Below is my column in The Hill on the first week of testimony in the Trump trial. It is making Rube Goldberg’s 13 step self-operating napkin look like a model of efficiency and clarity. It is so convoluted and illogical it is mesmerizing.
Here is the column:
Rube Goldberg, the inventor of bizarre machines that performed simple tasks through dozens of mechanical steps, was once asked about the essence of creating such fantastic, illogical machines. He replied “An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.” After the first week of testimony, the trial of Donald Trump is increasingly looking like a mad prosecution machine by lawyers who don’t take law too seriously.
I have long been a critic of the Bragg indictment as legally incomprehensible. However, I must confess that after a week of testimony, some of us have developed a weird fascination with the utter madness of the scene unfolding in Manhattan. It was not until the second week of proceedings that Bragg even revealed part of his theory of criminality. For months, even liberal legal analysts have expressed dismay that Bragg’s indictment had not clearly stated what specific crime that Trump sought to conceal by allegedly misrepresenting payments to former adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
The premise of the prosecution always had that Rube Goldberg feel. It was so implausible as to be impossible. After all, the base charge is a simple misdemeanor under a New York law against falsifying business records. Trump paid Cohen hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and costs, including $130,000 for a nondisclosure agreement with Daniels.
Bragg is vague as to what should have been noted on the ledgers for the payments. It is not even clear if Trump knew of this expense’s designation as a legal cost. However, it really did not matter, because the misdemeanor has been as dead as Dillinger for years.
The dead misdemeanor was shocked back into life by claiming that it was committed to conceal another crime. Under New York’s penal law, section 175.10, it can be a felony if the “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”
For months, Bragg has suggested that the “other crime” was the violation of federal election laws, suggesting that the payment was really a campaign contribution Trump made to himself that was not properly recorded. The problem is that the Justice Department investigated that crime already and decided that it was not a viable criminal claim. It did not even seek a civil fine.
Bragg’s predecessor and Bragg himself rejected the theory behind this prosecution. But then a pressure campaign led Bragg to green-light a prosecution roughly eight years after the 2016 campaign.
In the trial, Bragg added a type of frying pan flip to his Rube Goldberg contraption by arguing that Trump may have been trying to hide his violation of another dead misdemeanor under yet another New York election law prohibiting “conspir[ing] to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”
In other words, Trump was conspiring to try to win his own election. This even though the notations were made after he had won the election, and even though Trump was running for a federal, not a state office.
So again, what is the unlawful means?
The machine then flips you back to the beginning — seeking “to influence the election.” There are still the federal election violations, but that theory was rejected after an investigation. And if it were a real crime, it would be brought by federal, not state prosecutors.
There are also the misdemeanor falsifications of business records under section 175.05. So Bragg would use one dead misdemeanor to trigger a second dead misdemeanor to create a felony on the simple notations used to describe payments for a completely legal nondisclosure agreement.
This circular reasoning is already incredibly creative, but the actual evidence used to propel this ball through the machine is even wackier. Bragg decided to start with a witness to discuss an affair that is not part of the indictment. David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, had supposedly been paid to kill a story of a Trump affair with a different woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model.
Pecker proceeded to make the prosecution case even more convoluted. On cross examination, Pecker admitted that Trump told him that he knew nothing about any reimbursement to Cohen for any hush money, that he had killed or raised such stories with Trump for decades before he ever announced for president and that he had also killed stories for other celebrities and politicians, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Rahm Emanuel and Mark Wahlberg.
He also testified that Trump told him that paying hush money never really worked because stories still get out. And he understood that Michael Cohen was working as Trump’s personal counsel, not his campaign counsel. Finally, he testified that Trump had no direct involvement in arranging any payments to McDougal.
Pecker added that Bragg’s star witness, Michael Cohen, commonly exaggerated and often became loud and argumentative. Cohen will effectively ask the jury to send his former client to jail for following his own legal advice.
Bragg will now call to the stand Cohen, whom a judge just recently denounced as a serial perjurer who is continuing to game the system.
Even as legal experts debate what crime can be found in any of these flips and dips, Judge Juan Merchan seems content to listen as this weird machine bleeps and whirls in his courtroom.
