Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

That's because the charges haven't been announced yet. The facts that we know are that a grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump and has delivered a True Bill to the prosecutors.

The indictment is at this moment sealed. It should be unsealed shortly (speculation was a timeline of tonight/tomorrow, but I could also see it being early next week).

So, it's not known publicly what the specific charges are. Which is why people haven't described them in this thread. They're not yet known.

> most stories are vague.

This is partly because there's not a lot of information, but it's also because the news media needs to pump out an endless amount of content around this story (since it's both historic, and they have a profit incentive to keep people reading/watching), but there's really only a few paragraphs* of information that's currently available or relevant.

> It sounds like they have to prove two separate crimes, and connect them with intention. Intent of course is always hard to prove in court.

The speculated charges (which, again, are speculation, not the known public charges) involve a crime which is, on its own, a misdemeanor. The crime becomes a felony if it was committed with intent to commit another crime.

So, if (and again, this is a big if, since it's not the actual charges, just speculation) the prosecutors are going down that road, they don't actually have to prove two crimes. They have to prove the first crime and intent to commit another crime. They don't actually have to prove the facts of the second crime.

> Intent of course is always hard to prove in court.

Intent is hard to prove, but it's also something that gets proved in court cases frequently. For example, murder is (in almost all states) an intent crime. Prosecutors are still able to charge and convict on murder. So, while an intent element makes a case harder to make, it doesn't by default make it impossible.

For a crime similar to the being speculated about, consider Breaking and Entering. In many states a B&E is only a crime if it's done with the intent to commit another crime (in Washington state, for example, this is "Residential burglary" RCW 9A.52.025†). But if someone is caught breaking into a property at night with a ski mask and a burlap sack, prosecutors won't find it a challenge to demonstrate the requisite intent.

> Overall this seems like a weak case to me.

I think it's really too early to say at this point. I'd at least wait until the indictment is unsealed and released publicly so we can know the actual charges. Once we know the charges, and a summary of the available evidence, we'd be in a much better position to make a claim about the quality of the case.

* There's really only a single sentence of _news_ to report, but there's probably a decent amount of explaining the process that can reasonably happen, since most people aren't familiar with the details of the process.

† https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9a.52&full=true...

Michael Cohen pled guilty and was sentenced to three years for the campaign finance law, and he's been very vocal about Trump's knowledge and involvement. So proving intent doesn't seem impossible. And, by definition, falsifying business records comes with a record of false information.

Also, from everything I've read, well defended people are remarkably hard to convict. This is as it should be, as it may let some people go scot free, but protects the rest of us.

Convicting Trump will be hard. It might fail. Does this mean that charges should not be brought in the first place? That's a question I don't know how to answer, for any "white collar" or prominent defendant.

Nothing will happen to him just more lame reality TV type drama that gets ratings.

This will be unsealed when Trump is processed and arraigned. I believe this is set for Tuesday. Note that processing includes the mug shot, fingerprinting and DNA.

My understanding is the payoff was upgraded to a felony because it had to be. If it were a misdemeanour it would be beyond the statute of limitations. So this isn't even a case where the prosecutor has "insurance" with a lesser charge. A felony seems to require actual intent, as in knowing this would impact the election. Whose to say it wasn't done to protect his marriage, for example? Of course, there may be evidence to support this.

But I have trouble believing the Manhattan DA would indict just on this (alleged) offence. There has to be more to this. Hopefully we'll learn a lot more next week.

It's the justice system of New York state that's on trial, not Trump.

>> I've scrolled through the top ~10 or so comments

>> I'm not a lawyer and it's hard to parse the above.

>> Overall this seems like a weak comment to me.

If they only have a weak case, it will be easy to pass it as an attempt to prevent him from running 2024, so it will only serve to further polarize the country

I understand even his loyal voter base are now sometimes embarrassed by his actions. For example, him storing confidential papers at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency finished.

