Belkira wrote:
Even if gbaji were right, isn't perjury and trying to cover that perjury (in this case, not disclosing how much money you had to the court in an effort to get a lower bail amount, and then structuring these deposits to keep from alerting the government that you lied to said court for bail purposes) illegal, therefore making this structuring illegal in gbaji's "it's only illegal if your trying to cover up another illegal activity" scenario?
Yes. As I've acknowledged at least a couple times already. If you can show that they intended to misrepresent their finances to the court in order to get a lower bond and the transfers were an attempt to conceal that fact *then* you'd have a case. But the mere fact of how they transferred the money isn't proof of criminal action nor can it be used backwards to prove intent to lie (otherwise the whole law is circular and becomes arbitrary). You have to show that they believed that the court was unaware of the defense fund, knew that the court was asking (or expecting) them to include the money in the defense fund when asking about their personal finances, and then prove that they knowingly transferred the money the way they did to conceal this (or to facilitate it).
It's certainly possible that there's evidence to show this. But what most people seem to be making the most noise about isn't sufficient IMO. Enough to look into it, certainly. But not proof. That's all I've been saying here. I have no clue if they were trying to cheat and hide/misuse that money. What I do know is merely having it, transferring it how they did, and even failing to mention it when asked about personal finances does not prove that this was the case. It honestly looks more to me like a couple people who assumed that the defense fund was separate from their personal finances, treated it like it was separate from their personal finances (there's no evidence I've heard that they went on a shopping spree with it or anything), but failed to take the official accounting steps required to legally make it separate from their personal finances.
Maybe I'm more willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and not prejudge their actions, but I can absolutely see people not fully understanding what the court is asking when it talks about personal finances. Most people, when asked how much money they have think about cash on hand and in their bank account(s). Most would probably not think to include money in their 401k, or that IRA they put money into from time to time, or those bond certificates their parents gave them for their college education (unless they need to cash them in to pay off a pimp and buy back all their furniture or something). Are they trying to conceal money they have? Probably not. Most likely they just didn't think of it at the time. And a special fund set aside for a specific purpose (like a college fund or a defense fund) might absolutely not be thought of as "personal finances".
A lot of the law in this area (especially perjury) revolves around intent. You can't just work backwards from the actions, assume intent, and then assume violation of the law. Because if you do that then intent becomes meaningless. Everyone who transfers money in increments less than $10k must be in violation of the law, right? If we assume that if someone does that, it must have been to avoid some audit trail, which must have been done to avoid some illegality, so therefore they must have intended to avoid that outcome when they did it. Like I said though, that's circular logic. It always proves someone guilty, so it's a useless methodology to use.
