Trump Might Be Convicted Because He Can Never Admit a Mistake

And also because he's just generally a piece of shit

Photo from Julia Nikhinson via Getty.

Shortly after opening arguments in the Trump case, I said that the case against him “completely sucks”. Now that arguments have concluded, I have softened my stance: I now believe that the case merely “mostly sucks”. Had things been argued differently, I might have softened more — I could have been convinced that the case only “blows” or “is hella lame”. I remain frustrated that there was very little discussion of what I see as the only plausible “object offense”: election law violations. Those were glossed over, and yet the trial managed to uncover nauseating minutia, such as what Trump was wearing while sprawled out on a bed in an alleged “do I make you horny, baby?” pose.

If I drop acid, stand on my head, and squint, I can see a possible felony.¹ The story behind that felony goes like this:

• Trump and Michael Cohen conspired to pay off Stormy Daniels, and their plan involved Cohen fronting the money. This is a campaign finance violation, because Cohen could only legally donate up to $2,700, and he basically floated the Trump campaign a $130,000 loan.

• When Trump paid Cohen back, his organization wrote “legal services” on the invoices, when they should have written “payment to ensure that a porn star never writes a book in which she compares the president’s penis to a toadstool”. This is misdemeanor fraud, which becomes a felony because it was done to cover up the campaign finance violation.

This narrative contains a million unanswered questions. A few include: Was Cohen’s “loan” really a loan, or was he actually just couriering money? Was the hush money paid for campaign reasons, or for personal reasons? If Trump had reported the hush money in his campaign’s books, wouldn’t he have been prosecuted for misappropriation of campaign funds? Part of me wants to know: What is the legal way for a campaign to pay off a porn star? New York is implying that if you cut her a campaign check and report the payment, that’s fine. And I desperately want to see someone test that theory; I’d love to see, say, Marsha Blackburn put a line in her campaign books this fall that says “hush money to Magnus Thunderbeef” just to see how things go.

Basically none of my questions got answered during the trial. That’s partly the prosecution’s fault; their strategy seemed to be to immerse the jury in Trump’s profound sleaziness and not split hairs regarding what’s illegal and what’s merely shitty. They also, at times, talked as though any effort to deceive the public is “election fraud”, even though a reasonable definition of a political campaign might be “an effort to deceive the public”. But the main that reason that none of my questions got answered is the defense. The questions I raised above — and the many other questions I have — got little discussion because Trump’s defense did not concede the points that would have allowed us to address those questions! The defense pursued a “don’t give an inch” strategy, which I have to think probably came from Trump himself.

Trump’s defense rests partly on the contention that Michael Cohen is actually a lawyer. They’re arguing that of course Cohen made $420,000 in legal fees in 2017 — that’s the kind of scratch that a once-in-a-generation legal mind like Cohen rakes in! I cannot imagine a less plausible basis for a defense. I would have found it more plausible if they had argued that Cohen was actually a hologram, or that Trump paid Cohen $420,000 for a really cool drawing of a dragon. We’ve all come to know Michael Cohen, and surely none of us would pay him for legal advice — personally, I wouldn’t pay him five bucks to scare birds off of my driveway.

I’m not saying this is worth $420,000, but I’m saying that it’s easier for me to imagine this being worth $420,000 than for me to imagine Michael Cohen making that kind of money as a lawyer. (from Markus Lauber)

Trump also says that he didn’t have sex with Stormy Daniels. This was argued in court — it’s why we had the “Trump lying on the bed in boxers and a t-shirt” image forced into our brains against our will. We also learned less-than-crucial details, such as that Trump wears silk pajamas and that Daniels swatted him on the ass with a magazine. None of this had anything to do with anything. Trump might have paid Daniels because they had sex, or he might have paid Daniels because they didn’t have sex, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with campaign finance violations why the fuck did they bring up the pajamas?! The fact that the trial debated the details of a Trump sexual encounter — and the fact that they did so without breaks every five minutes to allow everyone to vomit — shows how off-the-rails this trial sometimes was.

Trump’s team disputed the existence of the so-called “catch and kill” scheme. They said that paying a woman six figures for her lurid story and then not publishing that lurid story is standard journalistic practice. Of course, while one might feel that The National Enquirer is not exactly the Times of London (for one thing, the Times covers Meghan Markle a lot less), one might also be surprised that a publisher would be fine with incinerating a six-figure sum. Publishers don’t usually negotiate big contracts and then not publish anything — that would be like buying a Warhol and then tossing it down a well. As usual, Trump’s team tried to argue that he’s not a scumbag instead of admitting that he’s a scumbag and pointing out that being a scumbag is not illegal.

Trump’s team argued points that had functionally no bearing on the legal merits of the case. And they let points that were directly relevant to the law go unchallenged. At this risk of getting all Michael Bluth pretending to be a pirate lawyer on you, here is the case that I would have made if I had been Trump’s lawyer:

Donald Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels. She came five times. (NOTE: I never said that I was against buttering up my client if the opportunity presents itself.) When Ms. Daniels threatened to go public with her story, my client did not want his wife to find out, so he agreed to pay Ms. Daniels $130,000 in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. Michael Cohen put up the money with the understanding that he would be paid back at a later date. And he was paid back: The Trump organization reimbursed Cohen in 2017 along with money to account for income taxes and other fees.

None of this was campaign business: This was an NDA of the sort used by virtually every business, and which Mr. Trump used extensively in his life before politics. Mr. Cohen was paid using funds from my client’s business, not from my client’s campaign, which further underscores that this was not campaign business. But even if it had been campaign business, Mr. Cohen did not commit a campaign finance violation, because he was merely the courier for this payment, as proven by the fact that he was paid back. The only crime here is the misdemeanor of mis-labeling the payments to Mr. Cohen.

Would that have worked? I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure I know this: Trump wouldn’t have allowed that argument to be made, because it concedes several points. And we know that Trump can never, ever concede…well, anything. He can’t concede an error, can’t concede a personal flaw, and definitely can’t concede an election. He possesses Michael Jordan’s hatred of losing but lack’s Jordan’s ability to win, so he just shuts his eyes, plugs his ears, and denies, denies, denies, always surrounding himself with people who are willing to indulge his delusions.

I can imagine Trump being convicted. This was an exceptionally weird case, in which illegal activity was the alleged frosting and being-a-general-shitbag was the thoroughly proven cake. The prosecution mostly just argued that Trump sucks, and instead of demanding that the trial focus on the law — where Trump might have stood a better chance — the defense argued the unwinnable “Trump doesn’t suck” case. The result — as per usual — is that politics got a bit dumber and messier. And no matter what the verdict, I suspect that they’re about to get dumber and messier, still.

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1. I’ve always found it easy to believe that Trump is guilty of misdemeanor fraud: For that to be true, all you have to believe is that Trump knew that Cohen would be paid for “legal services” even though that was not Cohen’s job.