Every single person in politics is a lizard on camera. And they are required to be by their voters. Better to focus on what outcomes they deliver than whether or not they are a lizard (they always are)
HN is probably not capable of having a conversation about this with any amount of signal. Sometimes more polarizing political news gets a nudge up to the front from the mods if it's historically significant like elections. Those threads demonstrate why political stuff usually gets pushed out.
Locally, when they called the election for Biden there were spontaneous celebrations in the streets of my local city. People seem to forget just how extreme those years were and how they felt.
Just refreshed after being away for a while, and it now shows as [flagged]. I think years ago HN used to have a way you could "vouch" for flagged content to unflag it, but I don't see the option, maybe they took it away at some point?
It's possible to "vouch" stories by emailing hn@ycombinator.com.
(It's also possible to dispute various actions, including HN mods disabling/overriding flags, if you feel that the decision was ill-founded, in the same manner.)
Sorry dang. I thought it would say flagged if thats the reason it disappeared, but it had no flag marking. Moderation hiding this post isnt necessarily sinister, but i agree that speculation is more fun.
I remember helicopters flying back and forth when the riots broke out, kept me up. Will I be watching Civil War across the border?
I'm getting the feeling that things are going too far, and sensible people let the crazies take over.
Feels like a setup for DeSantis to run, while keeping Trump in legal limbo.
What do you mean? He's a real lawyer and law professor. I haven't heard of any of these criticisms.
edit: I can't reply, so...
Specific criticisms, please? The link is to a video with a Canadian lawyer and someone who might actually have a relevant opinion on US law who, several minutes in, can only seem to broadly and mockingly dismiss him without saying anything specific other than accuse him of being biased and mock him for crying. Biased is not the same as wrong.
edit 2: Specific as in: what has he been wrong about?
For very fresh comments (<1 minute?) you need to go to the comment page by clicking on its time to get a reply box. (Honestly not sure what that's trying to achieve: it's not like one considered the comment for longer before loading up keyboard_warrior.exe just because the comment existed for longer at the moment one loaded the page.)
Why would any future president ever want to relinquish power, when a future of prosecution awaits him. Better serve as long as possible in that case, and use the power of government to keep himself in power. Kind of what used to happen before democracy.
> Why would any future president ever want to relinquish power, when a future of prosecution awaits him.
Because if he doesn't relinquish it the other branches will remove him anyway, as was imminent with Nixon. Trump wasn't convicted by the Senate, but his butt was still kicked out of the White House on Inauguration Day. American democracy isn't fantastic but it's still a long way from the President having absolute control.
"They will double down if we try to punish them." is a hollow argument that could be used to justify not punishing any crime. A pickpocket might try to run or fight back if he knows he will be punished, but that's not a reason to let him do it, it's a reason to have teams of fit people equipped with tazers and handcuffs that can subdue him anyway.
Richard Nixon won the 1972 U.S. presidential election by a large margin. He defeated the Democratic Party nominee, George McGovern, by winning 60.7% of the popular vote and 520 electoral votes out of 537. This was one of the largest landslides in U.S. presidential election history.
It wasn't imminent at all.
If Nixon wanted to end the republic as we know it, he nearly could have. He had a insane mandate by the people.
He didn’t have an insane mandate of Congress, which decidedly was going to impeach him.
It took some time and solid investigation but his party wholesale rejected him and made it clear he had no political future. Nixon was could either resign or be humiliatingly fired.
We no longer have a Congress which values country over party. There’s a good chance Trump could have murdered someone on 5th Avenue and he still would not have been impeached.
That's an F grade in any high school history class. Nixon's own party made it clear they were going to remove him if he didn't resign. You can't deny undisputed historical facts.
It's also safely assumed that a full 60% of the public would not have voted for him if they knew he was going to betray his duty.
>Why would any future president ever want to relinquish power, when a future of prosecution awaits him.
Presidents aren't kings, they can't just "use the power of government" to keep themselves in power indefinitely, and they aren't above the law, in or out of office, despite what some of them might say.
It doesn't matter if they want to relinquish power or not, their power ends when the Constitution says it does and if a president refuses to leave when the clock runs out, the Marines will put a gun to their head and show them the door. Which is as it should be.
A well meaning sentiment but we all break the law on a daily basis. The amount of laws in the US Code is staggering and if a motivated DA wants to charge someone of a crime, they’ll find a way. Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent by Harvey Silvergate is a perfect primer on this subject.
From what I understand, this indictment is about accounting and how a payment was classified. Not that the payment itself was illegal, or that it was some bombshell. Some argue it was a legal expense, some argue it should have been a campaign expenditure. It could go either way.
Seems like it's normal for the US. Just look at Al Capone: murdered who knows how many people, ran an organized crime syndicate, but was finally taken down not for any of those crimes, but because he lied on his taxes.
That's not how power works. When a person has the power to declare themselves dictator, they don't then arrest themselves for dishonoring the election.
No one in power believes this. As a manager I can tell you are an IC and not a manager, director or anything close.
Even CEO's and board members don't.
The only reason they don't fight to the death is because they believe they can get a normal life afterwards.
This just selects for psychopath candidates willing to cross every line to fight and keep power.
As a manager who keeps ending up with more people, asked to take on more, and would love to get back to IC; you sound like a manager I would never want to work for.
So your business doesn’t have rules and contracts? If the board of directors fires the CEO—quite rare—do you think they have any legal grounds to perpetually stay?
Do you think the business would be in good standing if the CEO violently tried to stay, after a legal vote of
no confidence?
There’s a reason why CEOs and business leaders don’t really make it to the Presidency.
Why would a future president think there are any limits whatsoever on his actions, when a future of prosecution will never await him? Kind of what happened on Jan 6.
It's the continuation of the unitary executive of the Bush Doctrine that has allowed Presidents to act with impunity, along with the blank checks that Congress writes them in order to avoid responsibility. Mislabeling payoffs to prostitutes is a triviality.
> Kind of what happened on Jan 6.
A riot by angry admirers of the last President when they overran the White House with only token resistance? You prevent that by arresting him?
You prevent it by not electing someone so obviously unfit for office. Failing that, you discourage it by not giving him reason to believe that he's untouchable. (Sadly, his ragtag army of goons had to learn the hard way.)
Uhh the guy in this indictment is the president who didn't want to relinquish power before he was charged with crimes. He obviously didn't need to be charged before attempting treason and autocracy.
Well, in this philosophy, there's only one real thing that you should punish presidents for, and that's trying to use their power to keep themselves in power.
But Trump did that, so he is exactly the man we should be making an example of.
There's all kinds of unprecedented legal and political ramifications nobody can predict from this.
Don't get me wrong, I think every POTUS in recent memory should be locked up for war crimes, but going after living presidents for petty nonsense isn't worth what falls out of it. This is complicated by the fact Trump is going to run again in 2024, putting this further into uncharted territory.
Yeah kinda funny how the same people who claim the Second Amendment is useless because "you stand no chance against the military" also think the government was >this< close to being overthrown by a bunch of unarmed yokels.
>> also think the government was >this< close to being overthrown by a bunch of unarmed yokels.
Trying my best to not engage in any pointless discourse in this thread, but there were plenty of highly armed people (quite literally waiting to be called in, staying in nearby hotels - just because they were dumbasses doesn’t mean they weren’t highly armed) as well as the fact they did try to call the military in & it was hindered by maleficence.
The whole protest was infiltrated by Government agents.
The shamen guy with horns was literally escorted around inside the building. (video of it on twitter).
It was never a serious attempt at overthrowing a government.
This was trap for Trump to walk down with the protestors, which he was almost baited into doing. Had he done it, he would probably be rotting in prison or dead.
This is not to say that the protest did not turn into a riot. But that riot negated Trump's election fraud claims, some of which were never fully flushed out after.
Violence delegitimized anti government protests, and so government agencies will use agent provocateurs to help things along.
Trump is hated more by the former neocon wing of his party than by Democrats. They gladly played interference to spite him. So his grip on government wasn't really that strong, hence his rants about the deep state.
The government is literally trying to arrest a leading opposition candidate.
A tactic deployed in the third world. The neocons that lied about weapons of mass destruction, faced no legal consequences. While Alex Jones is currently fined 1+ Billion dollars. 1 Million people killed in that war.
Kind of hard to reconcile these facts, and not think something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Remember, a Grand Jury indicted John Edwards, a vice-Presidential candidate, for essentially the same thing Trump is being accused of -- that is using campaign funds to hide an affair.
Prior to Edward's indictment he was thought be the future of the democratic party, if Edwards was convicted on all counts he faced up the 30 years in prison, he beat the charges though -- a rarity in federal prosecutions.
So there is precedent for indictments for this particular crime, not that this should matter, in a republic everyone is subject to the same law and jurisprudence.
>Prior to Edward's indictment he was thought be the future of the democratic party
Respectfully he wasn't seen that way. His indictment was in 2011. Obama was president and still had another election to do.
Edwards had not been relevant since 2008, really since 2004, as no one thought he could be Hilary or Obama in the primary.
>So there is precedent for indictments for this particular crime
One could argue its shows this is a waste of time and money.
The country doesn't need this. Trump was fading away.
in 2015/6 The GOP field didnt know what do with Trump and for the most part only half attacked him thinking he was a side show who would burn out. He also had no political baggage and no prominent court cases
Now he as alienated a lots of people, he lost an election, facing multiple court cases. He will have at least one or two R candidates who will directly attack him.
He will have to fight 'wars' on multiple fronts. Plus he is 8 years older than when he first started running. Closer to 80 than 70.
Is it possible he would have won nomination? Yes but I think was less likely and slipping away from him.
The bad thing for Trump might not be the indictment but that it didn't happen in December 2023.
Whether or not Trump was fading away has nothing to do with whether he should be charged, which is a function of his conduct and the law, not his political success or lack thereof.
It is never a bad time to pursue justice and allow the rusty machinery of our democracy to operate. I don't really care what comes of it, though I have an opinion of what is right and also what will happen. Many people treat this like a zero sum game: either he wins or he loses, and that result is good for Red Team or Blue Team. It would be helpful to our Nation if we recast this indictment as whether a public hearing on the alleged crimes is beneficial to the longevity of our way of governing. To show that none is above the law sends a powerful and unifying signal. So many of us -- my self included -- have already lost faith in our institutions, and while one trial will hardly restore them to glory or depolarize our politics, we must give our laws and processes credence by engaging them. Otherwise for what good are they?
> So there is precedent for indictments for this particular crime
Sure, but boy does it seem like a Plan Z attempt by Democrats to get literally any kind of charge to stick to Trump after 7!!! years of trying. And this particular case is one that's been known about for pretty much that entire time but was shelved, probably because they know it's weak.
Indictment is an unfamiliar and intimidating word. In reality it begins a much more involved process and it doesn’t indicate guilt. It is most certainly not a verdict or a prelude to a sentence being handed down, as many people seem to believe judging by social media.
Even in the absolute worst case scenario for Trump (he loses and... has a massive fine? Is in jail for a bit?), this is a huge boost to Trump's campaign handed to him on a silver platter.
Honestly thats exactly what Democrats want too, as they would rather run against Trump than Desantis or a Never Trumper.
Yes... but it takes a global pandemic at exactly the right time. That doesn't change his support, but it does get people off the couch who might otherwise have decided that Both Sides Are Bad.
Other than that most news is Heads I Win Tails You Lose. Any publicity is good publicity when it puts you in front of cameras to cast aspersions on your opponents.
And now a lot more people won’t ignore him. Many will vote for him now since he represents a truly anti-government position having been made a prisoner of said government. I might vote for him now out of sympathy and newly acquired anti-regime sentiment.
Ignoring him and letting him yell at clouds. But they couldn’t help themselves. They’ve seen massive losses in the polls and figured they’d drag the guy out as they did ok last time against him. I think this will backfire though.
> Isn't this the kind of thinking they had back in 2015, which resulted in Trump winning?
No, I don’t think so. Trump was actually the weakest general election candidate of the major Republicans, what resulted in Trump winning was institutional power in the Democratic Party aligning betwern a candidate that was, equally clearly, the weakest general election candidate of the major Democratic contenders, and whose negatives were much firmer than Trump’s were as a relative political cipher.
Also, Democrats didn't get Trump nominated, a Republican nomination system designed to build sipport for the early leader by providing disproportional delegate majority’s to the magnitude of popular victory—a system designed to favor the pick of the institutional party and cut the knees of “insurgent” campaigns—did that, because the institutional powerbase couldn’t unite behind a candidate.
Were Trump to be nominated in 2024, he will face the same problem as in 2020—he won’t be running against Hillary Clinton.
> He ran against like 17 Republicans, including major political dynasties like the Bush's.
Yes, that was actually the problem for the establishment; establishment support was split between (early on, which is what matters most the way the system works by design); they didn't coalesce behind one candidate after Bush was largely written off for failing to connect with voters before the actual primaries began, establishment support was initially split between several candidates,
> I don’t agree, even when the large majority dropped out, all but one didn’t have a double digit polling percentage.