That is different from when he was first elected as President. At that time he couldn't do anything wrong. I am sure the right wing press will spin this as a witch hunt, but will it fly with the voters on the ground?

Does anyone have more insight in this?

However:

1 iirc Grand Jury's are the ones that get to do everything behind closed doors. So we wouldnt know if they had a smoking gun until after trial possibly.

2 The US has a history of pursuing people it doesn't like through financial crimes. Rico etc.

I think its easy to see this in the lens of "oh its another attack on trump that will go away again" and if you experience your entire life through the highs and lows of the media cycle thats quite possibly going to be the case. But I think each prong of attack opens up a little more of Trumps weakness and eventually, either through weight of legal cost or dumb luck they will find something to hang him with.

In order for it to be a felony, you need to connect the two together. Otherwise it's a misdemeanour.

In terms of it being a "weak case", I would just say let's wait to see what the prosecutors' argument is - this will be released when the indictment is unsealed on Thursday. It's a document-heavy case. There is a witness who carried out the crime (Michael Cohen), and other witnesses as well. I would also posit that the prosecutors, and a grand jury (who unanimously voted to indict) would not take the unprecedented step to charge a former President unless they thought there was a strong case.

So, let's just wait and see.

The Economist, no fan of Trump, made much the same point [1], archived at [2]

> Prosecuting Mr Trump for the campaign-finance violation relies on a convoluted argument. In 2016 Michael Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer (who later went to prison himself), paid $130,000 to Ms Daniels out of his own pocket. Mr Trump allegedly reimbursed Mr Cohen with payments disguised as routine legal expenses. Falsifying business records can be a misdemeanour under New York law. The felony indictment would indicate that prosecutors are going to argue that the minor crime facilitated a more serious one: failing to declare the payment, which was made a few weeks before the election, as a de facto campaign expense.

> The payment probably did benefit the campaign and it was indeed undeclared. Mr Cohen, the lawyer, pleaded guilty to breaking campaign-finance law. But legal theory for prosecuting Mr Trump in Manhattan is untested. The campaign-finance rules that he may have broken are federal. The accounting rule is a state one. Linking the two in this way is unusual, and a judge may decide it is unwarranted.

And today it has a leader [3], archived at [4] which goes into greater detail, and concludes

> If Mr Trump is to be prosecuted, it should be for something that cannot be dismissed as a technicality, and where the law is clearer. The Manhattan DA’s case looks like a mistake.

[1] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/03/23/the-cases... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20230329221711/https://www.econo... [3] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/03/30/prosecuting-don... [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20230331115631/https://www.econo...

I've recently served on a jury for a criminal trial, so I've learned some things about the process that courtroom dramas did not teach me.

One: stacked charges (in this case, 30+) can indicate repeat offenses of the same crime / crimes on separate occasions (usually denoted as separate dates). I do not think this is simply a matter of a single hush money payout (or two, as has been reported in the news). I would not be surprised if there are 10 or more distinct events in play. edit: Note that the jury can render separate verdicts for each charge if desired.

Two: the grand jury merely decides whether there's enough evidence to bring this to trial. The standard of evidence for a grand jury is much lower than the actual trial jury.

Three: this is more theoretical because I'd be surprised if this happens, but the defendant in any criminal proceeding is more than entitled to neither testify on his own behalf, and the defense is not required to call any witnesses to the stand, as the presumption is that Trump is innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof lies with the prosecution.

Four: I'm going to paraphrase the judge in my case slightly, but "beyond an unreasonable doubt does not mean beyond any possible doubt. There is always going to be some shred of doubt. Beyond an unreasonable doubt means that you have a moral conviction that the defendant committed the alleged crimes."

> it sounds very technical

That's totally expected, as is the case for even the most mundane-seeming laws. The jury is not expected to have a legal background. The judge will instruct them regarding the points of the law (along with definitions of legal terms), and in particular provide criteria that must be met (sometimes with alternatives, e.g. direct vs constructive possession) in order to find the defendant guilty of a crime. https://nycourts.gov/judges/cji/2-PenalLaw/175/175.10.pdf is probably pretty similar to what the jury might expect to see.

