Prosecutors went through Bob Costello’s emails one by one, undercutting his credibility with each painstaking moment—a fate the defense had hoped for Michael Cohen.
In this case intent does matter. It’s a fraud trial. And it’s elevated to a felony because he had to be intending to cover up another crime.
Let’s say someone genuinely thought an apple was a pear. That’s not fraud because there was no intent to deceive, it was just an honest mistake.
To take the analogy a step further, and make it more accurate, maybe the my knew the apple wasn’t a pear, and maybe the prosecution is alleging the cashier ate the original pear, and they’re selling the apple as a pear to hide that.
To elevate it to a felony, they’d have to show that there was the intent to conceal a crime. Which means they had to know that eating the pear was itself a crime.
Yes, but I was referring more generally to the part where you said he probably doesn’t understand esoteric campaign finance laws. Running afoul of a law you don’t know/understand doesn’t mean you still didn’t break the law, whether you knowingly intended to or not.
He’s not being tried for the campaign finance law, this is separate and about him falsifying business records- it’s a felony because his intent was to cover up the campaign thing.
So they could conceivably argue that Trump didn’t know the campaign thing was a problem and there couldn’t have possibly meant to conceal it. At this point taking the misdemeanor would be a win.
Ignorance of a law shouldn’t matter though.
Sometimes it should be and that’s why such knowledge being a necessary element is limited to specific laws.
it shouldn’t matter for conviction but maybe for sentencing
It should, in some cases, absolutely matter for conviction.
In this case intent does matter. It’s a fraud trial. And it’s elevated to a felony because he had to be intending to cover up another crime.
Let’s say someone genuinely thought an apple was a pear. That’s not fraud because there was no intent to deceive, it was just an honest mistake.
To take the analogy a step further, and make it more accurate, maybe the my knew the apple wasn’t a pear, and maybe the prosecution is alleging the cashier ate the original pear, and they’re selling the apple as a pear to hide that.
To elevate it to a felony, they’d have to show that there was the intent to conceal a crime. Which means they had to know that eating the pear was itself a crime.
Make sense?
Yes, but I was referring more generally to the part where you said he probably doesn’t understand esoteric campaign finance laws. Running afoul of a law you don’t know/understand doesn’t mean you still didn’t break the law, whether you knowingly intended to or not.
He’s not being tried for the campaign finance law, this is separate and about him falsifying business records- it’s a felony because his intent was to cover up the campaign thing.
So they could conceivably argue that Trump didn’t know the campaign thing was a problem and there couldn’t have possibly meant to conceal it. At this point taking the misdemeanor would be a win.