https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/how-strong-is-the-legal-case-against-donald-trump-191053813.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“There is nothing inherently illegal about paying someone not to disclose a purported affair. But Trump is being accused of illegally plotting to falsify business records in an effort to hide the payment. Under New York law, that crime on its own is a misdemeanor, but it can be bumped up to a felony charge punishable by up to four years in prison if records were falsified with the specific intent to commit or cover up another crime. The indictment released Tuesday doesn\u2019t specify what that second crime may be, but there are indications that Bragg may attempt to connect the payments to campaign finance violations or tax fraud.”
\n…
\n“there\u2019s generally broad agreement that Bragg appears to have ample evidence to secure conviction on the misdemeanor counts of falsifying business records. There\u2019s serious disagreement, however, on the most important issue: Will Bragg be able to successfully tie those minor violations to a secondary crime?
\nSkeptics from both sides of the political spectrum say the felony portion of the case is built on shaky and untested legal reasoning that will require ironclad evidence to prove \u2014 evidence many believe Bragg likely doesn\u2019t have. There are also major technical issues that could derail the indictment, most notably the untested question of whether a federal crime like a campaign finance violation can count as a secondary crime under New York\u2019s state-level business records law. Some doubters add that the strength of Bragg\u2019s case is irrelevant if the trial isn\u2019t completed in time for the 2024 election, a prospect they say is extremely unlikely.<\/p>\n
But others argue that the case isn\u2019t nearly as weak as skeptics make it out to be. They say Bragg and his team, who have jurisdiction over the beating heart of the U.S. financial system, are incredibly adept at litigating complex financial issues such as this one. The lack of details about how Bragg plans to connect critical dots in the case, they add, is a sign that the district attorney is merely saving his most potent ammunition for later, not that he doesn\u2019t have it.<\/p>\n
Finally, some legal commentators say the indictment is so short on details and the circumstances so unprecedented that it\u2019s impossible at this early stage to make any real judgments about how the case might play out.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[790,221,1853,125],"class_list":["post-10390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-courts","tag-donald-trump","tag-indictment","tag-legal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10391,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10390\/revisions\/10391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}