That is why Bragg has created the perfect Rube Goldberg attraction. The artist himself explained his unlikely success by saying, “It just happened that the public happened to appreciate the satirical quality of these crazy things.”
In New York, that appreciation has moved from the satirical to the legal.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
Without getting into the merits, I don’t think there’s a circular argument by the prosecution here. The underlying crime that violates New York election law involved a conspiracy between Trump and the National Enquirer involving a catch and kill scheme that involved, among other things, illegal payments to Karen McDougal. The falsification of business records is not the underlying crime for the violation of this law. Hence, the reason why Pecker was called.
So the underlying crime raising the falsification of business records to a felony, is the New York state election law. And the underlying crime for the New York state election law is the conspiracy with the National Inquirer — not the falsification of business records.
“And the underlying crime for the New York state election law is the conspiracy . . .”
Not even Bragg is that bad.
A conspiracy requires an underlying crime.
Well Bragg is that “bad.” He is suggesting that Trump met with Pecker and orchestrated an illegal scheme involving illegal payments by the National Enquirer. That Trump and Pecker were in effect partners.
Every person whose retirement money has been used to purchase the stocks and bonds issued by the publicly-traded corporations which are in the business of providing the weapons of war, is getting a ROI, a return on investment, commensurately higher than if their retirement money had been invested in businesses such as solar, wind, non-fossil fuels, and the ‘climate-crisis’ stocks —
Warmongering has become as American as apple pie.
“This is a simple case of New York business records law.”
What is it about the words “dead” and “misdemeanor” that the Left doesn’t like?
Bragg is a part of the Band of Thieves. They are willing to take away our freedom for their political agenda. Where this ends — who knows but there is more at stake than just Trump — it is all of us. Bragg — he will go on to become a ‘little man’ in a big field one day but the damage to our system is beyond comprehension.
Mespo and Upchuck Farmer, you are some of Putin’s staunchest defenders. When the war is over,
you should be dealt with like the Milice (French Militia).
This is the problem with non-thinking stupid Americans. They automatically think just because I can look at the situation objectively, use historical facts, do my own analysis, and draw my own conclusion, that makes me a pro-Russia supporter.
Of course it does not.
Anyone with any degree of common sense can see the situation for what it is. We all know, those of us who can think, the Ukraine/Ruissan war is the result of the Eastward expansion of NATO. Several foreign policy experts have written, a few going back as much as a decade ago, the Eastward expansion of NATO would lead to the exact situation we are in now.
This war was lost before the first shot was fired. The Ukraine does not have the military industrial complex Russia does. The Ukraine does not have the logistical train Russia does. And most importantly, the Ukraine does not have the MANPOWER Russia does.
That is not being pro-Russia or pro-Putin. Those are just the facts. Something you are much to stupid to see or realize.
What I am for is pro-peace. End this stupid war no one wants especially the Ukrainians and the Russians on the front lines. End any possibility of WWIII. That is not being pro-Russia. That is being pro-common sense.
But you are too stupid to see that with you simplistic thinking.
Eisenhower and Patton were pro-peace, too. They achieved peace by destroying the true warmongers.
The true warmonger is Biden the butcher and his admin.
This war could of ended back in the spring of 2022 but Biden said no to peace.
World War 2 could have ended if England, France, Poland, and Russia ceded territory to Germany, without those pesky Americans prolonging the war by liberating territory.
Actually it could not have. That is literally what Chamberlain did in Munich and it did not work.
Germany was a far greater threat than Russia is today. With one difference – Russia does have half the worlds Nukes.
Regardless Russia has made clear what it wants, what it will go to war for – and the US made clear 35 years ago that was a line we would not cross – until Biden did.
Biden and the democrats and the “deep state” misjudged Putin. They beleived Putin was bluffing when he said he would not tolerate NATO at the russian boarder.
It is not just that peace was possible 2 years ago.
This war – like the one in Gaza was avoidable – but for the incompetence of Biden, Democrats, the children running the White House and the “deep state” warmongers.
There is the blood of a million on your hands.
