“Hush money” sounds incriminating, doesn’t it? Maybe you picture a couple of menacing cartoon bad-guys offering burlap sacks of cash to a shivering, knobby-kneed nobody who stumbled into the supervillain’s lair and saw…too much.
“Hush money” sounds nefarious. So that’s the phrase that has been and will be all over the front page of top-tier fake news outlets, used synonymously in-text with “extortion,” “blackmail,” and “bribery.”
Yes, it’s all political weaponization. But it’s even lamer than hush money. They just hope you’ll never make it past the headline. What makes it worse is that pseudo-pundits like Dave Portnoy are throwing their sources-uncited opinions into the ring, further muddling the so-called case against Trump.
The Left hopes you never learn that wiring hush money isn’t a crime.
Hush money is the colloquial term for legal tender exchanged in a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). NDAs are signed, sealed, and delivered every day. They’re contracts. Some may have money attached, and some may not.
The purpose of a non-disclosure agreement is to buy someone’s silence, which, in the United States, is perfectly legal.
Thus, $130,000 was paid to tighten Stephanie Clifford’s loose lips about an alleged third-rate romance low-rent rendezvous between herself and The Apprentice star in 2006. I’d be remiss not to mention both parties are publicly on the record denying that they were, uh, saw a lot of each other.
Not only does the Left hope you think hush money is inherently criminal. They also hope you think that it’s the criminal charge against former President Donald J. Trump. It’s not.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, paid Clifford the hush money himself. You know, the same Michael Cohen who went to federal prison, much like Clifford’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, who is now locked up until 2036.
“Felony”—there’s another scary word. A felony typically is punishable by imprisonment. So, yeah, tossing the word “felony” near “Donald Trump” in a news story is somewhat incendiary.
What exactly is the actual charge against our former president? What has our weaponized Department of Justice chosen for the first indictment of a previous Commander in Chief?
The most truthful of publications will state that Trump is being charged with 30+ felonious counts of “business fraud.”
As of Monday, the precise accusations against the former President remain under seal. Likely, some of the 30 counts describe a falsification of records, because a series of checks to his lawyer, speculated to be reimbursement for the Clifford hush money, were documented as “legal expenses.” The total sum of money paid to Cohen exceeds $130,000.
If Attorney General Alvin Bragg and his team can prove these “legal fees” were reimbursement for hush money, then they can prosecute Trump further—which is how I suspect they came up with 30 different attachable crimes.
One check, one felony count. Two checks, two felony counts. Ditto, wire transfers.
Another key detail state-run media hopes you forget is that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is pulling some questionable strings to extend the statute of limitations for Trump’s alleged 30 crimes, being that the deadline expired over a year ago.
The statute of limitations for this category of felony in New York is five years.
Michael Cohen completed the paperwork to pay Clifford on October 27, 2016. Trump was allegedly updated on the wire and Clifford signed the agreement on October 28, 2016.
Here is a comprehensive timeline of the whole situation.
Between May 23 and December 5, 2017, Donald Trump himself signed six $35,000 checks to Michael Cohen for “election-related expenses” with line items including “tech services” and a “bonus.” They were “grossed up” for tax purposes according to court documents.
The Left hopes you don’t do some quick arithmetic. Even if you were to employ the “final act” in the crime, the time allotted for prosecution—five years—would have expired Dec. 5, 2022.
President Donald J. Trump is the first former president in the history of the United States to be indicted. He will be arraigned tomorrow at 2:15 P.M.
For decades, the Left has been working to confuse citizens about their constitutionally-enshrined presumption of innocence. Remember the Senate confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh? The #BelieveAllWomen hashtag?
Beyond mobilizing the Democrats’ core constituency—middle-aged divorced or never-married suburban college-educated white women—the other goal was to begin chipping away at that cornerstone of Anglo-American jurisprudence, namely, that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty.
Ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to Twitter shortly after the indictment to lie:
“The Grand Jury has acted upon the facts and the law,” she began. “No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence.”
Here’s a crash course in civics for those fooled by Mrs. Paul Pelosi: the prosecution must prove guilt… beyond a reasonable doubt.
To do this, the court must prove mens rea, which literally means a “guilty mind.”
But even in the mind of someone who isn’t Donald Trump, mens rea is virtually impossible to verify. How can anyone read someone else’s mind? The prosecution must prove the former president was fully aware of… whatever it is he’s now accused of doing.
They failed with the Steele Dossier, the Mueller report, the first impeachment, the second impeachment, the January 6th Committee, the raid at Mar-a-Lago…
Stay strong, Mr. President.