There is literally no point in time when that was true before May 3, when Cruz (the strongest opponent) dropped out because it was mathematically impossible for Trump not to win the nomination, and everyone stopped polling. (Heck, it wasn’t even true in the last major poll which was conducted almost entirely after that point [May 2-8].)
> Even that is miniscule. The 3rd R (when there were 3 remaining) had 6.5% at their peak…
> Trump remained the clear majority, maintaining a 75% majority until the end.
In the last pre-Super Tuesday poll, Kasich was polling at 9%, Rubio at 18%, Cruz at 20%, and Trump at 39%.
Trump’s absolute high point in polling – in that last major poll conducted, again, largely after he had mathematically secured the nomination, was 60%. In the same poll, the #3 Republican (Kasich) was at 13%, the #2 (Cruz) at 21%.
> I just don't think America likes dynasties or the political establishment. You can see it from grassroot campaigns like Reagan and Trump.
Exactly: For a time in that same election Bernie Sanders also managed to present himself like this. When he dropped out, a lot of people who were leaning towards Sanders flipped to Trump.
Obama had a similar message during his first presidential run, but pretty much ended up just being more of the same.
yeah, paying money to someone to keep them quiet isn’t necessarily illegal (i think.. a lawyer’s knowledge would be appreciated here), but trying to write it off as legal fees seems to be the issue. i imagine there are tax implications, as well as what pool of cash the money was paid from (i.e. if it was from campaign money). it’s impossible to say for certain what the exact issue is until the charges are revealed
The legal fee thing is a case of misdemeanor falsification of business records on its own.
The fact that it was done to cover up a second crime (breaking federal campaign finance law) arguably converts it to a felony according to New York state law.
But NY can’t charge for that felony. It’s an absurd combination and nothing like it has ever been brought.
It reeks of a targeted campaign, well because it is. It’s why the DA was elected and exactly what he said he would do. So that’s really not a good look, no matter who it’s against.
IANAL but I know that a lot of companies when they lay people off give them various "parachutes" in the form of money and included are anti-disparagement clauses, that if broken you have to return the money.
And a lot of settlement cases could be argued to do the same thing. Using campaign money to do it might be illegal. Again, not a lawyer.
And then there's the whole "a DA can indict a ham sandwich" notion.
I don't pretend to know how this is going to shake out, but I've got my popcorn.
It’s just so classless. Back in the day you just turned to a rich supporter and they wrote the check directly (Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush). No need to need to circumvent paperwork with Federal declarations on them.
All: please don't post low-substance and/or high-indignation and/or political battle comments to this thread, or any HN thread. We're trying for something else here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
This is on the front page because it's historically significant and intellectually interesting; so please comment if you have something to say that enhances those aspects. I know it's hard to detach from the passions of the moment, but that's kind of necessary for curious conversation*, so it's good practice.
Nearly the entire point of the United States at its founding was that the law should apply to political leaders. We are overdue for setting the precedent of a former President being charged with a crime, and we ought to go back and charge a few other former Presidents with crimes while we’re at it.
Meanwhile, adjacent to presidents, Henry Kissinger remains both alive and not charged in any international criminal courts. I think he's literally 99 years old now.
I don't think one NATO country can credibly threaten to invade another, so not really, no... But clearly the US did not sign up to the international criminal court / war crimes courts etc because they were worried about random US DoD personnel who killed civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan being hauled in front of the court. Somebody like Robert Bales for instance:
As he has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole the US takes the position that they want to prosecute such things within their own system.
Which is really why this international criminal court has no real meaning - only the winner in a conflict gets to also win in the court.
For example, do you really think that by charging putin, that he'd really get arrested in participating countries? Or would the warrant be ignored?
And if putin does lose his war, and goes into exile, the ICC warrants would then be possible to enforce (now that no nukes is on the line). But putin knows this, so if the war goes badly, would it not make better sense to fight it out to the bitter end, rather than lose out to being arrested if he goes on exile?
The court that has no enforcement mechanism is mostly just political show boating.
There is the slim possibility that if the war goes very badly a small group of very senior Russian generals arrange to capture Putin, depose him, put themselves in place as some sort of junta, remove russian ground forces from Ukraine, and hand him over to the ICC to repair Russia's relationship with the rest of the world.
Yeah, except the West isn't equal to the world and chances of Russian generals handing Putin to ICC are the same as US generals delivering Bush or Obama to the ICC.
This is misunderstanding how Russia works - Russia is not a military dictatorship, it's a security services dictatorship.
The Military in Russia is a low-status organisation and it is not capable of doing anyrhing in internal politics. They commonly end up on the recieving end of racketeering by low-level gangs. Yes, people that drive tanks and fire missiles pay 'taxes' to bandits armed with pistols.
Putin was sending generals to their deaths without worry.
Various internal police forces have a higher chance of removing FSB from power than the military does. If thongs get bad enough, thats not impossible.
You can say approximately the same about the Stalin's USSR when Beria was the most feared man. But just after Stalin's death Beria was promptly executed and the military played the major role in that.
The Hague invasion aspect, and Hague Invasion Act nickname, are perhaps largely symbolic; the less symbolic effects are that it prohibits any part of government in the US from assisting the ICC except in limited circumstances, and bans ICC agents from doing any investigative work in the US.
The US relationship with the ICC has been quite variable. The law was passed in 2002, though it does provide for specific exemptions for specifically-named foreigners. Likewise, in 2020, the US had executive orders outright freezing ICC officials' assets, sanctioning them with OFAC, and banning them and their family members from entering the US (these were removed in 2021). At other times, the US has been somewhat supportive, if not to the extent of modifying the law or recognizing the court.
I think it’s rare for individuals in extreme-stress jobs like the SoS position he held to live much past 70. I have to guess that everyone who cared about charging him thought that it would be a waste of time, energy, and money based on his age for the last 30 years.
Sure if there’s an actual crime, but what exactly is worthy of charging here? The point of a fair justice system is not to charge a specific someone with something, it’s to go after a specific crime.
The legal gymnastics this DA is jumping through to attach charges here makes a joke of the entire justice system. I won’t be surprise if Bragg is disbarred for this.
But… the charges haven’t been released yet? How do you already know they’re baseless?
Like, it’s crazy to me that anyone would assert that the charges are baseless or that they’re solid before the charges have even been announced. How do you know they’re baseless?
I agree that the number of charges doesn’t make a point one way or another, about the strength of the charges.
And yet, NYT is somehow allowed to speculate on what those are without knowing them. I am sure you will agree that the same should extent to mere posters here.
I’m not saying we can’t speculate about the charges. Was there anything in my question that indicated I thought people here should be prohibited from speculation?
I’m asking how someone can be absolutely certain in their speculation about those charges.
Is the NYT saying the charges are particularly strong, or are they saying the charges are particularly weak? I haven’t seen that from them, but if they are then I have the same questions.
I’m not holding anyone here to a higher level of scrutiny than the NYT. I merely asked where someone’s confidence came from.
I deny it. I said it was crazy to me, and I said it was wild. There are lots of things that are baffling to me, or inscrutable to me, that I don’t think should be prohibited.
But, like, no one has answered the question I asked. How did you become confident that the allegations are baseless without seeing the allegations? That’s crazy to me.
You’re welcome to do it. It’s a free country, after all. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s rational in some way I don’t understand, or just baseless and overstated speculation.
It seems inherently irrational to me to state the strength of the allegations before we’ve seen the allegations (either meritorious or without merit), but I’ve been wrong before.
So far no one has stepped up and offered an answer to that question though.
> The New York Times thinks this is a huge mistake.
“Is it a mistake” is an entirely different question from “are the charges meritorious”?
Personally, I think they should be the same question, but lots of people think he shouldn’t be indicted even if he committed a crime, or that he should be indicted even if he didn’t. I think both are wrong, and the only mistake is giving him special treatment. He should be charged if, and only if, the facts and law demonstrate that he broke the law.
So, for me “is it a mistake” is a question that we can only start to address once the indictment is unsealed (and fully resolve once evidence by both sides is presented).
It's not the fact its baseless, its the context around it. That's what's crazy.
Your irrationality comes from the fact, you are trying to ignore the context around it.
Braggs is case is being criticized heavily from the LEFT and the RIGHT.
It is unprecedented and to most of the world similar with banana republics and like reeks of a setup.
You got the New York Post, the New York Times, The Rolling Stone, ABC, Fortune, Slate, The Hill, NBC, National Review, Daily Beast, Politico and more saying this is a bad idea. Don't you wonder why people more familiar with politics who are democrats AND republicans than you think that is ?
So you make America look horrible in the face of
- your allies in the elite political circles
- your allies internationally
- your core base
All the while selling Trump on his ultimate brand as the "Rebel", of which he sells T-shirts off.
You cannot ignore the context around all of this, which weakens America significantly in already trying time as countries around the world are dropping the reserve currency USD and also belief in American Ideals.
Well, I’m not going to apologize for my belief that the rule of law should be based on the facts, the evidence, and the law and not politics.
Your appeal to the authorities of political figures falls on deaf ears for me. I do not give a single flying shit about the political calculus. That’s what makes it a banana republic decision. Nothing about the decision to charge or not charge should be based on politics. So, fuck the Democrats, fuck the Republicans, and fuck Politico. I don’t give a shit about any of their opinions.
Frankly, the appeal to people who know more “about politics” on this topic is anathema to me.
Show me the charges, show me the evidence, and show me the law. Everything else is for the birds.
What I understand from your take is that Trump shouldn't be indicted because that's a bad view for America.
Like... What? Rule of law is completely not considered, at all, Trump should be above the law because he's just too big of a popular figure. That's simply absurd to read.
> lots of people think he shouldn’t be indicted even if he committed a crime, or that he should be indicted even if he didn’t. I think both are wrong, and the only mistake is giving him special treatment. He should be charged if, and only if, the facts and law demonstrate that he broke the law.
You seem to be using "special treatment" differently between your sentences. Almost all crimes that get committed do not result in any indictments. Committing to indict if a law was broken is extremely unusual. Observing that a law was broken and then not indicting is the second-most-common case, behind only to failing to observe that a law was broken and then not indicting. Why is the normal case "special treatment" while the very rare case isn't?
- lots of people want to see Trump indicted come hell or high water. That's special treatment.
- lots of people think Trump shouldn't be indicted, even if he committed a crime, because he's a former President. That's special treatment.
- lots of people think Trump shouldn't be indicted, because it would inflame his base. That's special treatment.
Throw all of that out. Let's deal with the facts and the law.
If the prosecutor thinks they have enough evidence to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed a crime, then he should be charged.
If the prosecutor doesn't have the facts, or evidence, or law to support a charge beyond a reasonable doubt, then he shouldn't be charged.
Throw all the politics and "special reasoning" around Trump out. Charge based on the facts, evidence, and law. A declination even if the prosecutor thinks Trump is guilty, but they don't have the evidence to convince a jury isn't special treatment. That's—as you note—a routine declination. But a declination because you're afraid of the political ramifications of an indictment is wrong. Similarly, charging a weak case because you're afraid of the political ramifications of a declination is wrong.
> Throw all the politics and "special reasoning" around Trump out. Charge based on the facts, evidence, and law.
That is not done in other cases. Why is it not "special treatment" to do it to Trump?
> A declination even if the prosecutor thinks Trump is guilty, but they don't have the evidence to convince a jury isn't special treatment. That's—as you note—a routine declination.
That's not what I'm noting. Failing to prosecute is the ordinary case for almost all crimes. It is absolutely routine for nonviolent crimes. So we have a prosecutor that thinks that Donald Trump really is guilty of whatever the charge is, and it's easy to prove it in court.
And the same prosecutor also knows that everyone in the government within three levels of the president really is guilty of very similar crimes, and those would all also be easy to prove in court.
Then he charges Trump and moves on with his life. That's not special treatment?
I think your hypothetical would be partially special treatment, but I don't think your hypothetical is accurate.
The one way in which it _wouldn't_ be special treatment, is I generally think it's most appropriate to charge top-down. That is, let's say at a company you know three people were all involved in the commission of a crime (maybe embezzlement, that's a popular white collar crime): The CEO, a mid-level manager, and a low-level employee. Assuming all three cases are the same difficulty to charge, and each person has approximately equal responsibility for the criminal acts, but you only have the resources to charge a single case, then I'd think the CEO would be the most appropriate person to charge.
But, assuming the prosecutor _had_ the resources to charge everyone, and only chose to single out one person, then I'd agree that is inappropriate special treatment.
> And the same prosecutor also knows that everyone in the government within three levels of the president really is guilty of very similar crimes, and those would all also be easy to prove in court.
I just...don't think this part is true. Especially the part around "would all also be easy to prove in court." I don't think it's particularly likely that the prosecutor thinks that. Especially given that this is a NY state prosecution, so most people within three levels of the President probably wouldn't have a nexus to NY or be subject to NY state laws.
So, I mostly concede that your hypothetical would be special treatment, but your hypothetical doesn't strike me as particularly likely (note, that it's not impossible, and if you convinced me it was accurate, I'd say we should bring the other charges).
