- Title: After arraignment, Trump's lawyers have 'nothing to rely on' - legal analyst
- Date: 5th April 2023
- Summary: LARCHMONT, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (APRIL 5, 2023) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) PROFESSOR OF LAW AT GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AND AUTHOR OF, "A RIGHT TO LIE? PRESIDENTS, OTHER LIARS AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT," CATHERINE ROSS, SAYING: "One of the rockier, grayer areas of this case is whether the state of New York can rely on a federal crime that the federal government h
- Embargoed: 19th April 2023 18:55
- Keywords: Catherine Ross GW Trump arraignment
- Location: NEW YORK + LARCHMONT, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- City: NEW YORK + LARCHMONT, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- Country: US
- Topics: Crime/Law/Justice,Judicial Process/Court Cases/Court Decisions,North America
- Reuters ID: LVA005312105042023RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: After former U.S. President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan court to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, he will have to make his way through the judicial process as he also wages a presidential campaign.
But according to one legal analyst, his defense has little work with, or is really just, "blowing air," as Catherine Ross, of George Washington University Law School, put it in an interview.
Trump has been accused him of orchestrating payments to two women before the 2016 election to suppress publication of their sexual encounters with him.
The two women in the case are adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
The grand jury convened by Bragg that indicted Trump heard evidence about a $130,000 payment made to Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels has said she was paid to keep silent about a sexual encounter she had with Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel in 2006.
"After the arraignment, Trump's lawyers came out and made a big fuss and said, 'nothing new, nothing new.' You know, 'this is just garbage.' They were just blowing air is the most polite way I can put it because they have really nothing on the law or the facts to rely on. They did not push back," said Ross, who is also the author of, "A Right to Lie?: Presidents, Other Liars, and the First Amendment."
Trump's lawyers, Ross went on, "should be very concerned."
While falsifying business records in New York on its own is a misdemeanor punishable by no more than one year in prison, it is elevated to a felony punishable by up to four years when done to advance or conceal another crime, such as election law violations.
"One of the rockier, grayer areas of this case is whether the state of New York can rely on a federal crime that the federal government has not prosecuted in order to show that there was a crime associated with the falsehood in the business records," Ross said. "And so what I think Bragg has done well is to build a multilayered indictment, that if a court says, 'you cannot rely on the federal crimes. We also have New York State crimes.' And there should be no doubt that New York State can link the business records violations to its own crimes and does not need to prosecute those crimes if it can provide evidence of the intent to commit the crimes. The crimes do not have to be completed If the business records falsehoods were created in order to try to accomplish a crime."
Trump described the New York prosecution as election interference.
Trump faces a separate criminal probe by a county prosecutor in Georgia into whether he unlawfully tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state. He also faces two U.S. Justice Department investigations led by a special counsel into attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and his handling of classified documents after leaving office.
"So how do you get that kind of repeated alleged criminal? And sometimes you have to go with the narrower charge rather than the most dramatic charge," Ross said. "And Al Capone is a great example because they had documents about his tax violations and it was much harder to prove than he sent the shooters for the Valentine's Day massacre. So too, for some of the crimes in New York. This may be the opening wedge."
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