“”If reelected, Donald Trump has said he’s willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military to deport the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country,” Kristen Welker asked of Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) on NBC News’s Meet the Press. “It would be the largest deportation operation in American history. Do you support that plan?”
“Yes, we are going to have to do something,” responded Rubio after arguing that the number of undocumented migrants is much higher. “Unfortunately, we’re going to have to do something dramatic to remove people from this country that are here illegally, especially people we know nothing about.”
A son of Cuban immigrants and, at one time, strongly critical of Trump’s proposal to end birthright citizenship and otherwise restrict immigration, Rubio’s turnaround matches the direction of his party, which takes a hard line on the issue. But if Trump plans “the largest deportation operation in American history”—his own words, adopted by Welker—we can assume that such a big-government scheme will come with matching costs. That’s exactly what number crunchers predict.”
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“”The costs of the former president’s plan to deport the more than 14 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. today could easily reach more than $1 trillion over 10 years, before taking into account the labor costs necessary for such a project or the unforeseen consequences of reducing the labor supply by such drastic amounts over a short period of time,” MarketWatch’s Chris Matthews reported this week of the results of a Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM) analysis.
Trump’s plan is still taking shape, though the former and perhaps future president has proposed using both the military and local law enforcement to eject migrants in this country illegally. If that policy was put into effect, “the removal of one million immigrants would cost the federal government between $40 billion and $50 billion over 10 years, and up to $100 billion if those immigrants were higher-paid workers,” Matthews wrote of PWBM’s finding.
Matthews notes that immigration hawks like Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), predict as many as one million deportations per year under tough enforcement. That’s quite a reach, considering that deportations peaked at an average of 383,307 per year under former President Barack Obama. A dramatically higher target means rapidly accumulating costs, with the trillion-dollar price potentially reached after a decade.”
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“”Under current law, unauthorized workers…generally do not qualify for federal benefits,” PWBM economists point in a separate analysis. They add that “more deportations, though, leads to less economic growth.” As a result, according to PWBM, with the implementation of restrictive policies, “GDP in 2050 will be four percent lower relative to no additional deportations.”
AAF predicted that with deportations, “the labor force would shrink by 6.4 percent and, as a result, in 20 years the U.S. GDP would be almost 6 percent lower than it would be without fully enforcing current law.”
In 2017, the Center for Migrant Studies cautioned that with a mass deportation program, “gross domestic product (GDP) would be reduced by 1.4 percent in the first year, and cumulative GDP would be reduced by $4.7 trillion over 10 years.”
Obviously, there’s a range of costs projected for a policy shift to mass deportations of undocumented migrants. That’s because it has never been tried on the scale envisioned by Trump and his supporters. In fact, if Rubio is correct that the real number of people in the country in defiance of the law is “upwards of 20, 25, maybe 30 million,” deportations will have to be that much more aggressive, with an even higher price tag to match.”
“a conviction was not inevitable. The legal issues were intricate and in some key respects novel, and some of them will credibly be at issue on appeal. The state’s evidence was voluminous but far from airtight, and there were weaknesses and gaps in the prosecution’s evidence as the case unfolded.
In fact, this was probably a winnable case — not in the form of an acquittal perhaps, but in the form of a hung jury that could have resulted by persuading one or more jurors that a case built around Michael Cohen — the former Trump lawyer/fixer turned convicted felon turned media personality — was simply not strong or reliable enough to warrant this watershed moment in American history. Trump also probably could have gotten off with convictions on misdemeanor counts of falsifying his company’s business records instead of felonies, but he never asked the judge to instruct the jurors on that point, perhaps fearing that the request might make him look weak — the worst offense of them all in his mind.
In life and in the law, hindsight is 20/20. In close political campaigns, analysts are often tempted to treat the eventual winner as the candidate that made the right decisions at the crucial points, and to treat the loser as having fumbled along. The same dynamic applies to legal proceedings too, so some caution is warranted. At some point, we may hear from some of the jurors themselves about what guided their decision, which would be a welcome addition to the historical record.
In the meantime, we are left to our own devices and to a tentative but unavoidable conclusion — that Trump and his lawyers bungled this trial.”
“When Trump lawyer Michael Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 presidential election to stop her from talking about her purported 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, that transaction was “not illegal,” Trump’s lead defense attorney, Todd Blanche, said during his opening statement last week. “Entering into a nondisclosure agreement is perfectly legal. Companies do that all the time….Executives, people who are wealthy, people who are famous enter into nondisclosure agreements regularly, and there’s nothing illegal about it.”
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“Trump is not charged with “conspiracy” or “election fraud.” He is charged with violating a New York law against “falsifying business records” with “intent to defraud.” Trump allegedly did that 34 times by disguising his 2017 reimbursement of Cohen’s payment to Daniels as compensation for legal services. The counts include 11 invoices from Cohen, 11 corresponding checks, and 12 ledger entries.
Ordinarily, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. But it becomes a felony when the defendant’s “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” Bragg says Trump had such an intent, which is why the 34 counts are charged as felonies.
Bragg had long been cagey about exactly what crime Trump allegedly tried to conceal. But during a sidebar discussion last week, Colangelo said “the primary crime that we have alleged is New York State Election Law Section 17-152.” That provision says “any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”
In other words, Bragg is relying on this misdemeanor to transform another misdemeanor (falsifying business records) into a felony. But the only “unlawful means” that he has identified is Cohen’s payment to Daniels. And while Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to making an excessive campaign contribution by fronting the hush money, Trump was never prosecuted for soliciting that contribution.
There are good reasons for that. The question of whether this arrangement violated federal election law hinges on whether the hush money is properly viewed as a campaign expense or a personal expense. That distinction, in turn, depends on whether Trump was motivated by a desire to promote his election or by a desire to avoid embarrassment and spare his wife’s feelings.
The former hypothesis is plausible, especially given the timing of the payment to Daniels. But proving that allegation beyond a reasonable doubt would have been hard”
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“Convicting Trump of soliciting an illegal campaign contribution would have required proving that he “knowingly and willfully” violated the Federal Election Campaign Act. Federal prosecutors evidently concluded that they could not meet that requirement. But to violate Section 17-152 of the New York Election Law, the provision on which Bragg is relying for “another crime,” Trump would have had to “conspire” with Cohen to influence an election through “unlawful means,” which suggests he knew the payment to Daniels was illegal.”
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“The fact that Bragg is relying on an obscure offense that apparently has never been prosecuted speaks volumes about his eagerness to convert the Daniels hush payment into 34 felonies. That strategy will prove “twisty,” Connor said, because “you’re having an underlying crime within an underlying crime to get to that felony.”
If Trump did not recognize the hush payment as “unlawful,” it is hard to see how his “intent” in falsifying business records could have included an intent to conceal “another crime.” And that’s assuming a purported violation of federal campaign finance restrictions counts as “unlawful means” under Section 17-152.”
“The stakes, in other words, are high. So he made a few big promises to match.
One such promise: “We’re going to give our police their power back,” he told rallygoers in Waukesha, “and we are going to give them immunity from prosecution.””