On gymnastics – The Economist:

‘There are three reasons to think that the verdict’s damage to Mr Trump will be limited and that he will weather it as he has so much else. First, the felonies are as low-level as they come. Though prosecutors described their case as one of election fraud, that was over-selling things. The actual charges concerned false documents held internally at the Trump Organisation; no one outside it was duped by them. Second, the conduct at issue became public six years ago when Mr Cohen, the prosecutors’ star witness, broke with his former boss. There were few genuine revelations during the trial. Third, the case employed a legal argument so contorted that a reasonable person could say that Mr Bragg, a Democrat elected to his office, was doing partisan gymnastics by bringing it.’

(…)

‘Tenuous legal theory aside, it defied common sense to think that Mr Trump did not do what prosecutors alleged. The defence claimed, implausibly, that their client had never slept with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, and that Mr Cohen had acted as a freelancer, without his boss’s blessing. That strained credulity. Mr Trump’s lawyer called Mr Cohen the “human embodiment of reasonable doubt” and said he was guilty of perjury at the trial, which he enunciated nice and slow: “per-jur-ee”.’

(…)

‘All that is to say that Mr Trump is actually in a pretty good spot considering his immense legal jeopardy. The other three criminal cases against him are far more significant—they deal with alleged election interference and the mishandling of national-security secrets—but none is expected to go to trial before November. If he wins, he will be able to drop the two indictments brought by federal prosecutors. The other state case, in Georgia, probably would not proceed while he is in office either. That leaves a minor, shaky case about a pay-off to a porn star as the only one to deliver any kind of legal accountability before the 2024 election—and perhaps ever.’

Read the article here.

Perhaps ever, so it is.

Felonies as low-level as they come.

We have five months till the elections. It’s a casino.

Live by the dice, die by the dice.