Correct. But they did not start fights they could not win. As Upstate pointed out and much of the world grasps, but for the attempted expansion of NATO to Russia’s border – this war would not have happened.
Time will destroy Putin and Russia – and not all that much of it.
We would all love to See Ukraine beat the crap out of Putin – But despite the amazing efforts of the Ukrainians and the massive resources the US has thrown at this – that Victory has not happened. Nor does it appear any closer.
Russia is destroying its future in this war – or better put radically shortening it. Demographics spell the end of Russia soon enough.
But whatever the long term outcome for Russia – Ukraine has already and will continue to pay a very steep price.
And there appears nothing that can be done for that.
Russia wins a war of attrition – eventually – at a terrible cost to both sides.
But Russia still wins.
And absent boots on the ground from NATO the odds of any other outcome are small.
Are you prepared to send US Troops to fight in this war.
Russia has lost more soldiers than the US has lost in any conflict since WWII, in all conflicts since WWII combined.
And Russia is less than half the US population.
Ukraine has lost more soldiers than the US has lost in all wars since Korea – combined.
In 2 years this is worse that All of Israel’s wars combined. The only conflict in my lifetime that matches this was Iraq vs Iran decades ago.
This is a bloody awful messy war of attrition. The US has avoided conflicts like that since WWI.
What is it that you think will change this ?
The US is producing 20,000 155mm shells a month. Ukraine needs about 200,000 Russia is using more than that.
US 155mm stockpiles are almost gone. The companies producing 155mm shells have geared up production by a factor of 3 and that is all they are going to do. To meet Ukraines demands we need more armaments factories and we need them for maybe a year – no more. Who is going to build a factory to produce 200,000 155mm shells for ONLY a year ?
Russian equipment is crap. But they have huge stockpiles, and they can repair the crap when it gets damaged WWII tanks are pretty simple. Russia has geared up for an existential war. The west has not – and likely will not.
It just does not make sense to do so. Ukraine is just not in the interests of the west.
At the same time = it is self evident that Russia is impotent. That Ukraine is the strongest nation that it can hope to defeat.
This war will end in a negotiated settlement – one that could have been reached 2 years and almost a million lives ago.
But then this war never needed to happen.
Well stated Upstate Farmer
This is a simple conclusion, reached by 4th grade math calculations.
But, when the facts you just laid out are presented, the stupid response is “Putin lover”. Or they will launch into the political arguments. Using that to lump the facts into a pro Putin desire.
I want Ukraine to be free. I see zero path for that happening though warfare. If someone can explain how war is going to succeed, please step forward and show me the way.
Understand warfare means the United States does nothing more that provide weapons.
Your mind is already made up, so it would be an exercise in futility. It would be like trying to
convince an OJ juror that he really did do it.
Minds often are made up by confrontations with the hard facts of reality.
Please tell us all how you are going to acheive a different outcome ?
Magic ?
Iowan2,
Would it be great if the Ukraine could fight and push the Russians back to pre-war boundaries?
Of course.
But that is not the reality of the situation.
Based off the agreement from the Istanbul meeting back in 2022, Russia would of pulled back in return for a neutral Ukraine. But Biden said no to peace and here we are.
Now Russia is gaining more ground as the Ukraine is in a tactical retreat.
The summer Ukraine counteroffensive is already expected to fail as their manpower issues persist.
We are just throwing more money and material at a bad situation and more death and destruction, needlessly.
UpstateFarmer said: “We are just throwing more money and material at a bad situation and more death and destruction, needlessly.”
But we are enriching the people who really count. Wasn’t that the objective, all along?
Thne route to a free Ukraine was for Hillary and her crew NOT to foment the orange revolution and Biden and his clueless children not to start foolish talk of NATO expansion.
Just as there would be no war in GAZA now but for Biden’s abysmal Iranian policy.
And the odds of both of these conflcits was amplified by Biden stupid energy policy.
4 years ago Iran was contained and Russia was ok with the Status Quo.
Those on the left made these messes.
I actually spent a year in Russia working. Russia did not want this fight. But Obama’s push to meddle in Ukraine politics and NATO expansion forced the issue. To Russia Ukraine being part of NATO is no different than Russian nuclear weapons being in Cuba for us.