As for intent being hard to prove: you are approximately never going to have direct evidence regarding intent. The prosecution can try to establish intent through circumstantial evidence from which the jury can make a reasonable inference. Again, paraphrasing the judge: if you see someone come into the courtroom with wet clothes and shaking water off an umbrella, you can infer that it was raining. Similarly, if the prosecution establishes that Trump took specific actions that could not be reasonably interpreted in a different way other than being made intentionally, or that there were too many of these unlikely occurrences for it to be coincidental, then the jury may use that to establish intent. Further, note that ignorance of the law is not a defense.

You can bet that the prosecution's case is going to center around providing evidence to directly prove those points, regardless of any narrative the lawyers on either side want to spin. At least in our case, we were instructed only to use evidence as presented in exhibits and per witness testimony. Any of the words of the lawyers (questioning, or even opening statements / closing arguments) were not allowed to be considered. The closing arguments are essentially suggestions re: how to view the evidence.

One last note: you cited that a class E felony in NY has a mandatory minimum of 1 year. Even if Trump is convicted of 30 class E felonies, those can be served concurrently, so theoretically the judge could hand down a sentence of 1 year prison time if he so desired. I think that's highly unlikely, but it is possible.

Interesting items:

- This is from the NY State courts so it is NY State laws in play (likely campaign finance laws), not Federal. If it were Federal it would be prosecuted by Federal attorney's in a Federal court.

- A Grand Jury (for those that don't know) is composed of citizens, about 16-20 or something, that proceed like a court case understanding laws and evidence presented, including witness interviews, and the result here is that they chose to indict. This means that 12 (or more) citizens decided there was enough evidence that specific laws might have been broken to bring charges against him.

- I believe (common sense here) that campaign finance funds have to be kept separate from personal or business funds, as in different accounts. Depending on the laws in various states the laws may require disclosure forms of funds into/out of the accounts, etc.

Its likely that this is technical and could be traceable - if the funds for hush money came from a campaign finance account through his attorney and noted as such its probably not a case that is worth trying. That doesn't appear to be illegal, its a (morally questionable) campaign line item. If the source of the funds was from a personal/business account then that could violate campaign finance laws by using the wrong account. This kinda sounds like how they got Al Capone on tax evasion and not the myriad of other potential crimes. I'm not comparing the people, just my layman knowledge of the cases.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/30/politics/clinton-dnc-steele-d...

Obama: Charged with $375,000 for breaking campaign finance law.

Regardless of how you vote, this is a political stunt and witch hunt. Next Biden will be indicted when he leaves office, then the next opponent, and so on…

This is an extremely dangerous precedence that will do nothing but fuel both sides.

[0] https://www.justsecurity.org/85745/survey-of-prosecutions-fo...

Said another commenter who, like everyone else outside of the DA's office, has literally no data on what is in the now-reported to be 34 indictments.

>> hard to parse the above, but it sounds very technical So, "I don't know what I'm talking about, generally don't like it, so I'll just call it weak.", is itself a very weak statement.

It is extremely unlikely that this reluctant prosecutor would go to the mat with a weak case around one event such as a payoff to one woman, even if it was done in a way to violate tax and campaign finance laws.

We know no details, but there are clues in the public domain. The same DA office already convicted the Trump Organization on 17 counts and got the maximum fines [0]. There were witnisses called before the Grand Jury who would have spoken to much more than a single payoff scheme. There were multiple women, and David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer, who was known to have paid for and killed multiple scandalous stories on Trump's behalf, and Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, who plead guilty in a 15-year Trump Org Tax Scheme.

Based on this, it is a reasonable inference to expect charges of a years-long conspiracy to commit tax, business, and campaign fraud.

I suppose if you consider white-collar crime "technical" and therefore weak, any such indictments would be weak.

