I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve paid a lot of attention over the years to the stream of evidence of Trump’s criminality.
While paying that attention, I’ve heard many experienced prosecutors talking as if the Manhattan D.A. needs Weisselberg to cooperate, to tell all he knows — in other words, to “flip” — or otherwise, Donald Trump will be out of reach. (Weisselberg, after all, and to use a phrase that has become as shop-worn regarding this situation as “connecting the dots” was with 9/11 — knows “where all the bodies are buried.”)
I can certainly see how if Weisselberg testified to everything he knows, Trump’s criminality — and the way that the Trump Corporation has consistently been a “criminal enterprise” — would be shown in vivid Technicolor and Cinemascope. (Do those words date me?)
I can see that such overwhelming evidence would be useful in terms of the delicate matter of prosecuting a former President who is practically worshipped by maybe 30% of the American population.
But simply as a matter of law — where the burden on the prosecution is to prove the defendant guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” — I just don’t see the necessity of Weisselberg’s flipping to achieve that standard of proof.
Maybe I’ve gotten too much of my “legal education” from watching Law & Order (I do sometimes claim — albeit jokingly — to be ready to take the bar exam for the state of New York), but can’t “beyond a reasonable doubt” be achieved through circumstantial evidence?
In particular, I’ve heard several people who have deep familiarity with the Trump operation — Michael Cohen being one of them — declare unreservedly that nothing happens at the Trump organization without the Donald approving it.
If several people testify to Trump’s modus operandi as a CEO who, even if he doesn’t leave a paper trail is known to make all the decisions, would a jury really need to have Weisselberg confirm that Trump was involved in order to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that whatever fraud was committed for fifteen years by Weisselberg and the corporation was committed also by Trump?
Maybe I don’t grasp how vanishingly small the doubt can be in “reasonable doubt.” (When Mueller decided that he didn’t meet that standard regarding Trump’s conspiring with Russia in the 2016 election, I thought that standard seemed unreasonable, too, in view of all the evidence.)
Maybe I don’t understand well enough what kinds of evidence are or aren’t admissible in a criminal trial. (Would it be admissible for a Trump insider like Cohen to tell the jury that Trump signs off on everything that happens in Trump Inc.?)
But I have no reasonable doubt about Trump’s guilt in this massive fraud scheme. (Nor did I feel any doubt that Trump — “Russia, if you’re listening….” — was guilty of conspiring with this nation’s major adversary to get himself elected to the Presidency.)
And I’ve never been one to jump carelessly and irresponsibly to conclusions.