Well, the Grand Jury looked at them and the evidence and seemed to think there is a crime worthy of prosecution here.
That's why we have grand juries, to make sure a crime is truly serious before revealing in public the alleged crime.
In all due time, the charge will be public and we will see the evidence ourselves. The news event is that the prosecutors have crossed one of the major hurdles of a typical criminal court case and have convinced a grand jury to proceed.
While a Grand Jury should theoretically be a high bar to cross, it certainly seems like (in practice) they’re not so much of a challenge.
I’m also generally much more skeptical of state level pre-indictment processes which generally aren’t quite as buttoned down as federal pre-indictment processes (though, that’s a pretty broad generalization).
But, the indictments will come out soon, and the evidence supporting them eventually, so time will certainly tell.
A grand jury sat and apparently found charges to be warranted.
It’s funny, Republicans used to often wax in about the sanctity of the rule of law. For some reason, the entrancing powers of Mr. Trump led many to throw that away to stand behind the demagogue.
We should demand better. I live in New York. 2/4 most recent governors left office as part of a deal to avoid prosecution. Prominent legislative leaders were convicted and removed from office.
Regardless of party, there needs to be a standard. Breaking the law and laundering money to buy the silence of a sexual dalliance is a serious crime. Former NY Governor Spitzer was facing federal charges for money transfer violations of his own money to solicit an escort.
Mr Trump seeks to make this a political matter because that distracts from the heart of the matter — his actions. The people who in good faith donated to his campaign wanted to “make America great again”, not pay hush money to porn actresses.
That actually came from a case called ABSCAM in the 70s and 80s. ABSCAM was a case where the FBI ran a sting (or entrapment depending on your POV) that ensnared and convicted of bribery about 30 people, including a dozen politicians... a half dozen members of the house and a US Senator.
> Sure if there’s an actual crime, but what exactly is worth of charging here?
... because there is a law on the books that says "it's a crime to do this thing" and this person pretty clearly did that thing.
Like, from a political perspective, I'm in the boat of "uggggh, I wish it wasn't this thing that is the first thing he is charged for". But from a legal perspective ... this is a thing you're not allowed to do ... which he did ... so ...
I honestly wouldn't put any faith in a jury choosing to indict. As famously once said, you can convince a jury to indict a ham sandwich. I'm waiting to see what the charges actually are and the evidence for them.
(1985 quote)
> In a bid to make prosecutors more accountable for their actions, Chief Judge Sol Wachtler has proposed that the state scrap the grand jury system of bringing criminal indictments.
> Wachtler, who became the state’s top judge earlier this month, said district attorneys now have so much influence on grand juries that “by and large” they could get them to “indict a ham sandwich.”
I served on a grand jury. There were cases where we heard evidence and it became clear that the charged crimes didn't occur. Those cases were not voted on and the public never heard about them. The vote is a formal procedure _after_ the evidence has built a case.
The grand jury system is a bit of a joke. You've seen how badly prosecutors twist facts and inaccurately frame things during cases. The grand jury is basically that except without anyone disputing anything they say. Only the most inept prosecutors don't get the indictments they want.
It has a negative political impact upon his chosen party. The truth of the crimes are irrelevant. If Trump were to plead guilty — and given his notoriously stupid outbursts he may — it wouldn’t matter. Only party matters, not guilt or innocence.
Remember John Edwards, former Democratic nominee for vice-President, was essentially indicted for the same thing Trump is now, that is using political contributions as hush money. Edwards was facing 30 years for all the charges arraigned against him.
We still don't know the specifics or the extent of Trump's legal issues, as the Grand jury is still ongoing for this case and others.
Also of note is that Edwards was acquitted and the Biden justice department, the previous NY district attorney, and even Bragg himself previously, has already rejected going after Trump for FEC violations that are apparently at the heart of how he’s constructed a felony charge.
Perhaps he had some sort of defense. I hear that's how courts work. Along with dealing in findings of fact and law, rather than speculation about whether it's vaguely fair or vaguely unfair.
I'd imagine a billionaire who is also a former President of the United States also has the resources to muster a defense as effective as a non-billionaire former Senator, if there's an effective defense to be made.
It's the opposite, using personal funds is the crime because it should have been a disclosed campaign contribution. Trump also went through several extra steps of having his lawyer and CFO create shell companies and then funnel payments and kickbacks through them falsifying documents all along the way. I'm assuming the DA of a city can't bring FEC violation charges. The charges will be about all the lying and possibly tax evasion. Things his lawyer and CFO have already been convicted of.
His personal lawyer went to prison for 2 years on charges related to this crime, and was the primary witness against Trump in this Grand Jury investigation.
Whatever he told them, along with whatever other evidence was presented, it was sufficient for them to indict.
They had better have some pretty solid evidence aside from his testimony. Building a case around the word of a man convicted of perjury, especially one with a public hatred of the defendant, seems like a profoundly stupid thing to do.
I'll be waiting with my popcorn, because one way or another, this is gonna be good.
The relevant phrase in the Michael Cohen indictment referring to Trump was "unindicted co-conspirator". Individual one is how they referred to him. Trump was supposed to be featured much more prominently in the indictment, but the Barr's DOJ intervened on Trump's behalf to minimize his presence in the proceedings, and they went out of their way not to mention him.
A political prosecution isn't wrong per se. Many, many prosecutions are political at heart (as seen in "tough on crime", or even "reform a corrupt system" DA offices).
Even if it’s a conviction I hope the sentencing is appropriate. Wealthy men making sex workers wealthier in order to not disrupt their ostensibly conservative social values is pretty low on my own criminal punishment tier list (especially compared to something that happened during the presidency like the burglary of election-connected properties by Nixon, or more favourable to Clinton’s consensual acts vs his credibility destroying behaviour after). The social/civil consequences of the reveal are often good enough and mostly a pure self-own. If it really is about a misappropriation of some campaign funds/laws then sure I hope there’s an adequate punishment scaled to the crime.
It’s often difficult to disconnect the actual crimes from wanting Justice generally for a person’s net life behaviour… which isn’t how this works IRL nor how it should work. Whether other crimes and social taboos should be better enforced is another matter entirely.
34 charges for just record keeping must be a pretty serious lack of accounting. I’m looking forward to reading the full indictment to understand the details better.
> JOHN MILLER: I am told by my sources that this is 34 counts of falsification of business records, which is probably a lot of charges involving each document,, each thing that was submitted as a separate count and a couple of matters.
In the mean time, you can watch David Frum, he's one of the connected neocons that championed the invasion of Iraq. These are the people behind this strategy, so critically listening to his projections, will give you a good idea what this is all about. He seems okay with civil war, if that's the price you have to pay to defeat Trump.
Trump has a long, long, long history of illegal accounting incidents many of which he's gotten in trouble for in civil court. This is just the first time it's been in criminal court.
> No one has ever pointed to a charge that related to the payment itself that I’ve heard.
When the story rolled around the first time, people did indeed make the argument that the payment itself was illegal.
The campaign finance laws require expenditures that help your electoral chances to be declared as campaign expenditures.
They also prohibit declaring any expenditures that help you in your personal life.
This leads to the obviously terrible result that while you're campaigning for office, it's illegal to pay for anything that simultaneously helps you electorally ("the voters will never hear about my affair with a stripper!") and in your personal life ("my wife will never hear about my affair with a stripper!"). If you don't declare the campaign expense, you're violating the disclosure laws. If you do declare it, you're embezzling from the campaign.
The Feds specifically declined to prosecute for this.
It’s a very bizarre legal theory, and also I believe entirely untested and hugely problematic as you say.
Edwards used actual campaign donations to payoff his mistress to the tune of $1mm and they brought charges and he was found not guilty by the jury.
Here we have a long-standing “fixer” for Trump doing something he had always done and had a history of doing for Trump, with or without a campaign ongoing.
Calling it a campaign finance violation for a business partner to do the legal things that they always did is absurd on its face, besides the fact that such a law would put every politician everywhere in legal jeopardy, and yet surprisingly this theory seems to only be trotted out against Trump!
I don't think anyone has ever accused donald trump of 'ostensibly conservative' social values. Everyone who voted for him knew his behavior in these areas and voted for him despite it, not because of it.
I’m pretty sure that George Bush Jr. qualifies for way more charges solely based on the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. But no, hush payments to porn stars is a lot more important. Welcome to clown world!
Is it illegal for the president to lie to Congress and the American people? Other than that, the military adventures were authorized, and Bush was within his Constitutional power to prosecute those military adventures.
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”
Which is all fine and good until you go committing war crimes on foreign soil in regions that may not have proper legal frameworks. Committing war crimes in Iraq for instance. Which is kind of where the whole ICC thing comes into play - it's not really for like, speeding tickets. The US had the opportunity during development of the framework to engage and ensure all the other terms could be fairly met. Note that the text you quoted was also an amendment to what was meant to be a living document, albeit long since ossified.
The US did tried to do that, it was overruled which is why the Clinton administration voted no.
The US government is not allowed to participate or facilitate a criminal prosecution that would deny a US citizen their constitutional rights there has been a Supreme Court case about this already ironically in 1998 which was also one of the triggers for voting no.
On a side note the ICC is terrible, any party can bring up a case, there is no separation of duties, no defined scope and no right of appeal.
The ICC is nothing more than virtue signaling, and should never been established in its current form the world was just too high on its own supply of late 90’s hopium at that point to care.
>As of March 2023, 123 states are members of the Court.[3] Other states that have not become parties to the Rome Statute include India, Indonesia, and China.[3]
I looked into it more and while 7 voted against, 21 abstained so votes don't tell the whole picture. Between China, Indonesia, India and The US you're talking a major chunk of the world population.
They do not, self executing treaties become domestic laws, if these laws are not constitutional then the treaty is pretty much void.
And non self executing treaties are meaningless they pretty much mean that the US government promised something but it is not compelled to do anything about it and there is no mechanism that would require it to comply.
The US constitution is supreme it takes precedence over anything the legislative branch might legislate and any action the executive branch might take.
Alien tort is also not accepted when interpreting the constitution so you literally cannot interpret the constitution from the point of view of international or foreign laws.
> Treaties have an effect similar to a constitutional amendment.
They obviously do not. If they did, you could basically abolish the Constitution with one with only the presidency, a bare majority of the Senate, and the cooperation of a foreign power. An actual Constitutional amendment must meet a much, much higher bar.
Yes it can. And I know this, because it already happened (the US became a signatory in 2000, but repudiated any intent to ratify in 2002.)
Are there potential circumstances where the US Constitution might conflict with obligations under the Rome Statute? Maybe; that certainly fairly regularly happens in practice with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, but the US has signed and ratified that treaty.
> Not to mention finally becoming a signatory to the International Criminal Court.
We actually were a signatory (and one of the prime movers for regularizing the ad hoc processes which we had also been a prime mover for creating in Yugoslavia and Rwanda) of the Rome Statute under Clinton, though the signature was effectively withdrawn under Bush.
> His stories about George Washington, none of which I knew, are even more fascinating. Bueno de Mesquita claims, quite plausibly, that a huge part of George Washington’s motive for fighting the Revolutionary War was to protect his substantial, and critically placed, landholdings in the Ohio Valley.
> The Proclamation forbade all settlements west of a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains, which was delineated as an Indian Reserve.[2] Exclusion from the vast region of Trans-Appalachia created discontent between Britain and colonial land speculators and potential settlers. The proclamation and access to western lands was one of the first significant areas of dispute between Britain and the colonies and would become a contributing factor leading to the American Revolution.[3]
> British colonists and land speculators objected to the proclamation boundary since the British government had already assigned land grants to them. Including the wealthy owners of the Ohio company who protested the line to the governor of Virginia, as they had plans for settling the land to grow business.[15] Many settlements already existed beyond the proclamation line,[16] some of which had been temporarily evacuated during Pontiac's War, and there were many already granted land claims yet to be settled. For example, George Washington and his Virginia soldiers had been granted lands past the boundary. Prominent American colonials joined with the land speculators in Britain to lobby the government to move the line further west.
> [...] his story made me realize that a large part of my belief in GW is romantic: because I learned about him so early in life, that romantic view is harder to shake and I’ve been less willing to put GW under the public choice microscope than with any current or recent president.
> An excerpt about GW’s wealth:
>> His last position, just before becoming President, was President of the Patowmack Canal Company–the Potomac Canal, as we know it, from the Potomac River. What that canal did was bring, make it possible to bring produce from the Shenandoah Valley–which George owned–up to the port in Alexandria, which had been built by Lawrence, by the Ohio Valley Company, in which George had a direct interest, and shipped goods out. So it was a very profitable undertaking–or so he thought it would be, in the long run, for him. And that’s what motivated him. Most people think of Washington as–besides a great hero, which he certainly was–as kind of a gentleman farmer. Economists have estimated the worth in real dollars adjusted for inflation, not appreciated, of George Washington’s estate, in contemporary terms; and it’s about $20 billion dollars. He is by far the wealthiest President. He is the 59th wealthiest person in American history. Three of the American founding fathers are in the list of the top 100 wealthiest Americans in all of history: Hancock, who was wealthier than Washington–made his money smuggling; and Ben Franklin, who was not quite as wealthy, who made his money because he had a monopoly on the printing press. These are the folks who led the Revolution. Thes...