The United States and Russia are not moral or political equals, so it is a false equivalence. The United States is good, while Russia is evil. Good should expand wherever it wants. If Evil doesn’t like the expansion of Good, then that’s too bad.
Those of you one the left constantly tell us all the US is evil and communism is good.
As to reality – I think the US is good – but NO good may not expand wherever it wants. Like americans the peoples of the rest of the world are free to choose for themselves their govenrments and their form of government.
The US wins the rest of the world over to our moral, political and economic principles – by example, not War.
Not only is that the best way, it is the only MORAL way. If you beleive the US should force its will on other nations – then we ARE no better than Russia.
Anon:
That’ll be strange since Russia has already won. I’m not a supporter of Putin (though I admire whathe’s done for Russia) but merely of reality. Ukraine has lost and they know it.
“the trial of Donald Trump is increasingly looking like a mad prosecution machine by lawyers who don’t take law too seriously.”
You still seem a little slow on the draw Jonathan. ‘Cause, well yeah. It was obvious from the inception this prosecution was completely untenable.
But the whole point of lawfare is to weaponize the law to incapacitate your political opponent one way or the other, by whatever means necessary. So what if you could all gets thrown out on Appeal years from now? The whole thing is designed to take Trump out of action NOW.
Exactly. And not only take him out now, but to prevent him from campaigning altogether. And Turley knows this, but he is still wrapped up in the communist democrat party and why? So Turley will spin and pontificate and blow smoke.
France wasn’t a member of NATO when the Normandy Invasion happened, yet America
still helped France. The point is that something bad is happening and it needs to be stopped.
Ukraine should launch missiles at the Kremlin in retaliation.
Yeah, Putin won’t retaliate with Russian nukes. You guanantee it. Ukraine supporters are delusional. You wanna commit suicide, be my guest. Just remember: It’s a war. People die. Buildngs get blown up. There are no innocents in this situation and least of all Ukraine.
You don’t seem to get it. Russia hasn’t even begun to enter the fray in a serious military operation. The Russian armed forces could turn out every light then Ukraine within a few hours and any moment they chose. They could rain down hypersonic missiles destroy every government office in whenever they choose. I’m sure chicken hawks like you don’t think about those things.
posa, I seriously doubt your assertions.
DBB:
Don’t. They can and are outproducing, outrecruiting and outmaneuvering us and our latest rendition of a doddering leadership fool, President Paul von Bidenburg.
They are and doing so is barely enough to maintain parity with a smaller but better trained and better equipped Ukrainian army.
The Germans could shoot the American troops landing on the beaches of Normandy. The Allies considered this. But they did the landings, anyway.
Russia is at this point winning this war – because Russia wins all stalemates and wars of attrition.
But NO Russia is not playing with Ukraine. Russia is taking about 5:1 casualities and that is just about all it can endure and prevail.
If it was capable of doing better – it would.
But with all out aide – Ukraine is not able to mount a real offense.
This is a stalemate – and Russia eventually wins stalemates.
You are advocating for a fighting war with Russia. You are perfectly will able to do that.
China is subsidizing Russia’s war effort. That will increase. All of that is fine of course. But the US hasnt won a war since WWII. Thats when they understood that massive destruction of property and killing of civilians was just what war is.
NATO did not exist back then, you idiot.
That’s the point. A treaty wasn’t necessary to help another country.
Then NATO isn’t necessary.
Some nations have signed security guarantees with Ukraine independent of NATO.
Christ you are historically ignorant.
It was just these kinds of agreements that lead to WWI.
One of the security agreements Ukraine had was with Russia, is discussing joining NATO they violated it.
Your arguments are childishly simplistic and historically wrong.
America wasn’t a member of NATO during Overlord. What is your point?
Where was the US when the Huti’s massacred 800,000 Tutsi in 90 days ?
Where was the US when The Khmer Rouge murdered 2M of their own people ?
The world is full of bad things all over.
The US is not and never has been the worlds policemen.
You still do not seem to grasp that We – the US – and particularly US Democrats started this.
