Former US president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump has been found guilty of falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election, in a case related to alleged ‘hush money’ payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump last year with 34 counts of criminal behavior, alleging that the Republican politician sought “to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.” 

The jury deliberated for two days and returned the verdict just before 5pm on Thursday: guilty on all counts, making Trump the first US president to ever be convicted of a felony.

“This was a rigged, disgraceful trial,” Trump told reporters after the verdict was announced. “The real verdict will be on November 5, by the people. And we will keep fighting, and we’ll fight till the end and we’ll win.”

The 34 counts refer to 11 invoices, 12 vouchers and 11 checks of Trump’s monthly reimbursement payments to his then-layer, for the $130,000 paid to Daniels. According to Bragg, this amounted to “falsifying business records.”

The case was based on claims by Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, that Trump instructed him to pay $130,000 to the adult film actress so she would keep quiet about an alleged affair with the presidential candidate. Trump has denied any relationship with the porn star. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to charges of campaign-finance violations as well as tax and bank fraud, and spent two and a half years in a federal prison. He also lost his New York bar license.

Numerous Republicans have denounced the trial as a farce, saying that Merchan violated the state constitution by taking the case even though his daughter works for the Democrats.

If Trump is acquitted, “the country will see the damage done to our country by corrupt prosecutors,” former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told Fox News ahead of the verdict. “If he’s found guilty, they’ll see that a man is being sentenced for a crime that no one can actually name.”

“Either way, the real verdict is in November,” Ramaswamy added, referring to the date of the presidential election pitting Trump against the incumbent Joe Biden.

“Even a cursory review of the evidence shows this case does not have a leg to stand on,” Jonathan Turley, a Georgetown University professor and constitutional scholar, argued in a blog post. Turley pointed out that Bragg revived what could at best be an expired misdemeanor by claiming that it was done to influence the election, describing the entire argument as “so circular as to produce vertigo.”

https://www.rt.com/news/598493-us-court-convicts-trump/

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Former US President Donald Trump says he is “OK” with serving potential jail time or being placed under house arrest over his 34 convictions for falsifying business records. Any punishment, however, is not likely to be taken lightly by the public, he added.

The ex-president made the remarks in an interview with Fox News aired Sunday. Asked about the potential punishments, Trump said he is “ok with it.” 

“I saw one of my lawyers the other day on television saying, ‘Oh no, you don’t want to do that to the president.’ I said, ‘You don’t beg for anything,’” he stated, suggesting, however, that the potential punishments would anger his supporters. 

“I don’t think the public would stand it. I’m not sure the public would stand for it.”

Trump reiterated his take on the case against him regarding alleged ‘hush money’ payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels in the wake of the 2016 election and the falsified paperwork to hide them, dismissing it as politically-motivated persecution. 

“People get it. It’s a scam. And the Republican Party… they’ve stuck together in this. They see it’s a weaponization of the Justice Department of the FBI and that’s all coming out of Washington,” he said.

The former president was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records by a Manhattan jury on Thursday. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of four years behind bars. Trump’s legal team has already vowed to appeal, with the ex-president saying the “real verdict”will be delivered by the public in the election on November 5. 

Trump is now the first US president to be convicted of a felony. Sentencing has been scheduled for July 11, just ahead of the Republican National Convention.

https://www.rt.com/news/598668-trump-says-prison-ok/

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The summer of 2013 was my first summer in prison after being incarcerated for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture program.

When summer arrived in Loretto, Pennsylvania, I had already made a handful of friends, most of whom came from the prison’s “Italian” population. One warm day in the spring, I mentioned to one of the Italians that I hadn’t spent a summer in Pennsylvania since my high school years.

My friend commented that it was probably going to be hotter than I remembered it being, owing primarily to climate change. But he added, “Be careful. There’s no air conditioning in here. And you don’t realize how hot it’s getting until it’s too hot.” He was right.

The only parts of the prison that had air conditioning were the warden’s office, the medical unit, and the guard booths. The 1,425 prisoners (in a prison built for 875) had to fend for themselves in the heat. And to make matters worse, many of the housing units, including mine, had no windows. None. We had no idea if it was day, night, raining, snowing, sunny or cloudy. But we could certainly feel the heat.

In retrospect, I was lucky. First, I only spent 23 months in prison, and I had the freedom to take a bath towel, soak it in cool water, and lay it on top of myself in bed. That is what most of us did to get through the days. Second, I was in Pennsylvania, not Texas, Florida, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama or any of the other states that are notorious for having prisons with no air conditioning.

I want to put this into perspective. I am not talking about people just being uncomfortable. It is far worse than just that:

• According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 13,000 prisoners died from excessive heat in U.S. prisons over the past 20 years, more then 600 per year.
• A current lawsuit in Texas alleges that temperatures in prisons there routinely reach between 120 and 130 degrees and that prisoners often resort to splashing themselves with toilet water to cool down. Others attempt suicide so that they can be even temporarily transferred to medical units, which does have air conditioning.
• Similar excessive heat cases have been filed against the respective Departments of Corrections in Georgia, New Mexico and Louisiana where, attorneys allege, state laws mandate that indoor temperatures in county jails be kept between 65 and 85 degrees, but that the laws are simply ignored in state prisons.
• The United Nations has condemned the Texas prison system’s lack of air conditioning as a violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
• The summer temperatures that many American prisoners face every day actually violate animal cruelty laws.
• A 2023 study published in the scholarly journal PLOS ONE found that suicide rates surged during the summer in prisons where there is no air conditioning. And even worse, the study found that, for every 10-degree rise in indoor temperatures in prisons, death rates increase by 5.2%. The increase is 6.7% for prisoners with heart ailments.

