What democrats need to be afraid of is not Trump winning in 2024, but them helping him win in 2024.
https://reason.com/2024/05/24/prose...tly-what-crime-trump-tried-to-aid-or-conceal/
Bradley A. Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), was prepared to testify for the defense that viewing the Daniels payment as a campaign contribution is contentious because the distinction between personal and campaign expenditures is fuzzy. To illustrate the difficulty of drawing that distinction, Smith also planned to tell the jury about the unsuccessful 2012 prosecution of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, which featured similar but seemingly stronger facts.
"Defendant seeks to elicit from Smith, among other things, that at the time Cohen paid Daniels, there had never been a case in which anyone had been convicted of a federal campaign finance law violation for the making of 'hush money payments,'" Merchan noted in a pretrial ruling. The defense wanted Smith to discuss "the facts surrounding" Edwards' trial and "his subsequent acquittal," explaining why "the case was heavily criticized." Smith's testimony also would have covered "the absence of culpable mens rea" for falsification of business records and "the willfulness element of a FECA violation."
Merchan ruled that Smith could not testify as an expert witness on matters of law, saying he could only offer "general background" on the FEC and "general definitions" of terms such as campaign contribution. Because of those constraints, Smith never testified, so the jury never heard why describing the Daniels NDA as "an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election" was problematic. Yet that claim is crucial to the argument that Cohen and Trump conspired to promote his election through "unlawful means."
https://reason.com/2024/05/24/prose...tly-what-crime-trump-tried-to-aid-or-conceal/
Bradley A. Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), was prepared to testify for the defense that viewing the Daniels payment as a campaign contribution is contentious because the distinction between personal and campaign expenditures is fuzzy. To illustrate the difficulty of drawing that distinction, Smith also planned to tell the jury about the unsuccessful 2012 prosecution of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, which featured similar but seemingly stronger facts.
"Defendant seeks to elicit from Smith, among other things, that at the time Cohen paid Daniels, there had never been a case in which anyone had been convicted of a federal campaign finance law violation for the making of 'hush money payments,'" Merchan noted in a pretrial ruling. The defense wanted Smith to discuss "the facts surrounding" Edwards' trial and "his subsequent acquittal," explaining why "the case was heavily criticized." Smith's testimony also would have covered "the absence of culpable mens rea" for falsification of business records and "the willfulness element of a FECA violation."
Merchan ruled that Smith could not testify as an expert witness on matters of law, saying he could only offer "general background" on the FEC and "general definitions" of terms such as campaign contribution. Because of those constraints, Smith never testified, so the jury never heard why describing the Daniels NDA as "an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election" was problematic. Yet that claim is crucial to the argument that Cohen and Trump conspired to promote his election through "unlawful means."