> Nearly the entire point of the United States at its founding was that the law should apply to political leaders.
I think that's overstated.
First of all, it was the Magna Carta which established that the king was not above the law, so in that sense the founding of the United States was more "and we don't need a king".
Second, there are frequently legal discussions in the present day as to whether a sitting president can be charged with a crime, so there is at least a substantial idea that there is some "sovereign immunity" (quotes because that's not what sovereign immunity refers to)
Third, the founders were also well aware of the threat of political motives for prosecutions and wanted to diminish them with various balance of power checks and balances.
This also happened before he was a sitting president, so all the stuff about “Bush Iraq war crimes” and “Nixon’s burglary” and similar historical presidential baggage is mostly irrelevant, at least in terms of new precedent.
The social/civil consequences of this sort of criminal indictment before election is enough to kill a presidential campaign and has enough times in history. As it should be.
This is behaviour before/after presidency when the stakes are far lower.
I almost wish HN had emoji reactions for comments. Upvote/downvote doesn't quite cut it when what this comment really needs is just an eyeroll emoji, possibly paired with "OK Boomer".
Just in case, I am hereby declaring my candidacy for the President of the United States for the upcoming election and all future elections in my lifetime.
Yes everything is different right now and all precedent and apprehensive reactions should be disregarded - aka what every single hysterical partisan in history has said.
Don’t worry… we’ll be okay whatever happens. It’s never as bad as what the FUD pushers wished would happen (“feared” would be the wrong word here).
In terms of tearing the country apart…I think you need to separate the nut jobs who idolize Trump from the right leaning folks who simply supported Trump mainly because he was on their side of the line and frankly not an elderly democrat who was a punchline before he became “The Alternative”.
The nut jobs will create problems, the others will complain but not act. Overall the others far outweigh the nut jobs.
I’m in the heart of Trump country and I guarantee the number trump flags flying and MAGA hat wearing ain’t what it used to be around me. I definitely don’t see the same levels of Trump adulation now.
Frankly even some hardcore supporters I know are tired of his shtick and lean DeSantis.
No sure what you fully mean here, but the 60s/70s, and the civil disobedience at the time, make all current stuff, BLM, the protests, seem tiny in comparison.
Trump is being indicted by a grand jury, not the DA. Half the people in his orbit have done time in prison for committing crimes that just happened to benefit him.
Trump is a fundamentally different player than Bush or Nixon. They were establishment in times the establishment wasn't nearly as hated as it is now.
This just plays to Trump's strength as the ultimate rebel.
In terms of game theory, this is a very different game than Nixon or Bush.
Trump annihilated the Bush Legacy, and is hated by both sides of the establishment.
Trump is part of "the establishment" himself. And that he can bullshit people like you into believing otherwise is part of his superpower as a lifelong pathologic liar.
Just to clarify. The King of the UK is above criminal law. The monarch of the UK cannot be arrested or charged with an offence, or be personally involved in criminal proceedings.
That is similar to the immunity given to the sitting US President. What is different is that monarch is not really expected to obey the law either. For example, the Prime Minister was fined for illegally not wearing a seatbelt. If the king didn’t wear a seatbelt, it would not be a big deal - the royal family freely ignore traffic laws (and more serious laws) without consequences. Queen Elizabeth did agree to start paying taxes, but there was never any suggestion that she be compelled to pay taxes, merely that it would be the right thing to do.
All good points. A small note though I believe the Queen started paying taxes in exchange for the state’s help rebuilding Windsor caste after the 92 fire. So seems more quid pro quo than something she felt was the right thing to do.
Still didn’t pay inheritance tax on her personal wealth though
There are also all the laws the monarch / monarch’s lawyers interfered with e.g. police can’t enter Sandringham Estate without an invite, leaseholders on the Duchy of Cornwall are excluded from buying their freehold
On the flip side... England did actually arrest, try and convict the King once. Also did the same to an ex-queen, in Lady Jane Grey. After first having un-queened her, which is also a thing that cannot be done.
The thing about Britain's constitutional arrangements is that there are many things which 'can't' be done, which it turns out simply 'aren't' done.
So very similar to the US then. It's not that an incoming Governor of the opposition party can't be stripped of executive power it's just that no one had done it until recently.
I mean, that's really true of any sort of law or political arrangement. They can all be broken or ignored. To mangle a quote, the law isn't power - power is power.
Sovereign immunity is a centuries-old doctrine dictating that the monarch cannot be prosecuted or subject to civil legal action under the law. Its origin lies in doctrine and convention, rather than statute, and there is no law setting out the rules underpinning the concept.
It stems partly from the medieval concept that the monarch is the source of justice, and can therefore do no wrong. It also relies on an argument that because the courts belong to the Queen she cannot be compelled to appear in them, since she would, in effect, be prosecuting herself.
Since at least 1800, the monarch has also had a legally distinct private persona, created to allow them to have independent wealth and property that could be inherited by their children. However, the lines between the two are somewhat blurred, and sovereign immunity has typically been interpreted to apply to both the public and private identities of the monarch.
That the king is above criminal law does not directly dispute the Magna Carta thread of this conversation.
We take it for granted now, but it was a beginning of constitutional order - king and government should follow certain laws and rules for how to run the country. And the UK is after all a constitutional monarchy, no longer at mercy to the whims of an autocratic monarch.
The only reason there are any discussions about whether a sitting president can be charged with a crime is because the USA elected an evil administration that was willing to seriously suggest and push that idea.
Nope. There is a constitutional argument that a sitting president should not get indicted. But for one thing that's not settled law in any form, nor is it based in "sovereign" powers, nor is it even an immunity. The constitution and the oath of office requires him/her to faithfully execute the laws. That means he can't be immune, he can't be above the law... And yes, the US constitution is beyond messed up. It just barely works well enough not to risk switching it up.
In Germany for example we have sort of an "updated" version, with lessons learned. But one thing I actually want changed is that members of parliament have actual real immunity. Not in the practical sense - immunity for individual members has historically always been waived by parliament at the slightest whiff of an investigation. But the example of Trump teaches us that it is a fallacy to trust in the decency of politicians and unwritten rules.
When it comes to Trump, people seem to be blind to the effects of soft power.
Trump is beloved by his base in a way no other president in the last 100 years is.
The danger of this half-assed prosecution to the republic is fucking enormous, I'm actually scared.
Trump's "base" doesn't particularly matter. They'll continue on in denial/spite regardless of what happens. The damage they themselves can do is limited, as long as we have functioning law enforcement.
The only way we're getting out of the larger situation is for Republicans and independents to realize that Trump is/was just another basic grifter capitalizing on frustration with the system. Just because someone is despised by the people at the country club doesn't mean they're your friend. While we're hungry for reform, this doesn't mean that every type of change is a step in the right direction. And despite the suffocating dynamic, there's actually a damn good reason we've come to expect that politicians should be a bit neutered. Ultimately true conservatism for the American status quo that we've come to take for granted, as much as it pains my past self to write that.
Trump’s base scares the hell out of DC for very good reason.
“Jan 6th but an actual insurrection with guns and political/military leaders”
Or
“Southwestern sheriff decides to expel illegal immigrants on his own, requests ‘MAGA patriots’ to come on down and get deputized, atrocities ensue, feds get involved and it spirals into a state vs federal fiasco (which sounds fanfic but Abbott and DeSantis are clearly sympathetic to the idea)”
I honestly think that the second scenario or at least another Malheur Wildlife Refuge/Waco style standoff is only a matter of time - and judging by DoJ’s public priorities, they’re extremely concerned about it as well.
There has been an 8-year witch hunt looking for a way to shut Trump down, with 10s of millions of dollars spent accessing and scrutinising his affairs looking for a legal attack vector. Likely no politician could have withstood that level of scrutiny without some sort of technically-illegal activity turning up.
A big part of the rule of law is treating people equally. Given the lead up, this is probably a question of selective persecution.
Meh, he's an ex-president. Of course indicting him is political. Not indicting him would be also political. It's not like there's a "non-political" Oracle that will tell us the most impartial course of action.
In a sense, any prosecution of a political figure can be considered political. But what's the alternative? Treating political figures as immune from criminal prosecution? What would that mean for the rule of law? And what would that mean for our expectations of our leadership -- who, if anything, should be held to a higher standard as model actors for our society and our children?
The alternative would be for prosecutors to focus their attention proportionally to `severity of crime * prior probability of guilt`. In an ideal world, you'd see Democratic prosecutors going after Democrats and Republicans going after Republicans just as often as the opposite. But I have no clue how to get from our current world to that world.
In the sense that they are trying to get him for things that they would never even consider charging a Democrat for, yes.
That doesn't mean he did or did not do something illegal. The difference is Hillary/etc. can't be prosecuted for anything.
How many campaign finance skeletons do you think most of the big politicians have in their closets that will never be investigated much less prosecuted?
At the very least we have to concede that investigation and likelihood of prosecution is proportional to the noise that is made in the media and by vocal voices. It's a thousand tiny little decisions that affect the direction on the aggregate.
I'm trying to keep this comment impartial. But I want to note that right now there is a huge belief that the media and companies and the wider "acceptable" social narrative are biased against a lot of the core beliefs that people on the right align to. I too hold that belief, and I've yet to see sufficient proof to convince me otherwise.
You combine these two wide points, and I'd argue that we should sympathize with those people and not call them "crazy conspiratists" for trying to shed light on this. It's actually a difficult to prove and isolate, second-order type of conclusion.
In the sense that a former president of the US was just indicted for the first time ever, yes, it's political. By definition, in fact.
However, to engage in a counterfactual: would I expect in the scenario that a different president not eligible for reelection were to generate the same fact pattern as Trump to also be indicted? Or another scenario: a politician who is eligible for reelection to a different lower office?
Yes, in both cases.
In other words, by virtue of Trump's position I think special care and thought was taken to make sure things are on the up and up. I think prosecutors are smart people and generally are aware and thoughtful about the position they are in. I do not think they are pursuing this issue with extra vigor because Trump is Trump.
From Trump v. Vance; Justice Alito in the dissenting opinion:
> ... And the district attorney should set out why he finds it necessary that the records be produced now as opposed to when the President leaves office. At argument, respondent’s counsel told us that his office’s concern is the expiration of the statute of limitations,11 but there are potential solutions to that problem. Even if New York law does not automatically suspend the statute of limitations for prosecuting a President until he leaves office,12 it may be possible to eliminate the problem by waiver.13 And if the prosecutor’s statute-of-limitations concerns relate to parties other than the President, he should be required to spell that out.
> ...
> 12: See N. Y. Crim. Proc. Law Ann. §30.10(4)(a) (West 2010) (statute tolled when defendant outside the jurisdiction); see also People v. Knobel, 94 N. Y. 2d 226, 230, 723 N. E. 2d 550, 552 (1999) (explaining New York rule for tolling the limitations period when a defendant is “continuously outside” the State and concluding that “all periods of a day or more that a nonresident defendant is out-of-State should be totaled and toll the Statute of Limitations”).
Many Americans see themselves as rebels. Funny thing is many of the most vociferous so-called rebels are nothing more than bullies and aggressors. People who already hold most of the power, and are "rebelling" only at the fact that their victims are starting to struggle a bit under their grip.
There's nothing "rebellious" about being a wealthy real estate baron and casino owner. And nothing "rebellious" about supporting him, either. It's rather, kind of the opposite.
Americans may consider themselves rebels, but they aren't. They talk a lot of shit about rebellion and watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants but still let corporations, police and government run roughshod all over them, and follow their party's propaganda line without question. A country with only two relevant political parties, more alike than not, and only one civil war in its history is not one rife with rebellion.
Americans are 100% rebels in comparison to many other countries.
They often take the contrarian position just because.
As a manager whose has to prep for international meetings, I can tell 100% there is major cultural divide.
I can't explain it, but I always have to gauge engineers going awol during a meeting with Asian partners.
Sorry, no, as a Canadian I've always been flabbergasted at the "smile and congratulate and comply" culture in American tech companies. Open criticism (and rebellion) to stupid ideas comes far quicker from Canadian and European colleagues.
As commenter poster alluded: a country with only two political parties, both of which are basically conformist on the same foreign policy and economic objectives... Where "conservatives" think anything left of Atilla the Hun is communism, so accept pathetic living conditions, corruption, and barbarous behaviour is A-OK.
Absolutely not a "rebellious country"; a country notorious for police brutality and individual acts of authoritarian violence.
Really more the tyrant than the rebel. Sorry you don't like the mirror I'm holding up.
This logic doesn't hold up. If he wins then they have to indict a sitting president and 9 years will have passed, and the "timing == political theater" seems even stronger. If they wait until he's out of office, it's 13 years.
