Even worse for the intent angle is that he did it through his lawyer. Proving someone acted with illegal intent by following the advice of their lawyer seems to be an oxymoron.

It's well understood that Cohen was Trump's fixer, so I don't think that'll be that big a hurdle.

It's even easier than that - Cohen already pled guilty and was convicted for this campaign finance violation. During the trial Cohen explicitly named Trump as a co-conspirator while the prosecutor decided to call him "Individual 1" in the filings

In criminal law, for intent, the prosecution doesn't have to prove no other intent, or what the "main intent" was. In fact, in some legal systems (perhaps the US as well) it is often enough to establish that the accused:

1. Was aware of his relevant actions

2. Was aware the actions are likely to have the relevant effect

3. Acted anyway

and - again, in some legal systems - this creates a presumption of intent. The onus is then on the accused to establish that they had an entirely different intent (in which case they acted "recklessly") or was not actually aware of the consequences (in which case they acted "negligently" because they should have been aware).

I am not a (US) lawyer, so I'm not sure that's the exact legal situation for Trump.

Luckily in the US an accused isn't required to prove the absence of a given intent just because a third party believes that intent might have been there.

Suppose you point a gun at someone and shoot someone. There are witnesses of you having done so, and of you being alert and sane at the time. But the prosecution cannot find any evidence of your intent to hurt that person. Would you not be convicted for having shot that person?

Contrived strawman aside, this is exactly why there are different legal definitions for murder in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degrees, as well as manslaughter. And different punishments for each based.

In this example, it's probably open-and-shut 2nd degree but the prosecution now has to prove that you premeditated this if they want to go for 1st degree (IANAL). They don't get to just say "it was clearly premeditated" and then put the onus of proof on the defendant.

Oh, ok, certainly, there can be different levels of gravity for the same offense. But it's not the case of "you haven't positively proven intent so no conviction".

That depends on whether the fact you shot someone is a disputed fact in the case.

you can't have direct evidence of someones alertness or state of mind, only circumstantial.

the direct evidence from witness testimony is only needed if the shooting is disputed.

assuming the shooting is proven, with no evidence of intent, you can't have murder 1, and likely can't have murder 2 either and are probably stuck with involuntary manslaughter.

obviously it depends on the state.

however even manslaughter requires some requisite knowledge and intention of what you are doing - but proving something like insanity or incapacity is usually on the defense to prove.

> and likely can't have murder 2 either and are probably stuck with involuntary manslaughter.

Can you refer to an explanation of this? Or to some case law explaining the non-attribution of volition?

> cannot find any evidence of your intent to hurt that person

in CA second degree murder is the unlawful killing of a human being that is done without deliberation and premeditation, but with malice aforethought (or with an intent to commit an act)

if there is literally zero evidence available as to intent, it cant be murder.

Culpability and the exact crime actually depends a LOT on your mental state and what intent you supposedly had. Let's start with some basic cases and get weirder:

* Intent to kill or harm someone - murder

* Intent to pull the trigger, but not to kill or hurt anyone - manslaughter

* No intent to pull the trigger (eg accidental discharge - maybe the trigger pull on the gun is very light and you put a little too much pressure on it) - possibly manslaughter on recklessness grounds if you knew there were people around or the person was there, but also maybe a lower crime (or not a crime at all) if you were being careful with the gun and got unlucky about where it was pointing when it discharged

* Not mentally competent to understand that you might be hurting someone or that hurting someone is wrong - not guilty because of insanity

* Intent to kill the person in self-defense and the person is intending to kill or harm you - not guilty of any crime due to self defense (a murder, but not a crime)

* Intent to kill someone else who is attacking you in self-defense, but you missed - also self defense (intent follows the bullet)

There are probably 10+ more other major scenarios to cover here with different outcomes. This is partly why when someone kills someone else with a gun, the prosecution tries to hit them with murder, manslaughter, and reckless handling of a deadly weapon. They don't know which one will stick, but they can be pretty sure that a jury will find one kind of intent.

They're required to prove absence of a given intent in the sense of "to the jury's satisfaction."

If the prosecution says "Here are all the things that indicate intent" and the defense says "I'm not going to respond to any of those, because none of them prove intent" then that's rolling some pretty loaded dice with a jury.

I'm not convinced it's the strongest possible case that could be brought against Trump, but I think he'd have a tough job convincing people that he arranged to pay someone in the middle of an election campaign in 2016 not to talk about something that happened in 2006 without any expectation of it having any impact upon his campaign, particularly not when his lawyer already pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws for his part in the payment.

> I think he'd have a tough job convincing people that he arranged to pay someone in the middle of an election campaign in 2016 not to talk about something that happened in 2006 without any expectation of it having any impact upon his campaign

You must have not seen much of the 2016 election crap then. It was pretty clear that it would not have any impact on his campaign by the time she was paid in October. So much crap was said about him by then, it would have been a small side story.

> It was pretty clear that it would not have any impact on his campaign by the time she was paid in October. So much crap was said about him by then, it would have been a small side story.

All election ads and promotional activities are small side stories in the scope of the overall campaign (and his family heard all the other crap said about him too!). Fact remains that the time Trump's lawyer paid off Stormy Daniels was years after the event but weeks before an election, and Cohen has already pleaded guilty to it being a campaign finance violation. In the scope of campaign finance violations it doesn't sound like a particularly massive one and the reasons for not wanting to declare it are obvious and unlikely to be related to any sort of wider conspiracy, but it stretches credulity to imagine that the election wasn't a consideration.

How exactly do you prove that this wasn't paid to prevent further embarrassment to his wife and to salvage his relationship? He did go around at the time calling Stormy Daniels "Horse Face". Which does directly relate to his wife being a former model, being more beautiful, and can be seen as an attempt to reassure her. Intent is hard to prove.