GUEST OP-ED: ‘I Don’t See Mother Teresa on the Witness List’ — Martin Sheil on Day One of the NYC Trial
Retired IRS criminal investigator Martin Sheil offers us his observations of Trump’s funky trial
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As I have noted in prior missives to you, I often send retired IRS criminal investigator Martin Sheil Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse, as she helps us follow the plots with her sharp legal eye. Marty, who follows the money and relays his findings to the Bette Dangerous community, was inspired by Vance’s latest, and wished to offer his summary of Day One of the NYC trial:
‘I Don’t See Mother Teresa on the Witness List’
Hey Heidi,
I don't see Mother Teresa on the Witness List…
And that is neither a surprise nor a detriment to the conviction of the Crime boss on trial in NYC - home of mob bosses and their capo regimes.
Ask any prosecutor what their ideal witness looks and sounds like and they will quickly formulate a description that sounds like Mother Teresa in terms of purity, credibility and likability to the jury.
Lacking a nun or a religious figure for your lead witness - what's a DA to do?
They put the witness on the stand that can best testify to the crime(s) involved due to their proximity, knowledge and/or involvement.
The Pope is not accused in this Hush money/Election fraud/Business fraud scheme but a grifting fraudster ex President is, and so the prosecutor must play the cards he has been dealt in terms of witness testimony.
When Rudy Giuliani prosecuted the Family Secrets case and mob figures with names like Tony "Ducks" Corallo (Lucchese family) and Fat Tony Salerno (Genovese family) et al., he brought witnesses in to testify to the racketeering, loan sharking, and murders associated with the crimes charged.
So a host of Goombah's testified that they 'wacked’ or kneecapped whomever they were directed to ‘wack’ by their respective mob bosses. That was their job. And so that was their testimony.
Who better to testify?
That kind of up close insider testimony proved critical to the successful conviction of the mob bosses.
So who does the Manhattan DA have to testify against the Trump Organization crime boss that possess intimate knowledge of the ‘hush money’ scheme concoction, payoffs, reimbursements and the cooking of the books?
David Pecker - slime news publisher and Michael Cohen - fixer, perjurer, felon, disgraced attorney - will be the main witnesses before the porn star and Playboy centerfold take the stand and then there will be an assortment of the most key witnesses in the whole dam thing - the true stars of this sordid drama - Bookkeepers and Accountants!
Brother Marty is available should the prosecution need an expert witness...
The talking legal heads are all focused on the most concerning issue in their respective opinion with regard to the Hush money case and I don't disagree - Intent.
Intent is often used synonymously with the term Mens Rea and also - Willfullness.
There are entire Law school classes that parse the above terms.
Let me give you the down and dirty version.
Mens rea - Consciousness of guilt - when the prosecution plays the Michael Cohen recorded telephone call with Donald Trump discussing the hush money payoff scheme pay careful attention to what Donald Trump says and does not say. Cohen goes into detail about how he is going to "finance" the payoff and Trump cuts him off mid sentence and says "take it out of cash" - game/set/match!!!! That is Mens rea - the Donald does not question the propriety of making a hush money payoff - he doesn't admonish Cohen and say - that would be wrong - don't do that - Trump intends to override the Cohen tactic of borrowing money as an additional layer of concealment - insulating everyone from the "real deal" - take it out of cash is a direction to pay the hush money and how to pay the hush money because he knows from his past experience that "cash payoffs” leave no paper trail while loans and shell companies and escrow accounts and wire transfers leave a paper trail a mile long.
Willfullness - while taxes play a minor corollary role in the instant Hush money scheme, it is the Supreme Court's description of Willfullness in Spies v U.S. that most clearly describes for everyone really - just what Willfullness is and how to spot it.
Context - Spies (pronounced Speez) was a Failure to File Misdemeanor criminal tax case that the IRS elevated to the Felony crime of Tax Evasion based on the level of Willfullness exhibited by the taxpayer. SCOTUS decided to take this case and explain to all just what Willfullness is and while they did not define it, they sort of surrounded it and provided some useful examples.
SCOTUS said at its core and I paraphrase - Willfullness is concealment, secreting, hiding, disguising and/or misdirecting. SCOTUS provided some helpful examples that they warned was by no means comprehensive e.g. maintaining a double set of books, maintaining an undisclosed bank account, submitting false invoices, maintaining a shell company, falsifying books and records etc.
Does anyone see in that short list anything that might be considered Willfullness in the Hush money case? We will come back to this.
Intent - there are a million definitions of Intent that I could reference here, but I don't really like any of them. Intent is really something you intuit. You know it when you see it. It is most important to distinguish actions and behaviour that is being prosecuted as not a function of negligence or something accidental or happened by chance. Prosecutors will rely on Willfullness and a pattern of behaviour when characterizing Intent. Such as...
When Michael Cohen devised a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) for everyone involved in the Hush money payment Conspiracy - each of the participants were given a nominee name.
Donald Trump for example was named David Dennison.
Ding ding ding - anyone spot concealment, secreting, hiding, disguising or misdirecting?
Cohen then arranged for a home equity loan from a bank to fund the hush money payment and set up a shell company (an LLC called Essential Consultants) to funnel the payments to Stormy's lawyers in order to further hide the payment. The use of a shell company as a conduit to conceal the payment is evidence of Willfullness and part of a pattern of Intent to hide the whole thing.
Hide from whom?
The FEC!
Hush money payments are in themselves not illegal. But these payments would be considered campaign contributions and by hiding them they become illegal. If Donald Trump simply wrote a check from his personal account for $130K to Stephanie Clifford aka Stormy Daniels - then there would be no trial and there would have been no Indictment.
The crime occurred in the covering up of the payment and in particular the falsification of the company books and records regarding the reimbursement of the hush money fronted by Cohen when Cohen was directed to submit false invoices for Legal fees which were then included on the company disbursements journal and general ledger as legal fees generating a dozen checks in the company name paid to Michael Cohen Esq. for legal retainer when there in fact, existed NO LEGAL RETAINER!
Why go to such extremes to disguise the reimbursement to Cohen as legal fees?
To cover up the hush money payments to Stormy from the FEC and NY State election regulators as to the election interference directed by Trump who was worried that if the Stormy sexual daillance surfaced just weeks prior to the 2016 election - Trump would have lost and the thing that Trump most fears would have come true.
Trump would have been a loser!
Mother Teresa would have said a prayer for him.
Now Rikers awaits and the Trumpster can join his CFO and lament why he didn't go with his first instinct - Take it out of cash - No paper trail - no evidence - no conviction.
marty
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(Below, Mother Teresa — courtesy the Mother Teresa Center; and Saint Martin of the Sheils, photo courtesy Cathy Sheil)
That's funny, I share the same personality type as mother Teresa, but so does Hitler. 😬