Buffoonery
From JC
2024 just got slightly more bizarre, dramatically revealing yet another flabbergasting bingo square that nobody saw coming. ABC News ran a serendipitous story yesterday headlined, “Michael Cohen is cashing in on the Trump trial with TikTok livestreams — and it could be a problem.” Yes, it could. It could be a problem for Trump’s enemies, that is. The problem is this ridiculous buffoon:
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney who turned out to be a criminal, a ‘criminal lawyer,’ if you will, had apparently agreed to Alvin Bragg’s increasingly desperate requests to please stop tweeting about the trial. Last week, Michael satisfied Bragg’s anxious prosecutors by tweeting to his 620,000 followers, “see you in a month (or more).”
Then, the ever-dependable Michael broke his promise by immediately firing up a new account on TikTok talking about, you guessed it, Donald Trump. Hey, the slippery lawyer never actually said he wouldn’t talk about the trial on TikTok. After all, TikTok isn’t “my X account” or “the Mea Culpa Podcast” either.
Every night since, Michael has been mugging for tips from deranged democrats on his TikTok channel, where he’s mostly yammering about the Trump Trial and yipping about how much he hates President Trump.
It’s a gift to Trump’s lawyers. They are probably turning somersaults.
All of Michael’s TikTocking is fair game for trial. It can all be played to the jury, to show how Michael is making money off hating President Trump. It’s practically become his entire career. Some jurors may be sufficiently TDS-inflicted to agree with the disgraced lawyer, but by ABC’s description, Michael’s performance sounds just as weird and icky as you would expect. Here’s a sample:
Cohen’s streams often seem like a fever dream — with Trump’s one-time fixer fluctuating between personal attacks on his former boss and making heart shapes with his hands after a user sends him a gift. Cohen did not specify how much he has made on the streams when asked by ABC News.
At one point on Tuesday night, in the middle of Cohen discussing his upcoming possible testimony, a TikTok user gifted Cohen a “Knight Helmet,” which cost 199 TikTok coins. The gift placed a cartoon helmet on Cohen’s head, prompting him to stop briefly mid-sentence before continuing,
“Ultimately what will happen is it will be my day … I’ll go there with my helmet, my spear, and I’ll sit my ass in that witness stand and I’ll just tell the truth,” Cohen said.
Michael Cohen wouldn’t recognize the truth if it gave him a Cherry Ripple colon cleanse. And this TikTok grifter is Alvin Bragg’s star witness.
Which brings us to another remarkable New York Times editorial.
…………..more fun in the comment section……………..
………….MEANWHILE…LOOKS LIKE THE “JUDGE” MERCAN GOT THE MEMO ………..
Today in a hearing about Trump defying his Gag Order …Mercan had the option of Jailing Trump but alas he chickened out by offered a stern warning…NEXT TIME !…How would this affect the Election ?
AND
Judge Merchan takes the bench and advises that Trump can attend Barron’s graduation on May 17th.
https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1785303410478022846
The trial must not be polling well. The New York Times ran a desperate, narrative bending guest essay yesterday, headlined “I Was an Attorney at the D.A.’s Office. This Is What the Trump Case Is Really About.” It was penned by Rebecca Roiphe, who before Alvin Bragg’s time a former assistant DA in the Manhattan office. Now she’s a Trump-deranged law professor at New York University who often gives media salty quotes about Trump posing the greatest danger to the Nation’s democracy.
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Rebecca is worried about the trial, and put the bad news up front. Alvin Bragg’s case against President Trump is turning out to be totally incomprehensible, and people are struggling to comprehend exactly what Trump is supposed to have done wrong:
Now that the lawyers are laying out their respective theories of the case in the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump in New York, it would be understandable if people’s heads are spinning. It’s not surprising that the lawyers are trying to make this about something sexier. This is a narrative device to make the jurors side with them, but it has also created confusion.
No kidding. Like me, and like other experts recently quoted in C&C, even Trump-deranged Rebecca admits this case is not about election interference or even about salacious “hush money” payments. Those things are distractions. It’s just about the stupid check stubs:
This case is not really about election interference, nor is it a politically motivated attempt to criminalize a benign personal deal. Boring as it may sound, it is a case about business integrity. Mr. Trump is accused of creating 11 false invoices, 12 false ledger entries and 11 false checks and check stubs, with the intent to violate federal election laws, state election laws or state tax laws.
Rebecca was even generous enough to admit that this clinically-insane prosecution doesn’t depend on the truth or falsehood of any of the bad things Trump’s been accused of, which as Rebecca sees it, poses another problem:
For the prosecution, the elements of the crime in this case do not require a finding that Mr. Trump interfered with the 2016 election. Nor does it matter whether he had sex with Ms. Daniels. By over-emphasizing the crime he was intending to conceal rather than the false business records, the prosecution also risks confusing the jury into thinking about whether the lies affected the election or to wonder why Mr. Trump wasn’t charged with this alleged election crime.
After carefully considering these pro’s and con’s and weighing the risks, Rebecca posed the question that we are all asking ourselves: “Is it really worth charging a former president for this?”
By way of an answer, all Rebecca could come up with was a single paragraph leaning into the tired old “no man is above the law” trope that we’ve repeatedly demolished. Ask Hunter Biden about no man being above the law. What’s a little sex trafficking between friends, anyway?
Rebecca laughably suggested that since any regular small businessman would be charged and tried for writing “legal expenses” on his check stubs too, then it’s super fair to also charge a President. After all, the liberal law professor mused, it proves the system is fair.
I hate to give Rebecca more bad news, but small businesspeople mischaracterize expenses all the time. It’s practically a national pastime. And in my experience as a commercial litigator, businesspeople usually do mischaracterize expenses to avoid paying some kind of tax, like sales tax, payroll tax, or income tax. And avoiding paying tax is clearly an “other crime” that would support a felony conviction for check stub fraud if Alvin Bragg were equally applying the law.
And if I am recalling correctly — and I think I am — Hillary’s campaign also mischaracterized the Steele “Russia Russia Russia” dossier as legal expenses. Yet this obvious example of prosecutorial double standards somehow escaped Rebecca’s keen legal instincts.
If charging the President with crimes proves the system is fair, without even really trying that hard I can think of a lot of things with which to charge Joe Biden. Let’s go.