If you treat your life as one big show, any accountability will seem like theater, but that doesn't mean you get to avoid it.
The vast majority of people understand this is 100% political theater.
Some just hope it takes him out of the running from 2024, but the truth is this probably empowers Trump to take 2024.
He's always sold him self as the ultimate "Rebel", and a half assed prosecution on something so minor to the grand scheme of things solidifies it. Human Nature 101 which seems to be something hackernews engineers don't understand as much as I'd like as a manager of many engineering teams.
I really don't understand how he drives his enemies to make so many basic mistakes, but he does.
I think it ensures he’ll be the nominee and also ensures he will lose the general if he doesn’t do a deal in the other indictments to drop out.
Your mistake is thinking a disastrous president that lost re-election somehow understands the modal voter. He doesn’t even understand the modal voter in swing states.
> At the same time there is a different dimension to jailing political leaders, which is why Nixon was pardoned.
Nixon was pardoned, but he also resigned and quit politics.
Political leaders are easy to replace, which means that the bar for replacing them should be low. If a leader is accused with crimes and the charges seem plausible enough, they are expected to resign to avoid a divisive trial. Similarly, unless the charges are particularly serious, the other side is expected to pardon the accused. Then the former leader is expected to quit politics and stop being a problem.
This all happens, because political leaders are supposed to care about national interests. Granting a disgraced leader a dignified exit and a chance for a peaceful retirement is often a good idea, as long as the former leader agrees to remain a former leader. On the other hand, pardoning active politicians is about as bad idea as anything can be. That way you get entitled leaders who consider themselves above the law.
It's kind of interesting because, according to a lot of other people (whether they are speaking factually or in an opinionated fashion), Trump has managed to avoid a lot of laws (inciting an insurrection, etc.). Why is this hush money thing the biggest law a Grand jury is able to stick on him? If he's supposedly guilty for so many other things, why is this all he's been indicted on the past few years? Genuinely asking. I really have no dog in this race/don't care, just find it interesting.
Considering we still regularly still do lie detector tests, dog searches, entrapments, confessions under duress or even torture, I would say we haven't changed as much as you think.
That was also an outrageous and silly charge and representative a failure of the legal system to live up to its ideals of process and fairness. It wasn't especially political though, because by and large there is consensus that being a gangster should be illegal and that Capone was probably a gangster.
Attempting to take a popular political figure out by blatant abuse of the legal abuse is a bit more concerning.
Popular political figures aren't above the law, they aren't special because they are popular. I don't believe that popularity should be in any way a consideration to put someone up for a trial after they break the law.
I'm reminded of a quote from Pirates of the Caribbean:
"One good deed does not excuse a man for a lifetime of wickedness!"
"But it seems enough to condemn him!"
Bit of a tautology, isn't it? I thought a crime was anything that it was OK to prosecute someone for.
The issue here is that people went looking for a crime for almost a decade, singling out Trump in a deranged crusade. Bush levelled entire countries. Obama put the foundations of the global spying apparatus in place. Biden might be on the verge of igniting WWIII with the policies of escalation that the US is employing.
Then in that background, there is speculation that Trump is going to be arrested for something related to Stormy Daniels after the levels of effort put in to pinning something on him. The people who feel that is appropriate can't serious. Based on what we've seen of the Trump saga so far, this is probably abuse of process. If that level of effort was put into another politician, they'd be in jail too.
Despite your disclaimers, this seems to be in bad faith given that “all they’ve got” implies he’ll never be indicted again. Also, Al Capone was indicted for what?
did he or did he not incite an insurrection on January 6th? there was an entire committee about it. he did, right? ok... so... not indicted, got it, moves slowly
did he have classified documents when he shouldn't have? yes. not indicted
did he do something wrong in regards to votes in georgia? yes. not indicted
i guess i just don't get it shrug it's as if like... based on the fact that he hasn't been indicted, you can conclude... he didn't do anything illegal, because if he did, he'd be indicted, right?
The remedy to his insurrection on January 6th was impeachment. He was impeached, and his jury found him not guilty. The jury in this case being the United States Senate.
Impeachment is a political process, not a legal process.
EDIT: To back this up, from Wikipedia:
In the United States, impeachment is a remedial rather than penal process,[13][14]: 8 intended to "effectively 'maintain constitutional government' by removing individuals unfit for office";[14]: 8 persons subject to impeachment and removal remain "liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law
No. These things take time. If you’re going to indict a former president who has declared that he is going to run again you need to be totally sure about your case. It’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove.
Does it suck that it’s taking so long? Of course. Unfortunately, that’s how the system works.
But all of the things you cite are "not indicted, yet". They're literally active investigations for all of those things.
At the federal level, Jack Smith is currently investigating the January 6th case, the related forgery of documents, and the classified documents. Since he's a special prosecutor if he declines to indict on the things in his remit he's required to file a report to Merrick Garland with his declination decision and reasoning. That hasn't happened yet.
Similarly for Georgia, a Special Grand Jury made a report recommending he be indicted. That then goes to a Grand Jury, which will make the decision on whether he be indicted. That Grand Jury hasn't sat yet, so that's also in process.
So, all of those things are in process. They haven't made a decision not to indict yet, so it's incorrect to draw conclusions assuming he won't be indicted for those things yet. It's too early to say, for each of the things you identified.
> did he or did he not incite an insurrection on January 6th? there was an entire committee about it. he did, right? ok... so... not indicted, got it, moves slowly
> did he do something wrong in regards to votes in georgia? yes. not indicted
Trump's lawyer there is fighting to avoid him being indicted (as you'd expect):
In a 483-page filing, Trump’s attorney Drew Findling urged a state court in Georgia to prohibit an Atlanta-area district attorney there from filing charges related to Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election.
The legal system is slow, but I think it's fair to say that in all these cases the legal teams are being very careful because bringing a case against a former President is unprecedented, and they want to be sure it is a good case.
> Why hasn't he been indicted of bigger/harsher crimes already?
I think that's a perfectly reasonable question. The basic answer I'd give is that the bigger/harsher a crime is the longer it takes to build as a case.
The bigger or harsher a crime is, it usually has more protections and requirements in order to prove. It takes longer to gather the relevant evidence, longer to put together a theory of the case, and longer to button everything down and present to a grand jury.
It's kind of like asking why it takes developers longer to build the biggest/coolest features in a video games. It's a lot more work!
This was also a question that came up quite frequently when the first Jan 6th defendants were charged. The first wave of defendants were charged with things like "trespassing" and other fairly mild charges. A lot of people were upset about that. But they just came first because they were much easier cases to proves and make. Eventually more serious charges such as "assault with a deadly weapon", "obstructing congress" and "seditious conspiracy" were later charged and convicted in front of a jury.
So, I generally wouldn't be surprised to see the easier/simpler cases come before more complicated cases. That's not to say that he will be charged with bigger/harsher crimes. Maybe the facts won't bear those cases out, and they won't be charged. But the ordering doesn't seem like it should be particularly surprising.
This is one of several cases against Trump that has advanced beyond the Grand Jury stage.
Potentially we could see several other indictments. Such as the Federal cases for the classified documents and the Georgia case for interfering with an election.
This is just the first one. Doesn’t have to be the last nor does it mean he is instantly ruled guilty and is going to prison or paying a fine. He will have his chance in court to make a case for his innocence in the face of these specific charges.
There are other investigations ongoing in other jurisdictions, including an investigation related to inciting the insurrection. Those investigations may likely lead to indictments from grand juries as well.
The United States has many local prosecutors that operate independently within their jurisdictions and are not bound to hold their charges in deference to some other charges that may be more serious coming later.
I get the impression that there's no explanation required for how all the forces of the most powerful government in the world and its intelligence agencies, which are the largest, best financed, and since 9/11 least restrained in the world can't prove the liberal claims of a vast array of crimes that a slightly stupid wrestling valet game show host who largely lived off branding agreements with real estate developers committed with the aid of a small network of self-serving d-list dipshits.
You’re talking about the 76-year-old WWE hall-of-famer who posted upwards of 200 tweets a day despite famously eschewing technology for paper and pencil. There’s nothing fake about this political figure. Or any others, for that matter.
> how all the forces of the most powerful government in the world and its intelligence agencies, which are the largest, best financed, and since 9/11 least restrained in the world can't prove the liberal claims
It's not the job of all those intelligence agencies to do that. This is a law and order question, which must be handled by the legal system, not the NSA and CIA.
Yeah it’s hard to look at something like the Rod Blagojevich saga and then look back at Trump and not immediately wonder what the hell is going on here.
They very clearly have the capability to coordinate the entire media apparatus, law enforcement, etc to cuff a sitting Governor and quickly send him to a federal pit and down the memory hole for essentially the exact same sort of quid pro quo that was underpinning the first Trump impeachment.
Trump isn’t Phoenix Wright, he’s only still a free man because the Blob either can’t come to a consensus on “Blago’ing” him - or else the constant “The walls are closing in on Drumpf THIS time” drama is serving a larger purpose.
A state governor doesn't have control or influence over federal law enforcement, nor do they get the cloud of ambiguity created by presidential immunity.
Because Trump has nearly religious following that scares many many people on the left and right.
They will do ANYTHING to stop him out of fear, anger, arrogance etc.
The problem here is Trump is an expert at reflection.
This HAS ALREADY empowered his base, and strengthened Ron Desantis.
I think the hardest part to accept is nearly half the nation DOES NOT AGREE with progressive principles at their very core.
The democratic nominee for President has won the popular vote in something like 7 of the last 8 presidential elections. A majority of Americans do have progressive principles, but America is a minority rule country at the moment.
When you consider population clusters in the big urban areas, your point is diluted a bit.
There's a reason we don't do popular vote; California and New York would pretty much pick the president every election.
Take a look at the geographic distribution of red v blue by county in the 2020 presidential election [1].
Relying on only the popular vote could devolve the country into a hunger games type dystopian hellscape where 90% of the country is controlled by a few dense urban clusters.
The US is a republic of states, not a democracy. We vote by electoral college, and not directly by the population, for a reason. The electoral college is weighted using both the House (population-weighted representation) and Senate (equal state representation) so the small states don't get ignored and controlled by the large states.
States are artificial, national elections should be ranked choice, or at worst simple majority vote.
Electoral college was a sop to slavers and should be deleted. It doesn't empower small states, it empowers large states which happen to be swing states.
On the other hand, if power in the US was as centralized at the time as you seem to suggest it should be, federal marshals would have simply enforced the escaped slaves act over abolitionist state's protests.
Returning escaped slaves was in the constitution itself (fugitive slave clause).
Founders’ intent is pretty irrelevant to today’s problems. They ran forced labor plantations, hadn’t mastered electricity or germ theory of disease, and the biggest city was ~30K people.
1 person = 1 vote, get rid of all the rural planter rigs.
"States" are a fiction. There are only people. So to translate what you wrote into on-the-ground reality: the senate exists to make sure that the people who live in states with small populations are not subject to the will of the majority of people in the country.
This is defensible, and I'm sure you would not balk at being called "anti-majoritarian", but lets be clear about what is going on.
Also, post-Civil War, this "we're a republic not a democracy" stuff really changed significantly. While it may have been absolutely true in 1776, it became much less true in the 1800s, and has continued to become even less so in the 1900s. It may have been better if the Constitution had been amended to reflect this (since it was happening anyway), but it's burying your head in the sand to pretend that the original conception is reality on the ground today.
We have state governments and different laws across states, and people move between states in part because of the effects those laws have on their lives. It is still very much a reality.
What we have is a heirarchy of laws, ranging from constitutional to federal to state to county to local. I think this is a great idea. But it doesn't mean that we're "just" a republic of states.
The disconnect here is that to many of us, it seems 100% rational that the majority of people (whether popular or representative) should pick the president. Not because of who people in cities tend to vote for, but because it makes no logical sense to allocate so much influence to so few people.
The universe doesn't owe unpopular ideas equal footing. People who don't like what cities think might feel like the odds are stacked against them in a popular contest. They are correct.
We don't give new chess players extra queens, either.
Republicans have won 8 out of the past 14 elections, and won the popular vote as well as the electoral college in six out of eight [1].
Or, looking at it another way, of the past 14 elections, republicans won the popular vote by an average of 7.42%, while democrats only won by 5.28%, which if you took that pointless cherry picked data seriously could convince you that on average republican candidates are significantly more popular than democrats.
The fact is, this country is split fairly evenly along the nonsensical left/right axis.
A more interesting evaluation would be along the authoritarian vs antiauthoritarian axis. I think a much larger percentage of Americans fall along the antiauthoritarian axis, and that the noise in the left/right false dichotomy is a result of that more than anything.
This is only true if you evaluate votes by district. Historically, the only thing Republicans love more than picking judges is gerrymandering districts.
If they didn't go to absurd lengths to chop up districts and make it harder for poor people to vote, it wouldn't even be a close fight.
If the question was "Would you support a strong leader who might make some unpopular decisions that would make America great again?", and a lot of people said yes, would call them anti-authoritarians or authoritarians?
