Nobody wants to admit this about Trump's trial

Alvin Bragg's case is built on very defective pillars

Today is going to be very short. Family matters make me into a single dad the rest of the week, meaning I have to tame two feral teenage boys without their mom. Prayers, please. Here’s my quickie: Alvin Bragg has a strong technical case that Donald Trump approved, and initiated payments that were recorded in his company records as something they weren’t. He does not have a strong case that these were made, mens rea, to illegally influence his election.

I don’t have time to get into the details of Michael Cohen’s guilty plea in 2018, or how the election campaign contribution charges were tacked on at the last minute, or how he got a light sentence, serving most of his three years from his Park Avenue digs, by agreeing to testify at this trial (yes, it was planned that far back). I will cover that in its own piece, should what I think might happen, happens.

Originally, I thought this case would end in a mistrial. But now I am less convinced of that, and less convinced of a conviction. I think the looming possibility of an acquittal sits over the jury, and the mainstream media refuses to think about it or speak of it.

Were I a juror, I am thinking, in order to believe the facts of the case justify a guilty verdict on the felony charges, I’d have to agree with these points:

• A presumption that the tryst between Trump and Stormy Daniels happened. Trump maintains it didn’t.

• Belief that Daniels is not lying. She has lied in the past and lost a case when Trump sued her.

• Belief that David Pecker and AMI have never done political favors for other candidates and admitted it in open court, with no consequences. That’s somewhere in the “Men in Black” universe: best investigative reporting on the planet.

• Belief that Michael Cohen, a crook to his bones, is telling the truth.

Taken one at a time, a juror could make a reasonable assumption that these facts might be proven to a large degree. But all, as a whole, once Cohen’s cross-examination is done this week, becomes a very weak foundation. Four liars.

Four liars who have every motivation to lie on the stand, who have been groomed and prepped and dealt and pleaded out with the feds and with Alvin Bragg, who maintain that it was Donald Trump, and Trump alone, the capo di tutti capi, who masterminded the payoff to Daniels, after doing the nasty with her while Melania was pregnant with Barron.

I have no trouble believing that Trump did all those things. But believing it, and as a juror, delivering a guilty verdict that prosecutors proved it beyond a reasonable doubt, are two different things. The jury has no option to convict Trump on a portion of the charges—they are all interconnected. and built on the same pillars. There is no option to convict on lesser charges. The faked-up document charges would be misdemeanors, well past the statute of limitations. It’s 34 felonies or nothing.

I don’t know that there’s enough strength in Bragg’s case to get this done beyond the “piss and vinegar” argument where jurors just hate Trump. Trump has been sleeping his way through the trial. What’s to hate in an old man with his eyes closed, reclining in his chair?

If they hate him enough, it will be guilty. But I am not at all convinced.

I’m out of time, so leave your (civil) thoughts in the comments.