The last piece of the puzzle

May 14, 2024

Joe Biden will win the 2024 presidential election despite the best efforts of the NYTimes to convince you otherwise. If you still read the NYTimes and are concerned about its latest effort to distort Biden’s prospects, skip to the second story. But if you want to hear how the prosecution completed the last piece of the puzzle necessary to convict Trump, read on!

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Manhattan Prosecutors Complete Their Proof Against Trump

Distilled to its essence, New York alleges that Trump falsified business documents to interfere in the 2016 election. Placing Trump at the scene of the crime—the falsification of documents--was the most difficult challenge facing the prosecutors.

Why?

Answer: Trump ran his business affairs to conceal evidence of his involvement in illegal activity.

In the absence of email, texts, memos, or phone records, prosecutors were forced to rely on first-person, eyewitness testimony of Trump's involvement in the crime. Michael Cohen delivered that evidence on Monday—bigly.

Michael Cohen testified that he and Allen Weisselberg carried the “smoking gun” document into Trump's office. The document showed that Michael Cohen’s payoff to Stormy Daniels would be mischaracterized as a legal fee to Michael Cohen. The prosecutors asked what, if anything, Trump said when presented with the plan. “He approved it,” said Michael Cohen. That approval by Trump is the crime—falsification of business documents in furtherance of a second crime.

Of course, standing alone, “He approved it,” is insufficient to prove the case. But the other elements of the crime have previously been established by the prosecution, including the following:

• Michael Cohen borrowed $130,000 against his home to fund the non-disclosure agreement preventing Stormy Daniels from telling her story to another media outlet.

• The $130,000 payment was transferred to Stormy Daniels upon receipt of the non-disclosure agreement.

• Trump requested that Cohen and Weisselberg “take care” of suppressing news of the sexual encounter between Trump and Daniels to protect Trump from negative reactions by women voters.

• Trump wanted the story suppressed until after the election—at which point he no longer cared whether it was disclosed.

The prosecution proved additional corroborating and stepwise facts, but the evidence outlined above—along with Trump's “approval” to disguise the true nature of the payments to Michael Cohen—establish the elements of the crime.

Here, the crime charged—falsification of documents in violation of Penal Code Section 175.10—is a misdemeanor. But when falsification is performed to conceal another crime, the falsification misdemeanor is elevated to a felony.

New York Penal Section 175.10 prohibits falsification of business records as follows:

A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.

So, what is the “other crime” that Trump was concealing by falsifying documents? Answer: Election interference, prohibited by New York State Election Law 17-152—conspiracy to promote or prevent an election.

Section 152 prohibits election interference as follows:

Any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

Okay, enough with the legal details. Here’s the point: With Cohen’s testimony, prosecutors have satisfied every element of proof necessary to convict Donald Trump of felony falsification of records.

The likely avenues of attack by the defense include (a) questioning the credibility of Michael Cohen, (b) claiming that Trump was trying to conceal the sexual encounter from Melania Trump—not to protect his electoral prospects, and (c) claiming that Michael Cohen, Allen Weisselberg, David Pecker, and others acted on their own to protect Trump.

Defenses (b) and (c) are not credible and should be rejected by the jury out of hand. Attacking the credibility of Michael Cohen will commence on Tuesday and will be brutal. But whether that will be enough to raise a reasonable doubt seems doubtful. The prosecution has done a masterful job of supporting Cohen’s testimony with documents and corroborating testimony.

Finally, there is the question of whether Trump will testify to rebut Michael Cohen’s testimony. It would be madness for him to take the stand. His testimony would ensure a guilty verdict. But his lawyers have no control over his ego, so we should rule out nothing.

An impartial jury applying the law to the facts should convict Trump. Although a conviction is not guaranteed—it never is—the prosecution has put on a much stronger case than almost anyone expected. They deserve tremendous credit for their professionalism, skill, and diligence.

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The NYTimes continues to make news—about itself

Polling has become big business for major media outlets. They get to write news stories in which they are star actors. The NY Times produces presidential polls on a monthly basis, guaranteeing exclusive stories in which it designs, conducts, and interprets polls that become front-page news for the Times. Create the news, report on the news you created, and interpret that same news for the public. It doesn’t get any better than that. Or more arrogant and presumptuous.

