Is a Trump acquittal a legitimate possibility?

In a just world, the Trump Hush Money Trial likely wouldn't have been attempted. This isn't a just world. At the start of jury selection for the trial, few legal scholars thought that Trump wouldn't be convicted. Bit-by-bit, though, things started changing. It didn't take long to figure out that Alvin Bragg relied too much on this being a Manhattan jury and a corrupt judge who was more a Democrat operative than fair-minded jurist looking for justice.

What happened, though, is that the prosecution's star witnesses on direct were turned into the defense's star witness on cross-examination. Michael Cohen admitted that he stole money from Trump while being cross--examined by the defense. That hit like a bombshell within the courtroom.

Tuesday, Jake Tapper convened a panel of legal experts. He said "What Tim just said … to me makes sense because I don’t know that they have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that … even if you believe the prosecution’s theory of the case … I don’t know that they’ve have proven that Donald Trump knew." Brandi Harden replied "They have not, absolutely have not...Time and time again, people keep talking about what might be missing or what’s not quite there. That is, in fact reasonable doubt when things are missing, when there are facts that to want to hear and you look to the prosecution and say, so where is that thing that means unfortunately here, he should be acquitted. And I think that because there are certain things that the government has to prove here, certain specifics that he knew, he had specific knowledge of these things. Those are just things I think that have fallen by the wayside. They just have not established those things in this particular case."

Check this out:

One of the panelists, Karen Friedman Agnifio, made the argument that Cohen "provides direct evidence that goes directly to Trump in this case." That sounds fine but that's the prroblem. Cohen isn't reliable. Cohen is a walking personification of reasonable doubt. One of the things that the prosecution did in their attempt to rehabilitate Cohen was to say "He doesn't lie all the time." While that's true, how do you know which things he's lying about and which things he's telling the truth about? If you aren't certain, that's reasonable doubt, which spells A-C-Q-U-I-T-T-A-L.

In a justice-loving world, this would be an easy case to decide. Unfortunately, people with ulterior motivations sometimes get put into positions of power. In Cohen's case, his motivation is that he got passed over for 2 jobs in the Trump administration that he really wanted. Since then, he's carried a grudge against Trump. How do you not factor that into Cohen's testimony? That's just logical.