But in terms of the actual strength of the case, based both on that DA's record of convictions, and the historic profile of this case (and the career-terminating consequences of losing it), they would not be bringing charges unless they thought they were extremely strong and they were extremely confident of winning.

[0]https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-organization-sentenced...

His attorney already went to jail over this and if he wasn't president, he'd have been charged years ago.

The entire impossibility of prosecuting Trump is weird to me. There's a host of crimes to pick from, from using/withholding already approved support for Ukraine to bribe/blackmail Zelensky for personal gain (dirt on a political opponent), to pressuring people to violate election laws, to instigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, to keeping hundreds of highly classified documents in his basement and lying about it when he's requested to return them.

Lots of people have gone to prison much quicker for a fraction of this. So why is it so hard to prosecute a president or former president? It really feels like he is above the law, and lots of people want presidents to be above the law, apparently.

There is speculation that many of the charges are related to falsifying business records to cover up the payment, which would explain the number of charges involved. If true, then this case has parallels with what happened with Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinski case: it wasn't the affair that was criminal act, it was the coverup after the fact.

Based on one article that quoted an anonymous source from one of Trump's advisors or confidants, said that they are working toward an arraignment on Tuesday. But it's a high profile case with exceptional circumstances--namely the involvement of the Secret Service--so we should probably take that date with a grain of salt.

It’s funny how so many people think less of this crime because the misappropriated campaign funds where used for something so redicules, compared to if it had been just plainly stolen or used to buy a luxury car or something like that.

When I tried DuckDuckGo, only HN came up.

I was curious what redditors thought of your response and what context it was made, but search engines seem to fall down on finding a great deal of what's been hidden on the Internet these days.

(In fact, you could argue that this defence is even stronger because he is Donald Trump. He has plenty of dedicated supporters who seem to stick with him regardless of his transgressions; accusations of infidelity might be less damaging to him politically than to other politicians!)

So, the prosecutors have to somehow convince a court what his intent really was, i.e. it's less about what he did and more about why he did it.

The whole thing is... probably not great grounds on which to carry out the first criminal indictment of a former US president, but the state of US politics and media in 2023 is such that outside of Trump circles the issues will be largely ignored.

Here is an analogy I thought of. Say my firm's database gets ransomewared. If I pay the ransom directly, that may be a particular way of accounting. But say, I pay McCohen Computer Associates to fix the problem. Why do I not book it as a computer expense? I am not an accountant but am curious how this works.

Also, booking something in the wrong accounting category, doesn't seem like a very convincing charge. On the other hand, Tax and election violations are very serious.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/01/07/obama-campai...

The interesting bit is that Hillary Clinton also violated campaign finance law in a similar way for funding the Steele dossier. She was fined $8000. People are really going to have a field day with this.

If this was actually Trump paying his own hush money via his lawyer, then it makes Michael Cohen a liar (when he said that he paid it out of his own pocket, thus admitting to violating campaign finance law), but Trump seems to not be implicated at all.

isn't this a bit of a stretch? lots of things that could "make trump look bad" (TM) might have a political consequence, but does that make them all defacto campaign related? Aren't there plenty other (personal) reasons he would pay her off unrelated to the campaign (he's done/said things unrepentantly that could equally impact his campaign, so it's not clear Trump is even motivated to pay her off for this reason).

The legal gymnastics this DA is jumping through to attach charges here makes a joke of the entire justice system. I won’t be surprise if Bragg is disbarred for this.

I thought the point of the US was to allow the president to do some sweet real estate deals? From https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html

> His stories about George Washington, none of which I knew, are even more fascinating. Bueno de Mesquita claims, quite plausibly, that a huge part of George Washington’s motive for fighting the Revolutionary War was to protect his substantial, and critically placed, landholdings in the Ohio Valley.

