Interesting - Judge actually seriously undermines Bragg case against Trump?

Will not allow Bragg to use Michael Cohen's guilty plea to prove Trump committed a federal crime.

I believed this was the plan all along. That Bragg would argue that Michael Cohen pleading guilty to campaign finance violations meant that Trump was also guilty of the same violation. The reasons why this logic is flawed is obvious:

• Cohen was never "found guilty" of anything campaign related and was eventually sentenced for tax fraud that had nothing to do with Trump.

• Cohen's guilty plea was part of a larger agreement to testify against Trump if the SDNY prosecutor's office decided to charge Trump. They obviously decided not to charge Trump, which arguably undermines Braggs case.

• Cohen pled guilty to violating campaign finance limits, however as the candidate, Trump has no such limits. Either way, by all accounts Cohen was paid back.

• Trump reported the $130,000 to the Federal Elections Commission as an interest free loan and the FEC has already ruled that it was not a campaign contribution. Trump was not hiding the $130,000 as Bragg is suggesting.

However, it seems obvious that Bragg was planning on using Cohen three years in prison to gaslight the jurists into believing that Cohen went to prison at least in part because he violated campaign finance limits and that said crimes were serious. By seven degrees of separation, that would mean that Trump must be guilty as well and also should be in prison. Moreover, I believe Bragg thought that the Judge would go along with it, just as he has gone along with almost everything Bragg has asked for.

Now the question is where does Bragg go from here to prove a crime that was otherwise covered up? In his motions and pleadings to the court he continues to imply that the payment to Stormy Daniels was illegal by suggesting it was covert and paid through a shell bank account. Of course, that is exactly how NDA work and there is nothing illegal about it. Cohen was not charged with an illegal payment to Stormy Daniels, because it is not illegal. The judge may be a hack, but I doubt he will allow Bragg to simply argue that nondisclosure agreements are illegal by making them sound sleazy.

The crime Bragg needed to prove all along was that it was not reported properly. But as I have argued before, even if the $130,000 payment should have been reported as a campaign expense, that would likely be no more than a civil violation and subject to the campaign being fined. Nobody would go to jail for reporting this as a personal rather than campaign expense. It was reported.

McCarthy and others have argued that Trump and his team should argue for the jury to be allowed to find him guilty of the "lesser included defense" which would be the misdemeanor charge of falsifying business records. This would allow any jurists who want to find Trump guilty of "something" to be able to do so, even as the argument for a felony falls apart. Being found guilty of a bookkeeping misdemeanor (which would be dropped due to statute of limitations) is not the sort of gamechanger that Biden and the Democrats would need here.

All that being said, if Bragg does not come up with a legitimate other crime that was being covered up, the Trump team could call for a dismissal of the felony charges after the Government rests. One would think that even Merchan would have to consider the implications of allowing the case to continue if Bragg fails to make the most important part of his case. Then he would literally just be allowing for the possibility of a rogue runaway jury being hellbent on finding Trump guilty no matter what. Someone has to be the adult.