"[Party A] is actively censoring speech that they don't agree with, calling it misinformation, even though their 'fact checkers' have shown strong political bias. Do you support this?"
and
"[Party B] wants to restrict your right to your body and self-ownership by limiting access to healthcare like abortion and gender affirming care for adults. Do you support this?"
These are the sorts of political "points" that both parties try to score. There are lots more examples.
What's the common theme?
There's an underlying message of "scary authoritarian government controlling me".
I think that most Americans, regardless of political party, have fairly strong antiauthoritarian leanings. I think both political parties attempt to exploit this in political messaging, but neither actually mean it.
By definition, a political party seeks power.
Of course, no one wants to point out their own power-seeking, so the only option is to point out your opponent's.
You're attempting to leverage the ambiguity in the word "censorship". Don't want to play.
The sort of authoritarian instincts I was thinking of involve things more like: incarceration camps for people with national origins in the wrong place, immigration policies denying entry to people from the wrong place, ignoring Constitutional separation between church & state to allow "just a little" theocratic bleed-through (imagine if the "church" in question was a mosque), using the army for law enforcement, outlawing more strikes by "critical workers", seeking to restrain the behavior of corporate persons (previously established as subject to the first amendment by SCOTUS) ... and we could go on. Basically, "fascism light" - nothing too horrible, just round one of Pastor Niemoller's famous anecdote.
Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton represent progressive principles? Hardly. Even Barack Obama, who opposed gay marriage when he ran for office was closer to being a Republican than a Progressive in his political rhetoric (though he is clearly a progressive at heart).
> Even Barack Obama, who opposed gay marriage when he ran for office
Wasn't that just a political play? Given that America as a society at large is pretty conservative, even within the Democrats base, pandering to opposing gay marriage gives a net positive voting.
Whether it matters that it was a political play aside, I guess I really don’t believe it was. Maybe there is some presidential historian who has dug into the documents, I’m just going on vibes I remember from the time.
Al Gore at least seemed to have some progressive appeal on the environmentalism front, but yes, as a non-American that was exactly my thought - there's been no real indication from federal elections in the US in recent decades at least that very many Americans could be considered genuinely progressive in their political leaning. Pretty much all the Democrats supported policies that would be considered quite conservative (or downright regressive) in many other Western nations.
None of which has anything much to do with my dismay that Trump still has the support he does.
Those facts don't support your conclusion. The popular vote is not even close to "a majority of Americans". Something like 120 million American adults didn't even vote in 2016, versus around 66 and 63 million who voted for Clinton and Trump respectively. Clinton winning would still have been "minority rule" by this measure.
Also, broadly speaking, being progressive means wanting change and being conservative means being more comfortable with the status quo. It seems obvious that of the 120 million people who weren’t motivated to vote, more of those would be latent conservatives. Or at least, it’s very hard to see a progressive majority in there.
> It seems obvious that of the 120 million people who weren’t motivated to vote
Could be true, but it's certainly not "obvious". There are myriad reasons (especially in the USA) why people might not vote that nothing to do with their political opinions (ideology or intensity). I am sure that a significant number of the 120 million non-voters were "not motivated", but not all of them. And of the "not motivated", it is hard to know the real reasons why and what it means. Some of them, for example, would never vote, regardless of who ran or what the platforms were. Maybe some of them would vote for radical progressive if there was one with credible chance of winning. Maybe some of them would vote for a blatantly Mussolini-inspired candidate. Either way, it isn't obvious that motivation was the reason to not vote for all of them and it certainly isn't clear that they are more likely to be "latent conservatives".
You’re right, it’s not obvious. And perhaps to strengthen your point, countries with compulsory voting (e.g. Australia) don’t seem to show any particular skew.
Regarding the original point, Pew published some interesting stats on voter preferences:
The Pew study is interesting, but I feel that it's whole approach manages to elide the more important question of what specific policies a majority of the population would support. It is clear (in general, and in the Pew report) that there are many policies that both the "progressive left" and "conservative right" will never agree on. But it is less clear what might be the support for policies like e.g. government industrial policy involving investment in US-based businesses which can be spun either way but are generally "populist".
Alas, we appear unlikely to find out, since no presidential/senate candidate is going to do anything truly populist with economic policy for fear of pissing off the big donors.
Yes, that’s the big unknown. It’s hard for any sort of anti-establishment populist to emerge. Trump is an example of this: he basically ran against both parties, was rendered ineffective, and they haven’t stopped trying to bury him. Ross Perot, Ron Paul & Bernie Sanders covered similar ground (albeit from different angles) and hit the same wall.
According to Pew, the wall they ran into is that their policies are not popular enough.
But anyway, I do not consider Trump as having been rendered ineffective, and he certainly isn't buried.
More centrally, there's no obligation of those with the (literal or metaphorical) printing presses to spread the good word Our Favorite Populist of the moment. In the USA, we ceded control of "the press" to the private sector, without any expectation that they would ever act against the interests of their owners. There's no reason why any multi-(m|b)illion corporation is ever going to champion Bernie Sander's policies. On the other hand, Trump's policies (from day one) were just fine for the largest news organization on the planet, precisely because they were never threatening to the status quo.
If people actually want to hear populist policies, they're going to have to pay attention to something other than corporate owned media, regardless of its nominal political orientation.
We don't have a popular vote for President. Candidates, campaigns, and voters would all behave differently if we did.
It's like if your baseball team lost a game and saying "yeah, but they had the fewest batters struck out!" OK... but that's not how the winner is determined, and both teams would have played differently if it were. We can't know what the outcome would have been, in that case.
your comment has nothing to do with the topic we were discussing. The person I replied to made a comment about what a majority of people in America believe.
> They will do ANYTHING to stop him out of fear, anger, arrogance etc
ANYTHING, eh? Please tell me, what did they do? Trump won an election (thanks to the mechanics of the Electoral College), he served as president, he passed laws (some of which the courts overturned, as happens with most presidents), he handed out pardons (some wise, some not), and then he lost an election.
What is this "ANYTHING" that has been done to stop him?
Agree, and let's reverse it. Trump will do ANYTHING to stay in power, including the incitement of a violent coup attempt where they were chanting to hang his own VP!
Time, juridiction, and witness cooperation lined up for this one.
The alleged crime happened 8 years ago by now. Some more recent misdeeds might still yield more indictments.
The jurisdiction is New York state, where Trump's status as former president is irrelevant (unlike insurrection related issues, which I guess are federal, and therefore for which his status as sitting president would've made impeachment the remedy rather than criminal prosecution).
There is a cooperating witness spilling the beans on this one. On his mini coup attempt, maybe they were a bit better at containing associates.
The most interesting aspect to this indictment is that, until now, there’s been a clear reluctance to go all the way on nailing Trump for the sort of extremely common crimes that many of our wonderful politicians/wealthy engage in on a regular basis.
It’s why they didn’t stick him on emoluments, nepotism, tax dodging - even “improperly storing classified documents” somehow turned out to be a brush too broad.
So now Alvin Bragg is (supposedly) indicting him for campaign finance violations. Okay. He’s probably guilty. But both Obama and Hillary paid fines for the exact same crime. So did John Edwards, for a VERY similar situation to the Stormy Daniels thing iirc.
This isn’t whataboutism - my point is that, if this indictment goes forward with the rumored rationale, every single politician will now have to watch their ass on campaign funds for the foreseeable future lest the opposing party find out.
That’s a good thing for America and a very obnoxious thing for the entire political class. I suspect Alvin Bragg is getting many angry phone calls tonight from folks who would otherwise like to fire Trump into the sun.
The Obama comparison doesn't hold water. Those were civil penalties for time to report donations. Trump is being charged criminally with felonies for intentionally hiding hush money payments in legal payments from the campaign (although we don't know what all the charges are yet).
Criminal impunity for political elites backstops their entire racket: laundering hard bribes into soft, insider trading and so on. They've blocked T•••• prosecution for things like the coup because federal law enforcement report to them, and they're wedded to the immunity. Only the most egregious get prosecuted, e.g. the Congressman insider-trading on the phone in the background of a public T•••• event.
The most malevolent things he did were political and while in office. As anti-Trump as I am though, the clock ran out on that and the remedy (conviction of impeachment) was never completed. In that sense, that chapter is closed and now we move to all the other stuff.
Prosecutors in their respective jurisdictions should look for crimes and prosecute if they see malfeasance. In the case of NY, these are the charges that were at the top of the priority list for that one prosecutor. Multiple other prosecutors are looking at crimes in other jurisdictions and I would expect Trump to be facing charges in at least 2 and maybe 3 or 4 courtrooms on entirely independent indictments.
You nailed it. There's nothing on him so they have to grasp at straws.
Or, like other commenters mentioned, it's an intentional move by dems to increase his popularity (in the hopes that he'll be easier to beat in 2024)
To make this claim you have to argue that the indictment is illegitimate. And I suppose there are a lot of people who will make that claim.
Presumably the reason Obama, Bush and Clinton won't be charged with crimes is that there isn't enough evidence that they committed any crimes for a prosecutor to seek an indictment.
Agreed. We haven't seen the indictment yet, so it's not really possible to opine on its legitimacy. A lot of people are jumping to conclusions without evidence.
The NY Times called the case an "untested legal theory" and said "it is not easy to point to a direct precedent for the case Mr. Bragg appears to be contemplating".
IMO any case made against a DA's political opponents should rest on solid ground, not untested legal theories.
It's disturbing that so many people are willing to throw away the legal system in order to prosecute someone they don't like.
> The NY Times called the case an "untested legal theory" and said "it is not easy to point to a direct precedent for the case Mr. Bragg appears to be contemplating".
> IMO any case made against a DA's political opponents should rest on solid ground, not untested legal theories.
Exactly. It's an even bigger violation of the principle that "the law should apply to political leaders" to abuse the law in order to prosecute one.
I'm no fan of Trump, but any case against him should be strong, not something so weird that an acrobat would have trouble jumping through all the hoops. Unfortunately, Trump broke America, including his opponents, and now they're out for blood and are willing to go as low or even lower than him to get it.
It seems like you're pretty upset about this, so maybe not the best time to discuss. But anyway my only point is that whoever is angry at Bragg about this must feel that the indictment is illegitimate, that's all.
Hey - can you please not break the site guidelines like this? We ban accounts that do that, regardless of their politics. If you'd be willing to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html you'll see that we don't have much choice about this.
Edit: it turns out you've been doing this a ton, unfortunately. I don't want to ban you for this in the current thread because people will just assume it was for partisan reasons, which it isn't. But if you don't start using HN in the intended spirit, we're going to end up having to.
If they don't serve a day in prison does it matter or is it just fodder for the masses?
Plenty of governors have been put in prison but an ex-president is going to have secret service, even in prison?
This is a crime another person served time for so it's definitely a crime worthy of prison but of all the crimes, this is so damn stupid in comparison.
I'd settle for CEOs and Bankers going to prison for all the crimes they have gotten away with on a daily basis than even one president as despised as they are.
Yes. I’m pretty sure Obama should have to answer for the drone executions he ordered (some which were even American citizens, which seems very illegal).
I wonder if all the innocent people killed in the US's overseas wars will get justice or their families get reparations. There seems like such a long list of justice that has yet to be delivered that makes me ponder if this is the beginning of an avalanche of change or just a small bump on a slow moving boulder. If its the former, that bodes really well for humanity but if its the latter then I am not sure how much this event will do to slow the continued erosion of institutions here and worldwide.
While it would be great to actually charge former US presidents for what they've done (Bush and Obama war crimes anyone?), politically motivated selective prosecutions are extremely corrosive. And that's what campaign finance charges (not specifically Trump ones) look like to this non-American.
Honestly, what the US campaign financing system needs is a full overhaul, its full of legal and illegal-but-ignored corruption.
The opposite — the US constitution is more like a slaver bill of rights, rife with plantation oligarch backdoors. The checks and balances are akin to NBA owners negotiating how not to ruin each other. Those rights originally were only extended to white men formally, and only rich white men in effect.
That would be great, if it was a relevant crime. Which is there is plenty in need of investigation among US politicians. This is a big show about an ex-President stealing the Whitehouse pencils
People are flagging you but seriously, if you pay attention to state and level GOP politics, the legislative priority of all things is... Banning drag queens? And books that mention anything besides white/cis/straight experiences? Railing against ESG funds? These are the most pressing issues the base think needs to be addressed?
I think these GOP efforts inflict real harm, but the top-priotity obsession against trans people is so strange to me, especially when trans people are a tiny fraction of the whole population.
What happened to being the party of free speech?
I am serious, if someone honestly can explain the GOPs enacted platform outside of being "anti-woke" I'd be interested to hear it. I don't see a vision, I see the mob culture war politics they claim they fighting.
But seriously, taking an HN viewpoint, the GOP has stopped looking at any data other than polls a long time ago (and has only accelerated that trend over time). And real harm is being done to people in the meanwhile.
