Clifford, Stephanie (1979- )

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    Will Trump Get Jail Time? We Looked at Similar Cases to Find Out.

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    Donald J. Trump faces sentencing on Nov. 26. The election three weeks earlier may determine not only if he returns to the presidency, but if he ends up behind bars.In November, after voters decide whether to return Donald J. Trump to the White House, the judge who oversaw his criminal trial could send him to jail.And despite Mr. Trump’s political status, the judge has ample grounds to do so, a New York Times examination of dozens of similar cases shows.The former president’s unruly behavior at the trial, held in New York in April and May, makes him a candidate for jail time, as does his felony crime of falsifying business records: Over the past decade in Manhattan, more than a third of these convictions resulted in defendants spending time behind bars, The Times’s examination found. Across New York State, the proportion is even higher — about 42 percent of those convictions led to jail or prison time. More

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      This Is What Worries Me About the Trump Trial

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      I can’t remember when I’ve been more disturbed by a criminal trial than I have been by the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump. The prosecutors are painting a vivid picture of Trump as a vile and dishonest person, and the daily pilgrimages of Republican politicians to the Manhattan courthouse, in spite of horrific testimony against Trump, demonstrates that the party has a broken soul.At the same time, the underlying legal theory supporting the prosecution’s case remains dubious. The facts may be clear, but the law is anything but — and that could very well mean that the jury convicts Trump before the election, an appeals court reverses the conviction after the election, and millions of Americans, many of them non-MAGA, face yet another crisis of confidence in American institutions.Let’s first discuss the dreadful facts. Stormy Daniels’s testimony crystallized, better than that of any other witness, the prosecution’s theory that Trump ordered Michael Cohen to pay off Daniels to save his campaign and then fraudulently disguised the reimbursements. It helped answer a key question: Why would a known playboy, a person who has boasted of his affairs with his friends’ wives, suddenly be so keen to suppress details of his encounter with a porn star?Consider the timeline. On Oct. 7, 2016, the “Access Hollywood” story broke. The Washington Post released the infamous recording in which Trump told Billy Bush, one of the show’s hosts, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” Trump went on, saying he could grab women by the genitals. “You can do anything.”The next day, a representative for Daniels told The National Enquirer that Daniels was willing to talk on the record about her encounter with Trump. We now know from Daniels’s sworn testimony that her story was going to essentially affirm the “Access Hollywood” tape. Trump used his star power to draw in Daniels and then exploited her.At trial, she did not testify to a frivolous or joyful encounter with Trump; she testified to something far more distressing. He invited her to his hotel room, and after she went to the bathroom, she walked out to find Trump on the bed in just his boxers and a T-shirt. She did not claim he forced himself on her, but she said she left “shaking” and testified that she was ashamed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why the Manhattan Trial Is Probably Helping Trump

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      Throughout the Republican primary campaign (such as it was), it was perfectly clear that the multiple indictments of Donald Trump helped him consolidate support. This was a source of moral exasperation to liberals, but their bafflement coexisted with the hope that what played well with the MAGA faithful would have the opposite effect in the general election. Trump’s cries of persecution might rally conservatives in a primary, but the trials themselves would help Joe Biden cruise to re-election.The trial that we’re actually getting, the prosecution of Trump for falsified business records related to hush money payments related to his assignation with the porn star Stormy Daniels, could theoretically still have that effect; a guilty verdict could shake loose a couple of points from Trump’s modest but consistent polling lead.But watching the trial play out so far, it seems just as likely that as in the primaries, so now in the general election: Any political effect from being charged and tried is probably working marginally in Trump’s favor.First, consider how this trial plays if you are not paying close attention to the legal details. Follow the coverage casually, the headlines about Daniels’s testimony especially, and it appears that Trump is on trial for cheating on his wife in a distinctly sordid way and then trying to conceal it — for being a political figure, a candidate for high office, and lying about sex.As it happens, America spent a pretty important period of time litigating the question of whether it’s a serious offense for a lecherous politician (one whose campaign apparatus notoriously labored to prevent “bimbo eruptions”) to conceal an inappropriate sexual liaison. Indeed, we even litigated the question of whether committing brazen perjury while trying to conceal a sexual liaison is a serious offense. And the country answered this question by embracing the consensus position of American liberalism at the time and offering Bill Clinton tolerance, forgiveness, absolution.Admittedly some politically engaged Americans are too young to directly recall the Clinton presidency. But the Lewinsky affair still casts a meaningful cultural shadow, and many of the Trump trial’s headlines cast the prosecutors in a Kenneth Starr-like part. Nothing really new is being revealed about Trump’s conduct here; the country already knows that he’s a philanderer and scoundrel. Instead the revelations are about the seeming hypocrisy of his political enemies, and how easily the former Democratic indifference to lying-about-sex gave way to prurience when it offered a path to getting Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 16, 2024

