News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
I’m so glad you came in here to explain how I’m wrong.
Oh. Might want to take a gander at the actual statutes. They make it very clear intent is actually a necessary part.
Second degree
And First degree
To be clear, im not saying he didn’t do it, im saying the prosecution didn’t cover one aspect during the trial (that trump knew he was covering up a crime.)
"Intent to defraud" doesn't mean you have to know it's illegal.
The first degree requires an intent to conceal the prior crime - they have to show trumps intention was to conceal the campaign finance stuff; otherwise it’s just a misdemeanor.
If Trump didn’t know the campaign finance stuff was a crime, then why would he conceal it?
Trumps lawyers are arguing, it was to spare his wife. (Something else all see as bullshit,)
So, mens rea gets slightly misunderstood a lot, especially with more white-collar stuff. Generally, you don't have to know that you were violating the law, just that were doing the action that happens to be against the law, at least for the basic fraud laws in question here.
The election interference part is murkier, and really all you have to do to avoid charges under the traditional federal interpretation of the federal statute is to claim ignorance; it's one of the weird exceptions and has basically rendered federal criminal prosecutions for campaign finance violations as a charming hypothetical, except when committed by campaign managers with law degrees. There is a revised standard that says you don't have to know the law inside and out, just that generally this sort of thing is not allowed, but that is untested.
There is NY election law that could be held to a lower, more traditional standard, and while itself a misdemeanor, it could be enough to trigger the felony standard. Overall, it is probably the weakest part of the prosecution's case, but the prosecution would say that falsifying the records to make sure that Trump got elected is enough.
The issue here is that NY statute requires an intention to defraud, and for the first degree felony, an intention to conceal a crime (either one you’re about to do, will do, or have done,).
intentionally concealing a prior crime kind of requires an awareness that thing being concealed was a prior crime.
An argument that trump was unaware the prior thing was a crime could knock it down to a misdemeanor. (Or get a hung jury.)