Russia invaded Georgia when the US started talking about NATO expansion.
Russia annexed Crimea when the US fomented the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
Putin has made clear what Russia wants – the US to stop meddling in the affairs of countries bordering on Russia.
And particularly not talkiing stupidly about their joining NATO.
The US promised it would not expand NATO.
We lied and hundreds of thousands of ukrainians are paying for that with their lives.
Mr. Turley. I appreciate all of your assessments. I’m wondering- does the recent decision by the NY Appeals Court to send back the Weinstein case have any similarities to this case? And would you be so kind to comment and better opine on how the Weinstein decision may relate to an appeal of this one? In any event, thank you!
Since NDA’s are legal, and Bragg cant use NY election law to prosecute those running for federal office, nor can NY prosecute using federal laws, There is nothing probative in Peckers testimony. Bragg is just going for maximum smear and maximum media coverage of the smears.
Witnesses that bring nothing of a factual basis to prosecute the charges is what got Weinstiens case overturned.
Professor Turley Writes:
“I have long been a critic of the Bragg indictment as legally incomprehensible.”
***
Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo pressed House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Sunday about the lack of headway in House Republicans’ investigations into President Biden and other political figures.
Bartiromo and Jordan were discussing the Judiciary Committee’s latest report that alleges the New York County District Attorney’s Office’s (DANY) hush money probe into former President Trump is “political prosecution.”
House Republicans on the Judiciary and Oversight committees have struggled in recent weeks to close their impeachment probe into Biden and are facing rising doubts from their own party about whether investigators discovered any wrongdoing.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4627707-maria-bartiromo-questions-jim-jordan-about-congressional-investigations-that-go-nowhere/
……………………………………………
It appears that rightwing pundits have realized the impeachment drive against Biden has gone NOWHERE. However, Johnathan Turley hasn’t noticed or doesn’t want to notice.
Shaking down foreign business leaders for millions of dollars in “gifts”, while serving as Vice President of the United States, is not “wrongdoing”?
They never found any evidence of that. Jeesh. Doyou really have to keep going over what isn’t there? Say something smart.
The cartoon is not just appropriate for this prosecution, but for nearly every tenet of the Democrat Party. Take the ongoing problems in the black community. An 80% out-of-wedlock birthrate provides a simple answer for the social, financial and educational problems in the community, and that was a well-established fact well before the Civil Rights movement.
One might find this 1913 article illustrative –
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1226&context=jclc
What do the Democrats do? They invent this bizarre contraptional belief system that Christopher Columbus, 1619 and Robert E. Lee are the cause of blacks’ problems in 2024. Same with crime, sex, borders etc.
The contraptions are necessary, because they are in the throes of cognitive dissonance. Just like Festinger’s original UFO cult back in the 1950s – when the aliens did not come – many of the believers invented elaborate excuses, all to keep from admitting that they were wrong.
Why does the United States allow some tyrannies and dictatorships to exist when they could be toppled tomorrow?
Is less tyranny in the world better than more tyranny?
The illustration with this article makes much more sense than the lawsuit does.
Since this prosecution is a Kangeroo Court in a Banana Republic, shouldn’t venue be changed to some country where there are both kangeroos and bananas aplenty? Some combination of Australia and Guatemala.
“If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of slavery].”
“My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.”
“[Should freed blacks be made] politically and socially our equals?”
“My own feelings will not admit of this, and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.”
“We can not, then, make them equals.”[5]
– Abraham Lincoln, Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854
Good point.
The Hush Money Case Is Really About Accountability
On the one hand, some legal experts claim that the conduct charged in New York was the original election interference. On the other hand, some critics think the criminal case is a witch hunt, and others claim it is trivial at best and at worst the product of selective prosecution.
As someone who worked in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and enforced the laws that Mr. Trump is accused of violating, I stand firmly in neither camp. It is an important and straightforward case, albeit workmanlike and unglamorous. In time, after the smoke created by lawyers has cleared, it will be easy to see why the prosecution is both solid and legitimate.