Remember that the 'Royal Proclamation of 1763' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Proclamation_of_1763 :

> The Proclamation forbade all settlements west of a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains, which was delineated as an Indian Reserve.[2] Exclusion from the vast region of Trans-Appalachia created discontent between Britain and colonial land speculators and potential settlers. The proclamation and access to western lands was one of the first significant areas of dispute between Britain and the colonies and would become a contributing factor leading to the American Revolution.[3]

> British colonists and land speculators objected to the proclamation boundary since the British government had already assigned land grants to them. Including the wealthy owners of the Ohio company who protested the line to the governor of Virginia, as they had plans for settling the land to grow business.[15] Many settlements already existed beyond the proclamation line,[16] some of which had been temporarily evacuated during Pontiac's War, and there were many already granted land claims yet to be settled. For example, George Washington and his Virginia soldiers had been granted lands past the boundary. Prominent American colonials joined with the land speculators in Britain to lobby the government to move the line further west.

More context from https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html

> [...] his story made me realize that a large part of my belief in GW is romantic: because I learned about him so early in life, that romantic view is harder to shake and I’ve been less willing to put GW under the public choice microscope than with any current or recent president.

> An excerpt about GW’s wealth:

>> His last position, just before becoming President, was President of the Patowmack Canal Company–the Potomac Canal, as we know it, from the Potomac River. What that canal did was bring, make it possible to bring produce from the Shenandoah Valley–which George owned–up to the port in Alexandria, which had been built by Lawrence, by the Ohio Valley Company, in which George had a direct interest, and shipped goods out. So it was a very profitable undertaking–or so he thought it would be, in the long run, for him. And that’s what motivated him. Most people think of Washington as–besides a great hero, which he certainly was–as kind of a gentleman farmer. Economists have estimated the worth in real dollars adjusted for inflation, not appreciated, of George Washington’s estate, in contemporary terms; and it’s about $20 billion dollars. He is by far the wealthiest President. He is the 59th wealthiest person in American history. Three of the American founding fathers are in the list of the top 100 wealthiest Americans in all of history: Hancock, who was wealthier than Washington–made his money smuggling; and Ben Franklin, who was not quite as wealthy, who made his money because he had a monopoly on the printing press. These are the folks who led the Revolution. These were not the downtrodden. These were not the oppressed. These were people who stood to lose huge amounts of wealth because of the King’s policies. And so they fought a Revolution. Which was, by the way, not very popular. Sixty percent of the colonists either were neutral or opposed to the Revolution.

> Nearly the entire point of the United States at its founding was that the law should apply to political leaders.

The Brits already had that system in place, so no need to secede because of that. Yes, the King was above the law, but he was a figurehead and by the time of the colonials' insubordination the country was already run by parliament and Prime Minister.

I think that's overstated.

First of all, it was the Magna Carta which established that the king was not above the law, so in that sense the founding of the United States was more "and we don't need a king".

Second, there are frequently legal discussions in the present day as to whether a sitting president can be charged with a crime, so there is at least a substantial idea that there is some "sovereign immunity" (quotes because that's not what sovereign immunity refers to)

Third, the founders were also well aware of the threat of political motives for prosecutions and wanted to diminish them with various balance of power checks and balances.

What I don't love is the timing of it. It makes it easily dismissible as political theatre. Wait until after the election.

In countries like Ukraine and Georgia, they have recently jailed their presidents or opponents. Yanukovich jailed Timushenko. Saakashvili was jailed.

This can wreak a lot of havoc in a country. Look at how the supporters of Imran Khan are reacting, as his opponents always try to arrest him:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Imran_Khan_arrest_attem...

This is also why it’s important to not use the law as a political tool. Otherwise trust in the law is undermined.

Plenty of governors have been put in prison but an ex-president is going to have secret service, even in prison?

This is a crime another person served time for so it's definitely a crime worthy of prison but of all the crimes, this is so damn stupid in comparison.

I'd settle for CEOs and Bankers going to prison for all the crimes they have gotten away with on a daily basis than even one president as despised as they are.

The founders of the United States were criminals and traitors.