I think it sets a good precedent. If indicting past presidents (and vice presidents) for crimes committed while in office (or while running for office), well, the courts are going to be busy on this front for years to come. Bush and Cheney are certainly candidates, r.e. those "Saddam has an active WMD program" claims. The list could be expanded to include charges related to the unConstitutional domestic spying programs, the assassination of an American citizen without due process, the kickbacks from foreign countries in the form of jobs for family members, the lack of prosecutorial effort regarding the 2008 subprime fraud situation... and just imagine if these prosecutorial standards were also applied to the House and Senate? The perp walk would stretch around the block.
I think the reason this indictment is tolerated is precisely due to it not being about any of those things. Anyone who wants to be President will be comfortable doing all the things you list, and probably worse we don't know about, but they are also generally savvy enough to keep their non-political crimes plausibly deniable. So, go after Trump specifically when he wasn't able to do that much.
100% even if Clinton had done something similar with his sex stuff and got charged that doesn’t mean Bush/Cheney would have been more likely to be held legally accountable. Especially at a time when it mattered.
Exactly. I also guarantee you that this 2011 prosecution was of remote interest and wasn't raced to the top of HN at the time and even if it was posted it would be either ignored, or flagged to oblivion as it is off-topic.
Furthermore, I don't see how is this whole thread is related to 'Hacker News', or where this is 'intellectually interesting' as it is already reported in the news.
It is only for pure politics and a degraded comments section with flamebait.
The “how is this related to HN?” is the most boring category of comment on HN. If it wasn’t of interest to our demo and was mostly producing flamewars it would be quickly flagged off the frontpage.
We don’t need heavy handed moderation to determine what’s relevant to HN, like Reddit pretends it needs. The community does a good job and the mods step in when necessary.
And if HN occasionally doesn’t flag stuff and it bothers you then don’t click on it. We don’t always get it right.
And more importantly, that's not what Trump was indicted for. Indicting him for misusing campaign funds would be straight-forward, if they could prove it.
So the fact that they indicted him for something else seems to show that they couldn't prove he misused campaign funds. They actually indicted him for recording a payment to his lawyer as "legal expenses", because it was allegedly used to pay for Stormy Daniels silence.
What I don't understand is why this is different from the many other cases when people and companies pay to settle claims in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. Those are usually considered legal expenses.
And yet the media has been explaining it for weeks. I guess I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, assuming that they have sources and aren't just making it up.
It doesn’t mention any specific charges or the evidence to support them.
This is one of the first paragraphs from your link!
“ The indictment has been filed under seal and will be announced in the coming days. The charges are not publicly known at this time, one source told CNN.”
If, somehow, Bush and Cheney are even considered for an investigation, I will gladly support Bragg's effort. That said, can you give me a rough estimate of a chance of that happening in the next decade?
edit: I missed the DA of Manhattan part so the comment below no longer applies, but I decided to keep it unaltered since we seem to be forgetting history rather quick.
<< On what grounds would the DA of Manhattan have for prosecuting Bush and Cheney?
Is it a real question?
On the off chance it is a real question, I am going to open with Iraq war, associated war crimes[1] and go from there[2] to people who wrote about it rather extensively and have some knowledge of the subject[3].
I am starting to think that there is wisdom in just waiting. Clearly, you can do anything if you let just enough time pass.
I was being cheeky, sorry. To make my point directly, I think you get that it's the DA's job to prosecute crimes in his district. The year is 2023, and before him he has details of a crime. It doesn't matter that some other crime at some other time in the past wasn't prosecuted by some other prosecutor. It was never on Bragg to do so. The decision to prosecute this crime must be based on the evidence. It cannot be based on who Trump is, and whether other people who held his position were prosecuted for other unrelated things.
This has nothing to do about forgetting history, I lived through it and was calling for Bush to be prosecuted then. It's so weird to me that the people today who are saying "Well what about Bush!!" are mostly those who voted for him twice, at least in my circles.
No worries. It is a charged subject at it is very easy misinterpret posts.
I absolutely agree with you in terms of principles as they should be executed ( no one is untouchable ). I actually agree on the DA part too ( you are responsible for the area you are responsible for ).
However, between limited resources ( we only have X amount of time and money ) and high visibility investigation target that does have resources ( unlike most people in US, can fight back in regular court and in court of public opinion ), it is simply a bad idea to go for a relatively minor charge ( although I suppose we will know more come Tuesday ). The benefit to society is questionable. And DA has to prioritize.
So real question is why he did prioritize this case if that benefit is not entirely clear? And that is the problem I have with this. If the benefit in fact is 'we got him, because we just know he did SOMETHING', that in itself is problematic. It does not reinforce the 'justice is blind' belief. It does the exact opposite.
This is relevant, because, and this is very much a personal opinion, I am worried about where we stand as a society. The general trust in existing structures is already low. I can't reasonably argue this action adds to trust in those structures. In fact, I personally would argue that it does the opposite AND manages to play into existing narrative used by Trump himself ( 'system is rigged' ).
<< It's so weird to me that the people today who are saying "Well what about Bush!!" are mostly those who voted for him twice, at least in my circles.
I am admittedly a little weird in terms of US political landscape, but then I come from EU ( at the time I left, old country had a bunch of small parties, but that has been consolidating lately like in US ).
I don't want to add my voting history into the mix, but I can openly admit I never voted for either Bush, but I could be an outlier here. I just.. would like the rules to be applied uniformly ( and based on your argument, I get the feeling you want the same ).
<< The year is 2023, and before him he has details of a crime.
We go back to the priorities question. Should just about any charge be prosecuted? Would you accept jaywalking? How about public urination?
It is a practical question. Trump is a (1)former president AND (2)current presidential candidate AND a (3)likely presumptive nominee given point#1.
Is that crime worthy of indictment? It is a crime, but is it.. bad enough to make it worth DA's time and money.
And this is how we get to this particular indictment.
Is it bad enough? Public opinion already weighed on it once based on the available leaks so the case better be ironclad.
Like I said. Priorities and the reality of the situation.
edit: I decided to add something I don't typically do here ( add a jokey youtube video mildly aligned with my stance[1] ). It is annoying how well they capture the lines of tension.
Certainly, Bush and Cheney invaded a country under false pretenses after lying to the public. They also set up a surveillance state with the help of major corporations. And, maybe not so much of a crime, they set us on the path of thinking that deficits don't matter in this country: so for their increases in spending they steadfastly lowered taxes. And the bank bailouts....
The unfortunate matter though is the damage they did to this country was fairly bipartisan, which I believe plays a large part in Bush's rehabilitation in the public image after leaving office. At least he didn't make mean jokes like some people.
Also consider the following quote from the Congressional Research Service about how the Senate chooses to place folks under oath:
> By statute, any Senator is authorized to administer the oath to a witness (2 U.S.C. 191). Committee rules commonly allow testimony under oath at the discretion of a committee’s leaders. (In practice, most committees rarely require witnesses to testify under oath at legislative hearings. Sworn testimony is more common at investigative hearings and confirmation hearings.)
Now, the NSA's lawyers absolutely _did_ lie under oath to the Supreme Court.
What happened because of that? Absolutely fuckall.
So, even if Clapper was testifying under oath, I'd expect absolutely nothing would have happened. (Don't forget that this is mostly the same Congress that gave every telecom company that (very, _very_ much illegally) permitted NSA warrantless access to their phone and data networks _retroactive_ immunity from prosecution.)
> It was impossible for him to do so because he was never testifying under oath.
To make my position on this clear, it absolutely _should_ be standard practice for folks testifying on matters in front of Congress to be sworn in and give testimony under oath.
The fact that it's actually very uncommon ("It's not done because our Honored Guests might think that we're impugning their honor and integrity!" is more or less the excuse I've heard for not doing it.) says (to me) quite enough about how disinterested Congress is in justice and integrity.
I think receiving testimony from people not under oath has its place too. When they are testifying under oath, they must be much more careful about what they say. Even to the point of saying almost nothing at all if they're not totally certain which is often the case. This even applies to those who aren't actually trying to lie in any way (many recommend to never talk to police and especially not the FBI without a lawyer present under any circumstances after all). Consider if the members of Congress and the Senate were forced to take an oath before they stood up to debate. Would there be any debate at all?
That said I do agree that _more_ testimony should be made under oath and that we should in general consider testimony not under oath is much more suspect. But I don't think there is a generally correct approach here.
I've had trouble finding the exact quote, but one of the Obama administration's justifications for not pursuing the abuses of the Bush administration was the precedent it would establish. As I recall, there was some worry that this would establish a norm where every outgoing administration could be targeted.
if anyones wondering why an indictment might not have charges announced, its generally because the prosecution is working to limit the ability of the defendant to influence the court of public appeal before the trial. The prosecution is certainly versed in former president Trumps histrionic theatricality.
There was a busy front page thread for each of Obama's election wins, Trump's First, and Biden's win. There were numerous busy threads on the Obama campaign's use of technology leading up to his first election. I'd say it's working out okay ~15 years into the experiment of unkilling certain historically significant political threads.
There are usually a few threads discussing major or controversial political news. Dang is good about collapsing them and keeping things isolated there. It is pretty easy to avoid these threads and they fall off the front page quickly. I don’t think they add much to HN, but I like to skim them as this community’s take is the least biased.
Wikimedia maintains a world news section [0] that is well linked to the context. Hacker News is not optimized to provide the prerequisite context for a topic like this. Topics like these attract bikeshedding value statements rather than extended breakdowns of topics and links to primary sources.
It is isn't it? However, it seems that someone wants outrage. If it was a different political person, it wouldn't be on the front page.
The admission here is that the only reason why this was upvoted or on the front page is because the only good news is Trump schadenfreude and the opportunity for launching cheap attacks here.
The only 'bad news' is any good news that benefits Trump. (Which never makes it on top on HN anyway, and it shouldn't and vice versa because it is pure politics and creates a complete mess of the comments and dang knows it.)
Just look at the wave of flagged comments everywhere in this thread. It tells use that there is good reason why such news like this should not be on top of this page. (It is not intellectually interesting, it is partisan and a heavily divisive flame-bait topic.)
The unfortunate thing is that many people do look at this article as a political piece. That it is, but it is also a piece of news that carries with it significant impact to our judicial system. It is an unprecedented case. Surely its novelty alone qualifies it for HN readers, much less its complexity or implications. Whether looking at it as a political piece, or a curiosity, that is a choice.
Have to agree. I don't read extremist right- (or left-) wing websites, so HN is really my only exposure to how some of these people think. It's not a good look.
If it's discussions about how X person is bad and Y person is good, then I would agree (even if I dislike X and like Y). If it's a meta discussion about the judicial process or such, then I would disagree.
Edit: The comments above yours (at the time of writing) are mostly okay, but as I read further down, it ventures into the territory of 'such and such person and party is bad' which I think HN is not a good place for that kind of discord.
Europe isn't any different, just the things being argued about.
But no, back in those days this board was absolutely dominated by ancaps and other libertarian types. The socialists and other progressives only really started getting active in the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street. Like any other causeheads, they tirelessly fill these boards with their messaging. The only thing that they really come together to agree on is "fuck the poor". You see it whenever posts about homelessness, zoning or rent regulation pop up.
Lectures are fun though. At least here in the United States, we're so serious about bigotry that even a statement that can be misinterpreted will destroy your career. Then Europeans deride us for being a divided, racist country...meanwhile all across Europe you have major political parties getting large double digit percentages of the vote running on hateful anti-immigrant platforms, major political candidates pulling stunts like burning the Quran as a party demonstration and football players getting racist expletives shouted at them during their matches. And we haven't started talking about Asia yet. That gets even more special.
So please, tell me more about how this is limited to the United States.
The problem is that people draw the related/unrelated line very differently. The site mandate is intellectual curiosity, not political battle—but that still leaves quite a few stories with political overlap. If you look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html you'll see the phrase "interesting new phenomenon". The current story surely qualifies as that.
It's an interesting phenomenon which is perfectly fine for intellectual curiosity, and there are plenty of comments in this thread relating to it that way. And of course there are also plenty of commenters bashing each other with partisan clubs. In that sense you are right. You're exaggerating the bias in the thread, though. For example the top subthread says "looks like a weak case" and was heavily upvoted.
Is it weird that I don't care? When he was in office he drove me insane. Now I really couldn't be bothered. I think I'm desensitized to... politics, or justice, or something.
No i think this is a reasonable response. I’ve completely checked out of politics as well after 4 years of trump and two years of a continued culture war.
They need to start ignoring the leading GOP candidate who actively conspired to overthrow the election and just received a criminal indictment -- a first ever in this nation's history?
No. When Trump was in power, he mattered and his nonsense had real consequences, and he had a presence on all of the major social media platforms, and people willing to take violence to the streets for him. Now he's shrieking in all caps in his little corner of the internet and making deranged threats about "consequences" if he's arrested and... almost no one seems to care. He's no longer leader of the free world, he's just a rich, corrupt asshole shrieking into the void and shilling NFTs.
There are worse things coming down the pipeline than Trump anyway, it seems he was just a trial balloon for the fascist era we're heading into. I just wish he'd go away already.
