Georgia phone call. Saying you need to “find” anything can be vague, like finding time, finding courage, finding forgiveness, finding wiggle room, or finding your way. But in this case it might be more like finding money, which can mean anything from excavating buried treasure, selling an asset, or going over the budget again to see if there is another expense that could be cut. It doesn’t necessarily mean “steal.” “To find” has become a vague verb and it can be argued that Trump meant more votes could be “found” during a recount, especially if he sincerely believed that he would win in that state. It will be nearly impossible for a prosecutor to prove Trump was suggesting election fraud.
As for giving money to a porn star, it will be impossible to prove why he gave her the money if there is not written contract to prove it was for her silence, until after the election. Without a contract, it might have been payment for services rendered, reimbursement for her travel expenses, or just to keep his wife from finding out. But if it was to influence the election, it’s no different from the $1 million Joe Kennedy Sr reportedly offered Jackie if she would just stay married to Jack because a divorce would ruin his political career.
How he ever got elected, and still commands support is beyond any comprehension of sanity. He’s dodged the legal system his whole entitled life. He’s a crook plain and simple.
I’m predicting the anti Trump establishment over plays their hand.
there is no way to overplay a hand so badly that a majority of americans will just decide trump is an innocent victim of evil forces and put him in the White House. his weasily s.o.p. and raging narcissism are a matter of record.
Agreed. Eventually Repubs are gonna wise up or be courageous enough like Asa Hutchinson or Chris Christie and say he needs to step aside. Until then, y’all are wasting your time.
The allure of Trump was–and is–that he’s not establishment. He has loyal followers, but they are not establishment and never will be.
so many people in trump’s camp don’t see the writing on the wall. here in sd the current trump lovers win elections when the turnout is low and the mon-trump people just don’t feel the urgency of voting while tea-partiers turn out their whole base. we see the story over and over in western sd.
how did trump even win the us vote in 2016? looking at the numbers, the most likely reason is that clinton’s team were out-hustled by the pre-trump republican local parties in the battleground states. hillary outpolled trump by a large margin in a popular vote tally, so clinton’s people misread the huge poll numbers in the blue states where they were going to get the electoral votes anyway, and just coasted at election time.
in 2020 the plain truth was that the post-trump local republican campaigners could not withstand the democrats heavy effort for biden in blue AND battleground states.
130 million voted in 2016, a 60 pct turnout; 155 million voted in 2020, a 62 pct turnout across basically the same size electorate. with blue states and a battleground majority, biden handily won the electoral college and popular total vote.
it raises an interesting question about whether battleground state voters would care enough to say no to trump in 2024, or let it slide like 2016 again.
fanatical base turnout and voter suppression seem to be the key to a trump victory, if that’s what you want. good luck with that.
the side prone to voter suppression / disinterest will be the republican side whether trump is the nominee or not – it’s rooted in the inability of the party to find a candidate to work nixon’s magic plan of going right in the primary and center in the general – not as long as the beltway rolls out the jeb bushes and the wingnuts demand unelectable elmer gantry clones over and over. as usual we are pre-screwed by ourselves.
I have zero hard evidence to support this, but I believe it is a rational theory. This is a ploy by Democrats to get Trump selected as the Republican nominee. Hear me out. They know that if they enrage Trump’s base, it will only further solidify their support for him as well as likely pull anyone in who is on the “fringes.” This gives Trump the best chance possible to be selected as the Republican nominee. And why do Democrats want Trump in, because they know that a wet dog could beat Trump in a national election right now. I agree with the majority of the policy that came out the White House when Trump was president and no one can deny that our country was on an outstanding trajectory before covid blew everything up. However, Trump makes himself a very difficult person for me to see as presidential. There are a whole lot of American that are sick of his antics and will refuse to vote for him again as president. The Democrats best chance to win the presidency in 2024 is with Trump as the Republican nominee. And that is exactly what they are trying to accomplish right now.
good thing for dems they don’t even have to lift a finger if they want trump as the nominee. i feel that they’d just as soon prefer that his political chances be destroyed for real. they’re not off somewhere in a secret meeting licking their chops over a possible trump 2024 campaign which they can easily defeat, like republicans used to publicly wish for with hillary— i feel they sincerely want him out of politics asap, and that they’re not afraid of the current wrecked state of the gop in any case.