"we must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately"

Honestly, what the US campaign financing system needs is a full overhaul, its full of legal and illegal-but-ignored corruption.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-senator-and-presidenti...

The unfortunate matter though is the damage they did to this country was fairly bipartisan, which I believe plays a large part in Bush's rehabilitation in the public image after leaving office. At least he didn't make mean jokes like some people.

I thought this was settled years ago

I mean, Saddam was the one making these claims the loudest (to look strong).

But there are dozens of people involved in a grand jury and there is just no way to manufacture anything without it becoming public knowledge. Someone in the NYC AD office is very likely a Trump voter and they’d never play along.

This is just a standard legal process with an extraordinary target.

Not to cut against your point, but just want to clarify that 247 years ago was 1776, which is not when our judicial system was founded. The first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, wasn't ratified until 1781 and did not include a judiciary. The second constitution, which created the judicial branch, didn't go into effect until March 4, 1789. Subsequently, the judicial system was established by the Judiciary Act on September 24, 1789.

>As law-abiding citizens, is this not what we expect and has it not been the foundation of our judicial system for 247 years?

Well it's what I've been expecting for 50 years, ever since he started coming to South Florida in the 1970's as a quintessential unknown fake millionaire, where the locals recognized right away what his still-strongest defining characteristics were; that he cheats at golf and couldn't be trusted in a real estate deal.

You should have seen what it said in our local paper (The National Enquirer) way before he was on TV, when he was associated with only scandals and bankruptcy. This was a known gossip tabloid and some things might have been exaggerated but surely even more things made it under the radar and were never reported at all. For a few years now I've been wondering where the archives for the National Enquirer are anyway. It would give today's reporters a lot of potential ideas of people who still might be good to talk to.

Now in the 21st century he's still the furthest thing from a life-long Republican, and could never reach high enough to even shine the shoes of Ronald Reagan who was more of an actor than a president himself.

And if you want to invoke great Republican Presidents like Eisenhower or something, ask yourself if you were a Republican what kind of person would you rather vote for, Honest Abe or Dishonest Don?

I mean... great, let's do that. If they're all committing crimes, let's start arresting them until they stop. That's how they treat us after all.

Someone still has to make a descision.

In general, I'd say there is huge bias in favor of Trump though. People respect authority and fame to a shocking degree.

Why is it necessary to state this? I find these kind of statements very interesting. They tell us a lot about unspoken rules, societal taboos, Overton windows etc etc

However, I'd be interested in learning more from those here who do have that knowledge and are willing to share perspective on these sort of events.

In general, I think it's valuable to be curious about things you're not necessarily interested in.

The admission here is that the only reason why this was upvoted or on the front page is because the only good news is Trump schadenfreude and the opportunity for launching cheap attacks here.

The only 'bad news' is any good news that benefits Trump. (Which never makes it on top on HN anyway, and it shouldn't and vice versa because it is pure politics and creates a complete mess of the comments and dang knows it.)

Just look at the wave of flagged comments everywhere in this thread. It tells use that there is good reason why such news like this should not be on top of this page. (It is not intellectually interesting, it is partisan and a heavily divisive flame-bait topic.)

It never helps pouring fuel on the flames.

Edit: The comments above yours (at the time of writing) are mostly okay, but as I read further down, it ventures into the territory of 'such and such person and party is bad' which I think HN is not a good place for that kind of discord.

I've posted various explanations about this over the years - a bunch are at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869, which shows how far back political discussion goes on HN, as well as the argument about politics on HN.

If anyone reads those past explanations and has a question about this that I haven't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

Getting indictment of any sort can lead to larger ones.

Other indictments are likely coming from other ongoing investigations.

No, you don’t know what the actual charges are.

You know the central focus of the investigation was a particular campaign finance fraud.

What the–reportedly more than 30–charges that have come out of the investigation are, is another question. What are they? We’ll see.

There are worse things coming down the pipeline than Trump anyway, it seems he was just a trial balloon for the fascist era we're heading into. I just wish he'd go away already.