To be clear, the problem of dangerous temperatures in American prisons is not confined to the South. A study by epidemiologists at Brown University found that the situation is actually worse in the Northeast, where no prisons have air conditioning and where prisoners are not accustomed to prolonged high temperatures.

Dr. Julianne Skarha and her team found that a typical two-day heat wave meant a mortality increase of 0.8% in the Midwest, 1.3% in the South, 8.6% in the West, and 21.0% in the Northeast.

This is not a complicated issue. Myriad federal courts, as well as the Supreme Court, have ruled on prison heat. Federal courts have interpreted the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment to mean that conditions of confinement must meet the “minimal civilized measures of life’s necessities” and must conform to society’s evolving standards of decency.

The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Farmer v. Brennan (1994) that conditions of confinement are unconstitutional if “they present a substantial risk of harm to an inmate’s health and if correctional officials acted with deliberate indifference to that substantial risk.”

There is no good news here. It is easy to say, “take to the courts!” But prisoners have taken to the courts for years, they have won, and nothing has changed.

It is easy to say, “Go to the media!” But it is the media which have kept us informed about these abominations for years. And nobody really seems to care. For those who would suggest going to Congress, I would ask (sarcastically) “And what district are you running for re-election in?” 

Can you imagine going on the campaign trail to give your stump speech and saying, “I want to make prisoners more comfortable by adding air conditioning to American prisons!” It will not win you any new votes

With that said, we have to keep up the fight, whether it is at the United Nations, in courtrooms, on the editorial pages, or in the streets. Something’s got to give. Eventually.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/10/04/deadly-heat-in-u-s-prisons-violates-animal-cruelty-laws/

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Draconian Sentencing Guidelines Result in Prison Overcrowding

By

 John Kiriakou

Prosecutors don’t get promoted by offering shorter sentences

Like many Americans, I follow criminal justice developments closely. The arrest and coming prosecution of Sean Combs, also known as P. Diddy, among other things, will likely remain in the headlines for months, and perhaps years, and promises to be fascinating. Prosecutions related to the January 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol remain ongoing. And the Justice Department has been making good use of the previously largely ignored Foreign Agents Registration Act to pick low-hanging fruit criminal cases against people whose politics they don’t like, such as journalist, whistleblower and former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter.

It also occurred to me that most Americans have no idea how federal sentences are determined. The methods of determining them are myriad. First, most judges do not have much say in the length of sentences. There are “sentencing guidelines,” which give judges a limited range in which to issue a sentence after receipt of a “sentencing recommendation” from an investigator with the U.S. Marshals Service, there are “mandatory minimums,” and there are “statutory maximums.” More ominously, and little understood by the public, there are “sentencing enhancements.” These are triggers that can make sentences longer, even if it is simply for declaring one’s innocence. And, as with just about everything, there are exceptions. Let me explain.

First, take a look at the sentencing guidelines. The chart has “Offense Levels,” under which every crime falls, listed from 1 to 43. Level 1 is something akin to jaywalking on federal property. The recommended sentence is 0-6 months in jail. Level 43 is something akin to carrying out the September 11 attacks. That can result in either life in prison or the federal death penalty. The sentencing guideline chart also has something called “criminal history categories I through VI.” If you have never committed a crime before, or if you have committed one minor crime, you would be a Category 1. On the other side, if you are a career criminal with many felony convictions, you would be a Category VI. You will see in a moment how this can impact an eventual sentence.

As an example, let’s say that John Doe has been convicted in a federal court under 21 U.S.C. 841 (b)(1)(A). That is the crime of “Unlawful manufacturing, importing, exporting, or trafficking of drugs.” Furthermore, a person to whom John Doe sold the drugs died of an overdose. The sentencing guidelines call for an offense level of 26. That means, with no previous convictions, a sentence of between 63-78 months. (All federal sentences are denoted in months.) If John Doe had committed crimes in the past, the sentence could be anywhere from 70 to 137 months. And if John Doe were a career criminal, the same crime could be as long as 150 months.

All of that is before “enhancements,” however, and there are a lot of them. If John Doe had a gun (even if he had not used it during the commission of the crime), that would be an enhancement of two levels, bringing that 63-78 month recommendation to 78-97 months. If the drug confiscated during the arrest was methamphetamine, that would be another two-level enhancement, bringing the recommended sentence to 97-121 months. And if John Doe used a computer to sell his drugs, that is yet another two-level enhancement, bringing the recommended sentence to 121-151 months. And if John Doe were to—gasp—take advantage of his constitutional right to request a jury trial, that is, unbelievably, another two-level enhancement, something that the Justice Department calls “failure to accept responsibility.” That makes the sentence 151-188 months. That is quite a difference from 63-78 months. It’s no wonder that the prisons are full to bursting.

I mentioned earlier that everything is open to negotiation. And that is why, according to ProPublica, the government wins 98.2% of its cases, almost all as a result of plea bargains. Who would want to face years, or even decades, in prison, when you can negotiate a deal and get a significantly shorter sentence?

And ask yourself this: How many innocent people plead guilty because they do not want to roll the dice in front of a jury and risk those decades in prison? After all, it is no secret that virtually every prosecutor sees himself or herself one day running for Congress or for governor, becoming the U.S. Attorney, or getting a corner office in an A-list law firm. They will not get promoted or be considered for those positions by not prosecuting you. They do not get ahead in life by offering you a shorter sentence.

With the largest incarceration rate in the world, we Americans have given ourselves a draconian and heavy-handed sentencing regime. It is not something to be proud of. It screams out for reform. But who has the guts? How many House or Senate candidates will go out on the campaign trail and say, “I want to make prison sentences shorter!” I can’t think of any.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/10/18/draconian-sentencing-guidelines-result-in-prison-overcrowding/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.