Trump For Prison 2024!
He will be convicted. It doesn’t matter what you and I think. He is in Manhattan which voted 85% for Biden. Fair trial? Forget it. Why do you think they picked Bragg to do this.
Ah, yes – politics will dictate the outcome of this trial – lol. Have you ever thought, some folks may hold principles above party – and make their decision based on the facts? If you can convince 12 folks he’s guilty – that’s a pretty high bar in my opinion. But, no – its a witch hunt, coming from the guy who loved the “LOCK HER UP” chant.
Fun fact, as much as they bluster about Hilary, or Hunter, or whatever red meat they throw out – where are the charges being filed for the supposed “crimes” they committed? Don’t tell me that the GOP hasn’t invested a ton of cash, trying to find something – anything to bring to court to support the claims being made. And holy hell, if Clinton, Biden, or whatever demon you are grilling at the moment has broke the law – charge them. No one is above the law.
My guess, is this DA has crossed all the “t’s” and dotted all of the “i’s” – knowing the magnitude of filing these charges against a former president. I would hate to be his legal council right now.
For good or ill, we know the former President has had a tendency to bend and break the law when it comes to his business dealings.
We know this because his business the Trump Organization – was convicted on 17 felonies last fall. We know this because his Charitable Foundation was forced to dissolve and he was fined millions of dollars for illegally funneling money from the charitable foundation into his personal accounts. This goes back to a long history of his stiffing contractors he hired to complete his casinos in New Jersey and fair housing act violations going back to the 1970’s. He has done some shady stuff.
Like or dislike his politics and what he did as president – as a businessman he has been at best questionable and at worst criminal.
Did he commit any felonies in this SPECIFIC business transition? We haven’t seen the evidence. We don’t know exactly what specific charges are being leveled against him. This is for a jury to decide. Based off of his business dealings from 2016 and before it is absolutely possible.
Is this the kind of thing that’s going to put him in jail? Even if he wasn’t a former President, he’s a rich businessman – If convicted he will get hit with a fine and MAYBE a house arrest and probation. He’ll sit for 3-6 months in his mansion in Florida, with the Secret Service acting as his guards.
i’d take a hannity exclusive with trump during house arrest with ankle monitoring at mar a lago. ok.
The pay off to Stormy Danials is the weakest of the charges he faces, primarily because the chief witness is his former lawyer and fixer, who is a smarmy fellow. The charges in Georgia with the primary evidence being his taped phone call with the Secretary of State, is the most damning and will be toughest to elude. He is still, and always will be, the favorite of a hard core of about one third of Republican voters, and, as such, will be difficult for any other Republican to defeat in a primary.
Terry a taped phone call in which he used the word “find” is a nothing burger.
the verb “to find” is too vague. it can have too many different meanings. It doesn’t necessarily mean “steal” or “manufacture.” What does a person mean when he says “we need to find the time to get this done” or “we need to find the money to pay for this?” Too vague.
Convenient word play here. If I was caught on a recording, telling someone I need “to find” a way for my ex-wife to wind up dead – and she wound up dead, that would be pretty damning evidence in court.
Now, you can say they didn’t find the votes, he asked “to find” – the simple asking is the problem. Why would you ask someone “to find the votes” – and give a specific number of votes to find – and not be up to some bullshit? Seriously, this isn’t that hard.
It’s mob speak. Say it without saying it.
it’s been over 950 years since Henry II said something like “personne ne me debarraserat-il de ce pretre turbulent?” He didn’t speak English in any case, and maybe he said it in Latin, which would have been more official, like an edict. But historians are still confused as to whether he really wanted the barons to murder the Archbishop of Canterbury, or if he was saying he hoped God would eliminate the problem. That is the trouble with conversations like this: what a speaker means and what a listener hears can be two different things.I think a prosecutor is going to have a hard time with the Georgia phone call.
Holy hell, that is quite the stretch – bravo. You make it seem like Trumps words may be off the cuff, spitballing random words. But most folks will take his words at face value, and know what result he was trying to achieve. This is not that hard, and you throwing whatever latin or other nonsense into the equation is pure gaslighting.
terry what you’re clearly saying is republicans won’t win the white house in 2024, if you’re saying there won’t be a candidate to beat trump in the primary in 2024. i totally agree, if a leader who can shove trump aside doesn’t rise up, it’s over already.
Trump can spend the rest of his days in a federal pmita prison and America would be better off.
He’s spent decades bragging about being a crook, about time it caught up with him. The GOP is better off without that brand.
Folks, consider. There are 30 charges. He didn’t make 30 payments, So it’s not that. My guess? 30 false records and filings. It would be just like trump to make his campaign donors pay for his Hooker Hush Money. But you cant just write a check that big and not have it stick out. So you gotta write a bunch of smaller checks to wash the payoff.
For a state DA to have jurisdiction, the money had to come from a local Trump committee…
It aint that he paid her hush money. Its that he lied about it in documents. You heard it here first.
Now this is all sheer speculation, but stand by, we will know on tuesday!
Enquirer–Yup, I guess that’s what I’m saying. The tragedy for the Party is that Biden shouldn’t be that tough to beat. He’s eighty years old. But, I don’t think we beat Biden with a 78 year old guy, under indictment and carrying lots of baggage. I’m not wild about DeSantos, but at least he’s the right age. Interesting to see who else emerges.
agreed
Funny thing is when you commit crimes, and evidence is there to justify it, you are charged. The reason Hillary was not charged was the longest running congressional investigation failed to find evidence to justify the criminal charge (Benghazi), and the missing emails was more operational mishandling than criminal. The Hunter Biden investigation only has the laptop(s), which have exchanged so many hands no jury could say beyond a reasonable doubt they would convict. That is the difference here when everyone tries pointing the finger at the other side.
What color is the sky on the planet you are on?
The coalition of Democrats, McConnel, and Never Trumpers conspire to renominate and re-elect Trump.
True statement if you measure one’s actions by the outcome. A month ago, Trump was having a hard time getting attention. Today, he is made into a a martyr, surging in the polls, having his primary opponents defend him, and the likely next President.
Including the Bush family.
except that his general election viability is dead by any measure that can actually measure this. trump’s public relations team loooooves to wax on and on about the huge wave of political change that’s waiting for a chance to vote for him next year. the tea parties nursed that fantasy about the millions and millions they spoke for, for quite awhile after the millions evaporated in 2009. no sane reading of the facts should find this any different, given how the nation said no to him on review in 2020. enough already. this is the equivalent of throwing good money after bad.
Enquirer, surging in the GOP primary polls AND within 1% of Biden in the national polls are measures of being very much alive politically IMHO. And, imagine how it might be if the nation is in a recession/depression, inflation is raging, oil is $100 a barrel, the Ukraine War is unresolved, and relations with China/Iran/Saudia Arabia put us on the verge of both global economic and military war.
Trump couldn’t as positively impact his prospects better than you people are doing.
i’m pretty comfortable with my position here, based on past performance of all involved. trump needs a multiparty bump he’s never going to get again.
It’s crazy how holding someone accountable transforms them into a martyr, particularly given the underlying facts of the case, as he slept with a porn star while his wife sat at home with their newborn son. And yet, evangelicals adore him. Lunacy.
Under the rule of law, it must be a crime (sleeping with porn stars is not a crime regardless of the circumstances) and the statute of limitations can’t have run out.
In a tyranny, you get to make things up, apply the law unevenly and jail your political opponents.
Anyone who believes in the rule of law and Constitutional civil rights and liberties, regardless of your views on Trump on anything, should appear this as a threat to all. Everyone else, you are just a petty tyrant.
at least i’m not a putsch-throwing jan-6 brownshirt.
Enquirer the moron, your brown shirt reference only shows to the degree you aint got anything intelligent to say.
One can not support Trump politically and still want the rule of law equally applied without one’s race, creed, religion, sexual orientation, gender or political views.
By definition a tyrant is one with rules for those you like and different ones for those you don’t like as you clearly do. What makes you petty is you are also a ‘never will be’ who thinks what you have to say means something.
the ny prosecution is what it is, and really has nothing to do with south dakota and the gop; anyone who thinks what happens to trump can also happen to them is a bigger egomaniac than he is.
Trump could have started a gofundme account with the overt use of the funds to pay off a porn star, and his supporters would contribute..
In fact any politician could have a separate campaign account dedicated to controlling bimbo eruptions, and their supporters would happily donate directly to that particular fund. It would provide bragging benefits; guys in locker rooms bragging about how much money they donated to a politician’s bimbo account.