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In a Cafe Brief publication that was reprinted in New York publication on Friday, CNN’s legal researcher Elie Honig shared both the pro and counter-Trump perspectives on the Alvin Bragg event that will take place on April 15 in Manhattan. In” Donald Trump’s Test Is a Rorschach Test,” Honig clearly determines which of the two viewpoints holds the best chance. “
… The offense is related to how Trump and his companies logged a number of perfectly legal ( but unseemly ) hush-money payments in their own internal records. The prosecution’s celebrity see is a convicted philanderer and fraudster who boldly spews vitriol at the defendant, usually in hideous terms, effectively for a living.
Years ago, the notoriously violent government at the Southern District of New York passed on the situation, and Alvin Bragg, the latest Manhattan district attorney, could have been charged before he left office, but they did not. The majority of defendants convicted of similar infractions are sentenced to probation and fines, not prison, and the fees are either infractions or the lowest-level crimes ( depending on how the judge decides the situation ).
Honig next presents what appears to be a rather pathetic way of viewing the test from a person who is angry to Trump, presenting it as a desperate reward scheme in 2016 to stop his campaign from collapsing:
… Trump and his team paid porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged extramarital affair in order to prevent his naming strategy from growing, and they paid those obligations as legal costs. Trump, who is already the first president or former president to face criminal charges, has the potential to lose the election of 2024 and end up in jail as a result.
Which of these viewpoints, in Honig’s opinion, best captures reality is not difficult to discern. This is also reflected in what else he wrote:
… Paying hush money is not illegal. In fact, a hush-money agreement, though seedy, is legally no different from any other contract between private parties. Knowing about the Daniels payoff, which he obviously did, is only a good place to start, and it is n’t enough to support anything illegal.
Falsification of business records is a crime committed in New York State. The DA alleges Trump had the hush-money payments fraudulently recorded in his internal books as “legal expenses ” ( rather than, I don’t know, “hush money to porn star” ). If proved, that ’s merely a misdemeanor, a low-level crime virtually certain to result in a non-prison sentence. For comparison, under the New York code, falsification of business records has the same technical designation as shoplifting less than$ 1,000 of goods.
… However, it is not entirely clear whether Trump was directly involved in the internal accounting of his business — remember, that is the crime. Trump appears to be unsure about the accounting process when Cohen secretly recorded his then-client talking about a hush-money payment to another woman in 2016.
… The received wisdom is that the Manhattan case is the least important, and will be the least impactful, of the four pending Trump indictments. The very first part of that statement is indisputable.
One has to wonder if Donald Trump has committed so many massive crimes as those who oppose him claim. Why do the cases involving him, like the Manhattan case, appear to be so severely flawed and have been prosecuted by either corrupt or highly biased or flawed officials while being fabricated by the Biden administration?
Hopefully, Elie Honig wo n’t be let down by his CNN coworkers because of his observations regarding the Manhattan case.
