Donald Trump dömd för 34 punkter i Stormy Daniels-fallet, bokföringsbrott (2024-05-30)

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said that the cross-examination of adult film actress and Trump trial witness Stormy Daniels after her testimony against former President Trump was a disaster.

While Honig said that Daniels' testimony about a sexual encounter with Trump in a hotel room in 2006 was "plausible," her responses under cross-examination by Trump's team called her credibility into question.

"Her responses were disastrous," Honig said, referring to the moment when Daniels admitted that she hates Trump.
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"When the witness hates the person whose liberty is at stake, that’s a big d--- deal!" Honig said. "And she’s putting out tweets, fantasizing about him being in jail. That really undermines the credibility."
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Daniels has made multiple posts about Trump on social media, including writing that she "will go to jail" before she has to "pay a penny" to Trump.

"The fact that she owes him $500,000 by order of a court, owes Donald Trump a half million dollars, and said, ‘I will never pay him. I will defy a court order,’ the defense is gonna say, ‘She’s willing to defy a court order. She’s not willing to respect an order from a judge. Why is she gonna respect this oath she took?’ So, I thought it went quite poorly on cross-exam," the analyst said.

ALX 🇺🇸@alx

“The material that came in was not relevant to this criminal case at all. And I think it shows that she was trying to ‘get Trump.’ I actually thought there was a motive there.”

—Former Federal judge to CNN on Stormy Daniels’ testimony in the NY Trump Trial

Trump’s trial is a stupendous legal catastrophe
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The underlying crime is seemingly a minor misdemeanour – falsifying business records – which long ago expired under the statute of limitations. In order to turn it into a felony within the statute of limitations, prosecutors will have to show that Trump falsified the records in order to impact his election, thus constituting a federal election felony. The problem is, however, that federal authorities have not prosecuted Trump for this federal election crime. Moreover, state prosecutors have no jurisdiction over federal election law. Finally, we were not even clear, when the trial began, as to precisely which federal election laws the District Attorney was relying on.
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Prosecutors cannot simply make up new crimes by jerry-rigging a concoction of existing crimes, some of which are barred by the statute of limitations others of which are beyond the jurisdiction of state prosecutors.