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      M. Cohen
      –
      Cross/Blanche
      3839
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      And you had been hearing on television that they were
      dangling pardons. So, you directed your lawyer, hey, find out
      if I can get a pardon. I want this nightmare to end, right?
      A Not if I can get a pardon. If the President was going
      to be doing these pre-pardons.
      But you
      —
      you testified that you were 100 percent
      open to accepting it, anything to end this, right?
      8
      A
      Yes, sir.
      9
      And so
      —
      and you did that with a couple of your
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      A
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      lawyers, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Costello, correct?
      Mr. Costello was never my lawyer.
      Well, you asked Mr. Costello, putting aside whether he
      was your lawyer, you asked Mr. Costello to reach out to people
      in the administration, including Mr. Giuliani, about the
      possibility of a pardon?
      A We spoke about it.
      And as part of your conversation with him, you asked
      him to reach out to Mr. Giuliani and explore it, correct?
      Yes, sir.
      And so, when you testified under oath less than one
      year later, February, on February 27th, 2019, that you never
      asked for, nor would you ever accept a pardon, that was a lie,
      wasn’t it?
      24
      A
      At the time it was accurate.
      25
      Well, the very next day so, again, February 27th,
      Susan Pearce-Bates, RPR, CCR, RSA
      Principal Court Reporter More

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      Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 13, 2024

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      M. Cohen Direct/Hoffinger
      3277
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      was there at The Trump Organization about executives coming in
      2
      to meet with Mr. Trump?
      3
      A
      Mr.
      Trump had an open-door policy, which, if there was
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      somebody in there, you waited; and if not, you knocked on the
      door, and I would say, “Boss, do you have a second?”, and I
      would walk right in.
      7
      Q
      And others did the same, to your knowledge?
      8
      A
      9
      To my knowledge, yes.
      Now, when you met with Mr. Trump at The Trump
      Organization, in his office, did you, generally, need
      10
      —
      I’m
      11
      sorry.
      12
      Did you, generally, record those meetings in your calendar?
      13
      A
      No, ma’am.
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      As part of your work at The Trump Organization, did
      you feel that it was part of your job to keep him updated on
      matters that you were handling for him?
      17
      A
      Yes.
      It was actually required.
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      A
      Tell us what you mean by that.
      When he would task you with something, he would then
      say, “Keep me informed. Let me know what’s going on.”
      And what he was saying, what everybody did is, as soon as
      you had a result, an answer, you would go straight back and
      tell him. Especially if it was a matter that was troubling to
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      him.
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      So, two things, just to break that down.
      Laurie Eisenberg, CSR, RPR
      Senior Court Reporter More

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      Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 10, 2024

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      1
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      J. Jarmel-Schneider
      –
      Direct/Conroy
      3217
      And if we could just continue going down January and
      February, those two columns, we talked about the one invoice,
      two vouchers; and is there only one check?
      3
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      A
      Yes.
      5
      with?
      How many invoices were there, in total, on this chart?
      Eleven.
      And can you just read which counts they’re associated
      Counts 1, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29 and 32.
      After January and February, is there one invoice for
      each month for the rest of the year?
      Going down to vouchers, same question. Could you just
      read the count number for each of the vouchers?
      ७
      A
      7
      8
      9
      A
      10
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      Yes.
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      Sure.
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      Sure.
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      A
      Yes.
      Counts 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30 and 33.
      And is there one voucher for every month in 2017?
      Yes.
      And, finally, in checks, could you read the count
      number for each check?
      It’s counts 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31 and 34.
      And after January and February, is there one check for
      each of the remaining months in 2017?
      Laurie Eisenberg, CSR, RPR
      Senior Court Reporter More

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      Donald Trump After Dark

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      Stormy was working blue, and the judge was seeing red.Justice Juan Merchan chided Donald Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles, saying he didn’t understand why she hadn’t objected to seamy details about the President and the Porn Star spilling out.“Why on earth she wouldn’t object to the mention of a condom I don’t understand,” Merchan complained about Necheles.But I wanted to hear about the condom — or lack thereof. The New York trial involves an abstruse legal strategy and illusory crime. It’s the weakest of the cases against Trump. It’s certainly not putting him on trial for the attempted coup d’état he incited or for treating top secret documents as dinner conversation fodder at his golf clubs. But it now seems almost certain that none of the other cases will be resolved before the election.So we’re left with a two-bit case that has devolved into dirty bits, filled with salacious details — a spanking, a missionary position and ping-ponging insults like “horse face” and “orange turd.”Yet, even if it plays like a cheesy old Cinemax “After Dark” show, it’s still illuminating. The case doesn’t hinge on Stormy Daniels’s story about her liaison with Trump, or even if the former president is lying when he says they didn’t have sex. (He would say that, wouldn’t he?)It’s instructive about the moral values — or lack thereof — of our once and perhaps future president.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Custodial Witnesses Affirm Basic Facts in Trump’s Hush-Money Trial

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      They have provided some of the more quotidian testimony in a trial populated by porn stars and presidents: a series of witnesses who have discussed such matters as FedEx labels, Sharpie usage and stapling protocol.But each of those witnesses has provided a link in the chain of custody of the 34 business documents at the heart of the case against Donald J. Trump, whose trial is completing its fourth week on Friday.Mr. Trump is accused of disguising those records as payments for legal services to cover up a reimbursement to Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer. Mr. Cohen in 2016 had paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, to bury her allegation of a sexual encounter with the former president.Such witnesses, known as custodial witnesses, are used to authenticate documents and events that have not otherwise previously been agreed to — stipulated, in legalese — by prosecutors and defense lawyers.Witnesses this week have included Madeleine Westerhout, a former executive assistant to Mr. Trump during his time in the White House. Ms. Westerhout, who spoke affectionately of Mr. Trump and broke into tears on the stand on Thursday speaking about her 2019 firing, testified about having received checks for Mr. Trump to sign, which he sometimes did in the Oval Office.Jeffrey S. McConney, the Trump Organization’s former corporate controller, also described in painstaking detail how Mr. Cohen requested the checks by invoice. They were then cut by Deborah Tarasoff, an accounts supervisor at the organization, and sent via FedEx to the White House by Rebecca Manochio, a junior bookkeeper at the company.Those checks left Mr. Trump’s headquarters in New York stapled to Mr. Cohen’s invoices and arrived in Washington, making their way to the White House through two of Mr. Trump’s aides, including Keith Schiller, Mr. Trump’s personal bodyguard, at their home addresses.A defense attorney, Susan Necheles, sought to downplay the sending of checks to an outside address, suggesting in questioning Ms. Westerhout that such an arrangement was simply “a workaround” to avoid things getting delayed in a crush of mail being received at the White House. Ms. Westerhout agreed.Once the checks were signed by Mr. Trump — often in Sharpie, according to testimony — they were sent back to New York, and eventually to Mr. Cohen, who is expected to be a key witness for prosecutors, beginning on Monday. More