The central conceit of presidential horserace polls is fatuous: “If the presidential election were held today, which of the following candidates . . . .” The question's premise assumes that the remaining six months of campaigning are meaningless. It assumes that the public is devoting the same level of attention to the presidential race six months before the election it will be devoting in the campaign's final weeks. It assumes that the poll is something other than an opportunity to vent anger or anxiety about the current state of the world in which the respondents find themselves. It assumes respondents have not self-selected into participating in a lengthy poll because someone will finally give them the attention they are not receiving at home.

The NYTimes polls consistently overweight Trump's prospects, which the Times dutifully reports, even though most of its findings show an effectively tied race. The Times’ analysis delves into subgroups with sample sizes so small the error bars render them meaningless.

The Times treats its own polls as front-page news, but when polls showing more favorable results for Biden are reported by other outlets in the ensuing weeks, they are ignored by the Times. Because, well, those polls weren’t designed, conducted, and interpreted by the Times.

All of this is a prelude to saying that the Times has once again created a made-for-the-Times poll that kinda-sorta shows Trump statistically tied in three swing states and leading in three states, which—in the Times’ telling—is Trump leading in six states.

But don’t believe me. Read Simon Rosenberg, Hopium Chronicles, Notes On The NYT Polls and Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, NYT-Siena Obsessing Addendum and The Dismal (Polling) Science.

Finally, thanks to reader Stephen B. for alerting me to Dan Rather’s excellent essay in his Substack blog, Steady, Time Out! As Rather notes,

Analysts from the polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight explained the 2022 election results this way. “[A poll’s] true utility isn’t in telling us who will win, but rather in roughly how close a race is — and, therefore, how confident we should be in the outcome. Historically, candidates leading polls by at least 20 points have won 99 percent of the time. But candidates leading polls by less than 3 points have won just 55 percent of the time. In other words, races within 3 points in the polls are little better than toss-ups — something we’ve been shouting from the rooftops for years.”

The hypothetical presidential race six months before the real election that exists only inside the Times’ computers is close—effectively tied. That is an unsurprising result six months out. What is surprising is how much unnecessary angst the Times can create with its fantasy football approach to polls.

When I rail against the carefully planned, statistically valid approaches of media outlets like the Times, readers sometimes accuse me of descending into “snark.” If that’s what you take away from my criticisms, I have failed miserably. I don’t mean to be snarky; I mean to harshly criticize the unthinking adherence to polling models that are clearly broken. To pretend they are not is beneath the stature and intellect of the Times and similar outlets. And yet they continue to follow the old models as if nothing has changed—when everything has.

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Opportunities for reader engagement

Readers who signed up for the Colin Allred / Today’s Edition fundraiser tomorrow, Tuesday, May 14 at 5:30 pm Pacific / 7:30 pm Central / 8:30 pm Eastern should have received a link to the event today. If it is not in your inbox, please check your spam and junk folders.

Also, you can submit questions here: Question for Colin.

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Concluding Thoughts

I spoke to a reader today about astrophotography, and the conversation turned to the fractured political dynamic our nation is experiencing. The reader noted that he actively participated in civil rights and anti-war protests in the 1960s and 1970s. He observed that it seemed as though we were losing ground that was captured in those decades.

Many readers of this newsletter likely have the same experience of participating in protests and witnessing rapid social and political change. The reactionary MAGA movement and civil rights setbacks of the last six years seem anomalous. The loss of civil liberties under Trump’s reactionary Supreme Court rightfully raises dire concerns about the world we will leave our children and grandchildren.

But, with a bit of perspective, it appears that the rapid progress of the 1960s and 1970s was the anomaly. Readers who came of age during those decades reasonably assumed that such rapid progress was in the natural order of things. In truth, the progress of the 1960s and 1970s was built on decades of frustrating losses, setbacks, and seeming futility that prepared the ground for future victories.

We may be experiencing another season of discontent that will precede rapid progress. It took the reality of Dobbs to remind us of the hard-fought victory of Roe v. Wade. It took the slap in the face of Shelby County v. Holder to remind us of the crowning achievement of the Voting Rights Act.

In loss, there is pain and remembrance. Fortunately, those who remember the lessons of the 1960s and 1970s have rallied to reclaim the ground gained half a century ago. But to complete the victory, we must involve the next generation—whose rights and freedoms are on the ballot in 2024.

So, spread the word! Do not pass up the opportunity to remind younger voters of what it took to gain the rights and liberties now under attack. Together, we can reclaim and expand the rights guaranteed by the Constitution!

Talk to you tomorrow!