It would hardly make for a dramatic opening statement or cable news sound bite, but the case is about preventing wealthy people from using their businesses to commit crimes and hide from accountability. Manhattan prosecutors have long considered it their province to ensure the integrity of the financial markets.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/opinion/trump-bragg-manhattan-case.html
A self identified expert
You are qualified to name the crime that overcomes two misdemeanors with expired SOL
On a side note you can explain how the payments required, by law, to be entered in the ledgers. We know payments to NDA’s are not a crime.
Is there a case holding that a family asset trust is a “business” under New York law? This is a relevant distinction because although business creditors might have an interest is seeing the records of a potential buyer, it is hard to see what right such creditors would have as to a family trust.
There is no crime and there is no crime to present to the jury.
This jurisprudential aberration will be blown out of the water on appeal.
Brotha Bragg must be prosecuted for criminal racism, abuse of power, and malicious prosecution under color of law to the fullest extent of the law.
Tinhorn Obama Banana Republic Jungle Justice at its worst.
Someone wake up the Sleeping Giant.
“Manhattan prosecutors have long considered it their province to ensure the integrity of the financial markets.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
OH, yes, which is why there were sooo many prosecutions following the 2008 meltdown! But, thank you for the laugh!
What crime? 🤷🏻♀️
Darn, no answer from the self indentified expert. I thought I was finally going to get an answer
“. . . to commit crimes . . .”
Such as? Dead misdemeanors?
“. . . ensure the integrity of the financial markets.”
So today the crimes have something to do with “financial markets?”
What we get from that former prosecutor is the same thing we get from Bragg and the media: Trust us. There’s a crime there, somewhere.
With prosecutors like that, who needs Inquisitors.
You sir are an idiot!
“Alvin Bragg and The Art of Not Taking Law Too Seriously”
– Professor Turley
____________________
You can’t blame Alvin Bragg. Parasites were created to consume of hosts. From Marx and Lincoln, through the Progressives and Communists, to Obama and Bragg, the communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) have done a professional and thorough job of that.
It was the American people who partook of “The Art of Not Taking Law Too Seriously” when they allowed “Crazy Abe” to throw the baby out with the bathwater—the Constitution out with reprehensible slavery. Owing to the breach of the branch for judicial adherence, the failed judicial branch, including the Supreme Court, America, and its Constitution, have been all downhill ever since. Secession was not prohibited and was fully constitutional; every subsequent act of Lincoln was and remains invalid, illegitimate, illicit, and unconstitutional, including the “Reconstruction Amendments” of Karl Marx’s theory. If Lincoln were allowed to do anything, it must have been that of his own ideation.
To wit,
“Racial separation must be effected by colonization of the country’s blacks to a foreign land. The enterprise is a difficult one, but ‘where there is a will there is a way,’ and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.”
– Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857.
Were Lincoln allowed to act illicitly and unconstitutionally, he should have, at least, been compelled to act within the Constitution and the Naturalization Act of 1802, the extant immigration law in full force and effect for 73 years, and compassionately repatriate the pitiable, long-suffering abductees, the freed slaves, which should have been the historical, definitive, and singular act of remediation.
George said: “You can’t blame Alvin Bragg. Parasites were created to consume of hosts.”
And, to complete your metaphor, you certainly cannot blame an infected host (physical or virtual) for taking whatever measures might be most effective to purge and kill the parasitic organism. I wonder what the most effective measure to purge Bragg and his parasitic brethren might be?
IN A SOCIETY OF LAWS, THE LAWS MUST BE ADHERED TO
As the Supreme Court acted retroactively by 50 years to strike down Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court must act retroactively by 150 years to strike down the illegal immigration and unconstitutional deployment of a latent foreign 4-million-man standing army on January 1, 1863. The so-called Emancipation Proclamation transformed the legal status of slaves from “property” to “illegal alien” per extant immigration law, the Naturalization Act of 1802, which had remained in full force and effect for 73 years. Freed slaves must have been compassionately repatriated, per immigration law, and Lincoln must have maintained the courage of his convictions (i.e. previous recommendations for “colonization” or compassionate repatriation) and adhered to the law.
_________________________________________________________
Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798, and 1802 (four iterations for complete clarity and persisting for 73 years)
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof…