April 1, 2023 - Epoch Times
09:02
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Well, it finally happened. | |
| Late last night, the 45th President of the United States, Mr. | |
| Donald J. Trump, was officially indicted by a Manhattan grand jury. | |
| This makes Trump the first president to be impeached twice, the first president to be raided by the FBI, the first president to be wiretapped prior to taking office, the first president to be banned from social media, and now the first president to face criminal charges. | |
| Now, in terms of what these specific charges are, at this very moment, the specifics have yet to be made public. | |
| The felony indictment will remain under seal until at least Tuesday when President Trump is set to be arraigned, which will include both fingerprinting him as well as taking his official mugshot. | |
| However, what we do know is that the felony indictment includes 34 counts of falsifying business records, most likely having to do with the hush money payments that President Trump's lawyer made in 2016. | |
| Now, this indictment presents both positives and negatives for President Trump. | |
| On the negative side is the fact that this is happening in Manhattan of all places, meaning that if this goes to trial, he will have to face a jury pool selected from people in Manhattan, who, just for your reference, voted 86% in favor of Joe Biden. | |
| In 2020, Trump only received 12% of the vote here. | |
| And so whether an impartial jury will be able to be formed is a real question. | |
| Now, the positive for President Trump here is that this trial might not even make it to the point of having to select a jury. | |
| The indictment might just be thrown out by the judge. | |
| And the reason why it might be thrown out is several-fold. | |
| To start with, here was a famous quote from a chief judge right here in New York State. | |
| Quote, A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich if that's what the prosecutor wanted. | |
| And the reason that he said this is because a grand jury is essentially a really one-sided proceeding. | |
| The grand jury does not hear any arguments from the opposing side. | |
| From the defense, they only hear arguments from the district attorney's office. | |
| That's because the whole point of a grand jury is only to determine whether there is probable cause to believe that a crime might have been committed. | |
| And typically, a jury pool tends to respect prosecutors, especially when there's no one there to point out the flaws in their argument, and therefore, in many places, a grand jury serves as essentially a rubber-stamp process wherein, if a prosecutor wants an indictment, they'll typically get one. | |
| And so that's all to say that the burden of proof before a grand jury is extremely low. | |
| Regardless of that, though, the fact remains that this particular grand jury here in Manhattan decided to indict President Trump on 34 counts of felony bookkeeping fraud. | |
| However, regardless of the fact that he was indicted, proving this case in court will be very challenging, because the legal theory that the prosecution is using is... | |
| It's novel to say the least. | |
| Basically, in order for this bookkeeping charge to be a felony, it requires that President Trump not only committed a bookkeeping cover-up, but also that bookkeeping cover-up must have been made in order to hide a second crime. | |
| Both of these two things need to be true. | |
| There needs to have been bookkeeping fraud and that bookkeeping fraud must have been made to hide another crime. | |
| And so essentially, when you break it down, this is the prosecution's argument. | |
| Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, gave Ms. | |
| Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels, $130,000 in exchange for her signing a nondisclosure agreement back in 2016. | |
| She took the money and she signed the agreement. | |
| The prosecution then alleges that President Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen for that $130,000 payment through a series of $35,000 checks. | |
| And the way that these checks appear to have been sent is that Michael Cohen would send over monthly invoices to the Trump Organization for what he referred to as a retainer fee. | |
| And the Trump Organization would then send him the checks and account for this payment in their books as a quote-unquote legal expense. | |
| And so, here is the legal argument that the Manhattan DA is making, taking those facts into account. | |
| First of all, they allege that this is a bookkeeping cover-up, since these were not really just retainer legal fees, but rather they were hush money payments. | |
| So that's the bookkeeping part of the alleged crime. | |
| However, in order to make this a felony, they need to prove something else. | |
| The second part of the district attorney's argument is that these hush money payments, these payments that were covered up, weren't even really just normal hush money payments. | |
| But instead, they were a form of illegal campaign contributions. | |
| Essentially, the Manhattan District Attorney is arguing that Michael Cohen spent $130,000 in order to pay Ms. | |
| Stephanie Clifford so that Trump could ultimately win the election. | |
| They're making the argument that this $130,000 payment was actually a campaign contribution which was reimbursed. | |
| And that bookkeeping cover-up was done to hide this campaign finance crime. | |
| However, to prove all this will be quite difficult. | |
| That's because, among other reasons, Mr. | |
| Alvin Bragg, the current Manhattan District Attorney, he does not have jurisdiction over federal law. | |
| He only has jurisdiction over New York State law. | |
| And so, whether or not this $130,000 payment constituted a federal election violation is actually not something that he can determine. | |
| That can only be determined by the Federal Elections Commission. | |
| And two years ago, the Federal Elections Commission was looking into it, but they ultimately decided to drop the case. | |
| Which would make some sense, because President Trump, he could easily argue that this $130,000 payment was not made to win the election, but rather it was just made to save his reputation and not to embarrass him in front of his wife. | |
| However, regardless of the fact that the Federal Elections Commission dropped this case two years ago, the Manhattan DA is still pushing it along, making the argument that regardless of what the Federal Elections Commission said, this was a form of campaign finance violation, after all. | |
| And this isn't really a surprise, because while he was on the campaign trail, the Manhattan DA was rather open about going after rich, old white men, such as Donald Trump, who, he said, evade justice. | |
| Here was him talking to a local radio station here in New York prior to getting elected. | |
| You are right. | |
| We've got two standards of justice, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein. | |
| Being a rich, old white man has allowed you to fade accountability in Manhattan. | |
| That includes Trump and his children. | |
| They were engaged in fraud in a Soho real estate deal as children. | |
| So you're right. | |
| We've got two standards of justice. | |
| I grew up in the second standard in Harlem. | |
| I know all about it. | |
| And you're right. | |
| I'm being a little careful because I don't want to prejudge. | |
| And then I get in the office and the first motion I get from the Trump team is I got to recuse myself because I prejudged the fact. | |
| And so now the Manhattan District Attorney will have to prove that this creative bookkeeping by the Trump Organization was done in service of hiding another felony, even though that felony is one that they do not have jurisdiction over. | |
| We'll just have to wait and see how this all plays itself out. | |
| However, in regards to this particular case, I believe it's Nancy Pelosi who said it best. | |
| Here's what she wrote on Twitter shortly after the grand jury came out with their indictment. | |
| The grand jury has acted upon the facts and the law. | |
| No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove their innocence. | |
| And right there, Miss Nancy Pelosi gave the game away a little bit. | |
| Because typically, in the American justice system, people are innocent until they're proven guilty. | |
| At trial, the state has to prove that you're guilty. | |
| You don't have to necessarily prove that you're innocent. | |
| But right there, she says it. | |
| President Trump has the right to a trial in order to prove that he's innocent. | |
| And so now, we wait for the arraignment, which is tentatively happening on Tuesday. | |
| Our reporter here at the Epoch Times, he actually spoke with Trump's lawyer, and he said that Trump's team plans to cooperate with the Manhattan DA, and they will go in for processing, including the taking of fingerprints as well as a mugshot, sometime on Tuesday. | |
| Meaning that we will have to wait a few days in order to see what President Trump's official mugshot will actually look like. | |
| If you'd like to go deeper into this story, I'll throw all my research notes down into the description box below this video so you can peruse them at your own leisure. | |
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| I'll also throw a link down in the description box below. | |
| And then lastly, I'd love to know your thoughts. | |
| Do you think that Trump's arrest is warranted given the facts of this particular case? | |
| Or do you think it's strictly politically motivated? | |
| Or is it a little bit of both? | |
| And furthermore, do you believe that perhaps this whole thing is a net positive, since now we have a new precedent in this country wherein former presidents can be prosecuted? | |
| I'd love to know your thoughts. | |
| Please leave them in the comments section below. | |
| I'll be reading them later today as well as well into the weekend. | |
| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. |
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