"falsifying business records in the first degree...with intent to defraud and commit another crime and conceal the commission thereof" is what the "introduction" to the indictment has to say...most of this case revolves around a payoff to a porn actress to suppress news of their canoodling becoing public and the deliberate mislabeling of invoices, vouchers, and ten check stubs for checks made out to lawyer cohen to reimburse him for the payoff which were labeld as "retainers"...wonderful...they cooked the books...well, "don't boo" donny comes from a corporate culture and there are a couple of things to consider...first of all those structures are universally authoritarian and coersive.."my way or the highway" is a standard viewpoint as you move up any corporate hierachy...so we have an entitled twerp who thinks he should have his own way no matter what...secondly, i would be hard pressed to think that there isn't a corporate entity that doesn't keep multiple sets of books...one for the government, one for the shareholders, and then the actual accounting...corporate structures are sociopathic...they lie, cheat, steal, and cut the competition's throat at every available opportunity...cooking the books is all part of that...like the spook world, they want things as confusing as possible so why would they be transparent about "business records"? i perused the indictment's tangled legalese for some time ( helpfully provided by the new york times as a pdf ) and as i wandered through, translating as best i could, i ran across this interesting passage..."from august 2015 to december 2017 the defendant orchestrated a scheme, with others, to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchaseing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the defendant's electoral prospects. in order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in business records of various entities in new york. the participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furthurance of the scheme."...so parts of this "scheme" took place while donny was president which, and mind i am no lawyer, would seem to open the door to the whole "executive privilege" and "presidential immunity" business, at least in part...if they can't find some judge to overturn a possible conviction ( and we need to ponder how likely either of those events may be ) this could conceivably land in the lap of the supreme court...that sounds like a process of years..and another point, the "tax purposes" signals the possibility of some wider investigation by other legal entities ( aka the justice department )...all of which are serious spurs for donny to get back into office and begin meddeling with the constitution via some reichstag fire incident so he can stay there...toss in the fact that any conviction would not bar donny from seeking the presidency or serving as such ( the senate acquitted him twice and a senate conviction for "high crimes and misdemeanors" would be the only legal bar to a second term ) and all this will probably succeed in doing is offering donny attention he seems to need and harden attitudes as far as advocacy for one candidate or the other in 2024...in short hightening divisions and political dissonance...commodities we already have in abundance...the behavioral sump that is presidential politics is begiining to reek noticeably early and i am uncertain whether this is going to help put a lid on the sump.