I want the next Trump to know they're not above the law. This indictment is good practice for our system. Trump caught it off guard because so much ran on tradition and the assumption that presidents think the constitution is rad because they pledge to protect it.
Unfortunately the playbook of these types is to "flood the zone" with so much stuff that you get desensitized / give up on trying to figure out what's true and what matters.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 409 ms ] threadLocally, when they called the election for Biden there were spontaneous celebrations in the streets of my local city. People seem to forget just how extreme those years were and how they felt.
(It's also possible to dispute various actions, including HN mods disabling/overriding flags, if you feel that the decision was ill-founded, in the same manner.)
Moderation didn't see it until someone told us about it and then we put it back on the front page.
He'll probably have a video out on this soon.
edit: I can't reply, so...
Specific criticisms, please? The link is to a video with a Canadian lawyer and someone who might actually have a relevant opinion on US law who, several minutes in, can only seem to broadly and mockingly dismiss him without saying anything specific other than accuse him of being biased and mock him for crying. Biased is not the same as wrong.
edit 2: Specific as in: what has he been wrong about?
Edit-You can even pay them to disagree with each other. And! People do this all the time!
For very fresh comments (<1 minute?) you need to go to the comment page by clicking on its time to get a reply box. (Honestly not sure what that's trying to achieve: it's not like one considered the comment for longer before loading up keyboard_warrior.exe just because the comment existed for longer at the moment one loaded the page.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRbRdE2pGv0
Because if he doesn't relinquish it the other branches will remove him anyway, as was imminent with Nixon. Trump wasn't convicted by the Senate, but his butt was still kicked out of the White House on Inauguration Day. American democracy isn't fantastic but it's still a long way from the President having absolute control.
"They will double down if we try to punish them." is a hollow argument that could be used to justify not punishing any crime. A pickpocket might try to run or fight back if he knows he will be punished, but that's not a reason to let him do it, it's a reason to have teams of fit people equipped with tazers and handcuffs that can subdue him anyway.
It wasn't imminent at all.
If Nixon wanted to end the republic as we know it, he nearly could have. He had a insane mandate by the people.
It took some time and solid investigation but his party wholesale rejected him and made it clear he had no political future. Nixon was could either resign or be humiliatingly fired.
We no longer have a Congress which values country over party. There’s a good chance Trump could have murdered someone on 5th Avenue and he still would not have been impeached.
It's also safely assumed that a full 60% of the public would not have voted for him if they knew he was going to betray his duty.
Presidents aren't kings, they can't just "use the power of government" to keep themselves in power indefinitely, and they aren't above the law, in or out of office, despite what some of them might say.
It doesn't matter if they want to relinquish power or not, their power ends when the Constitution says it does and if a president refuses to leave when the clock runs out, the Marines will put a gun to their head and show them the door. Which is as it should be.
Because the message here is that they will be criminally charged, if they don’t honor the election and the peaceful transfer of power.
It’s scary that we have to set this precedent, but it’d be scarier if we don’t.
With something completely unrelated? That's a concerning viewpoint.
I guess it would be concerning if you commit so many crimes that nobody knew which one you'd actually be charged with first.
Me, I just try to not do that.
A well meaning sentiment but we all break the law on a daily basis. The amount of laws in the US Code is staggering and if a motivated DA wants to charge someone of a crime, they’ll find a way. Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent by Harvey Silvergate is a perfect primer on this subject.
From what I understand, this indictment is about accounting and how a payment was classified. Not that the payment itself was illegal, or that it was some bombshell. Some argue it was a legal expense, some argue it should have been a campaign expenditure. It could go either way.
> Some argue it was a legal expense, some argue it should have been a campaign expenditure.
Whomst among us has never bought the silence of a porn star using political campaign funds?
Declaring one’s self a dictator doesn’t grant power. That’s not how power works at all.
Even CEO's and board members don't.
The only reason they don't fight to the death is because they believe they can get a normal life afterwards. This just selects for psychopath candidates willing to cross every line to fight and keep power.
As a manager who keeps ending up with more people, asked to take on more, and would love to get back to IC; you sound like a manager I would never want to work for.
You don't like it because you don't understand how upper management thinks, that's why you want to go back to being an IC.
You have to understand upper management to protect your teams.
Do you think the business would be in good standing if the CEO violently tried to stay, after a legal vote of no confidence?
There’s a reason why CEOs and business leaders don’t really make it to the Presidency.
https://time.com/4547837/donald-trump-business-presidents/ in case you get stuck.
> Kind of what happened on Jan 6.
A riot by angry admirers of the last President when they overran the White House with only token resistance? You prevent that by arresting him?
But Trump did that, so he is exactly the man we should be making an example of.
Don't get me wrong, I think every POTUS in recent memory should be locked up for war crimes, but going after living presidents for petty nonsense isn't worth what falls out of it. This is complicated by the fact Trump is going to run again in 2024, putting this further into uncharted territory.
;)
Trying my best to not engage in any pointless discourse in this thread, but there were plenty of highly armed people (quite literally waiting to be called in, staying in nearby hotels - just because they were dumbasses doesn’t mean they weren’t highly armed) as well as the fact they did try to call the military in & it was hindered by maleficence.
It was never a serious attempt at overthrowing a government. This was trap for Trump to walk down with the protestors, which he was almost baited into doing. Had he done it, he would probably be rotting in prison or dead.
This is not to say that the protest did not turn into a riot. But that riot negated Trump's election fraud claims, some of which were never fully flushed out after.
Violence delegitimized anti government protests, and so government agencies will use agent provocateurs to help things along.
Trump is hated more by the former neocon wing of his party than by Democrats. They gladly played interference to spite him. So his grip on government wasn't really that strong, hence his rants about the deep state.
Oh man. One of my buddies who loved to watch Ancient Aliens and Alex Jones has been telling me this for about two decades now.
Saddam Hussein apparently died of diabetes a decade before we planted a body double of him too.
Wonder how much the actors posing as chucklefucks got paid to “stand back & stand by” at those hotels with their pickup truck arsenals.
Kind of hard to reconcile these facts, and not think something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Why weren't they called in? If it's all to be believed, the operation was succeeding beyond anyone's wildest dreams and then...?
But more to the point -- I guess January 6th proves the Second Amendment is still relevant and important?
Prior to Edward's indictment he was thought be the future of the democratic party, if Edwards was convicted on all counts he faced up the 30 years in prison, he beat the charges though -- a rarity in federal prosecutions.
So there is precedent for indictments for this particular crime, not that this should matter, in a republic everyone is subject to the same law and jurisprudence.
Respectfully he wasn't seen that way. His indictment was in 2011. Obama was president and still had another election to do. Edwards had not been relevant since 2008, really since 2004, as no one thought he could be Hilary or Obama in the primary.
>So there is precedent for indictments for this particular crime
One could argue its shows this is a waste of time and money.
The country doesn't need this. Trump was fading away.
Agree with the former, disagree with the latter. he's still the frontrunner to win the gop primary
Now he as alienated a lots of people, he lost an election, facing multiple court cases. He will have at least one or two R candidates who will directly attack him. He will have to fight 'wars' on multiple fronts. Plus he is 8 years older than when he first started running. Closer to 80 than 70.
Is it possible he would have won nomination? Yes but I think was less likely and slipping away from him.
The bad thing for Trump might not be the indictment but that it didn't happen in December 2023.
He is lying about election fraud, states tried to send fake electors, they used the courts to push phony cases.
Same situation
Popularity should be the last factor in whether someone is prosecuted for a crime.
Sure, but boy does it seem like a Plan Z attempt by Democrats to get literally any kind of charge to stick to Trump after 7!!! years of trying. And this particular case is one that's been known about for pretty much that entire time but was shelved, probably because they know it's weak.
Honestly thats exactly what Democrats want too, as they would rather run against Trump than Desantis or a Never Trumper.
Other than that most news is Heads I Win Tails You Lose. Any publicity is good publicity when it puts you in front of cameras to cast aspersions on your opponents.
Isn't this the kind of thinking they had back in 2015, which resulted in Trump winning?
No, I don’t think so. Trump was actually the weakest general election candidate of the major Republicans, what resulted in Trump winning was institutional power in the Democratic Party aligning betwern a candidate that was, equally clearly, the weakest general election candidate of the major Democratic contenders, and whose negatives were much firmer than Trump’s were as a relative political cipher.
Also, Democrats didn't get Trump nominated, a Republican nomination system designed to build sipport for the early leader by providing disproportional delegate majority’s to the magnitude of popular victory—a system designed to favor the pick of the institutional party and cut the knees of “insurgent” campaigns—did that, because the institutional powerbase couldn’t unite behind a candidate.
Were Trump to be nominated in 2024, he will face the same problem as in 2020—he won’t be running against Hillary Clinton.
Then in the generals he went and flipped Pennsylvania and won more counties than any R since Reagan.
You can look at the turnout and total votes to see it blows away your "weak candidate" argument.
I just don't think America likes dynasties or the political establishment. You can see it from grassroot campaigns like Reagan and Trump.
Most of the time they get shoved in your face and there's no choice, but when there is a popular alternative, it's a clear choice.
Yes, that was actually the problem for the establishment; establishment support was split between (early on, which is what matters most the way the system works by design); they didn't coalesce behind one candidate after Bush was largely written off for failing to connect with voters before the actual primaries began, establishment support was initially split between several candidates,
In the end it was Ted Cruz with 22%, so you can assume most of the no-trumpers coalesced behind him (because he was one of the few non-dynasties).
Even that is miniscule. The 3rd R (when there were 3 remaining) had 6.5% at their peak...
Trump remained the clear majority, maintaining a 75% majority until the end.
There is literally no point in time when that was true before May 3, when Cruz (the strongest opponent) dropped out because it was mathematically impossible for Trump not to win the nomination, and everyone stopped polling. (Heck, it wasn’t even true in the last major poll which was conducted almost entirely after that point [May 2-8].)
> Even that is miniscule. The 3rd R (when there were 3 remaining) had 6.5% at their peak…
> Trump remained the clear majority, maintaining a 75% majority until the end.
In the last pre-Super Tuesday poll, Kasich was polling at 9%, Rubio at 18%, Cruz at 20%, and Trump at 39%.
Trump’s absolute high point in polling – in that last major poll conducted, again, largely after he had mathematically secured the nomination, was 60%. In the same poll, the #3 Republican (Kasich) was at 13%, the #2 (Cruz) at 21%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for...
Exactly: For a time in that same election Bernie Sanders also managed to present himself like this. When he dropped out, a lot of people who were leaning towards Sanders flipped to Trump.
Obama had a similar message during his first presidential run, but pretty much ended up just being more of the same.
The fact that it was done to cover up a second crime (breaking federal campaign finance law) arguably converts it to a felony according to New York state law.
It reeks of a targeted campaign, well because it is. It’s why the DA was elected and exactly what he said he would do. So that’s really not a good look, no matter who it’s against.
And a lot of settlement cases could be argued to do the same thing. Using campaign money to do it might be illegal. Again, not a lawyer.
And then there's the whole "a DA can indict a ham sandwich" notion.
I don't pretend to know how this is going to shake out, but I've got my popcorn.
Capone gotta Capone…
This is on the front page because it's historically significant and intellectually interesting; so please comment if you have something to say that enhances those aspects. I know it's hard to detach from the passions of the moment, but that's kind of necessary for curious conversation*, so it's good practice.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
Best you could hope for is domestic charges or for Kissinger to make a visit to Viet Nam and get arrested there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandahar_massacre
As he has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole the US takes the position that they want to prosecute such things within their own system.
For example, do you really think that by charging putin, that he'd really get arrested in participating countries? Or would the warrant be ignored?
And if putin does lose his war, and goes into exile, the ICC warrants would then be possible to enforce (now that no nukes is on the line). But putin knows this, so if the war goes badly, would it not make better sense to fight it out to the bitter end, rather than lose out to being arrested if he goes on exile?
The court that has no enforcement mechanism is mostly just political show boating.
The Military in Russia is a low-status organisation and it is not capable of doing anyrhing in internal politics. They commonly end up on the recieving end of racketeering by low-level gangs. Yes, people that drive tanks and fire missiles pay 'taxes' to bandits armed with pistols.
Putin was sending generals to their deaths without worry.
Various internal police forces have a higher chance of removing FSB from power than the military does. If thongs get bad enough, thats not impossible.
The Hague invasion aspect, and Hague Invasion Act nickname, are perhaps largely symbolic; the less symbolic effects are that it prohibits any part of government in the US from assisting the ICC except in limited circumstances, and bans ICC agents from doing any investigative work in the US.
Doesn't this make the US a safe haven for other countries' war criminals?
You'd think the rule would be that there will be no support for ICC agents investigating US citizens.
Most of its prosecutions would be impossible without US help.
The legal gymnastics this DA is jumping through to attach charges here makes a joke of the entire justice system. I won’t be surprise if Bragg is disbarred for this.
Like, it’s crazy to me that anyone would assert that the charges are baseless or that they’re solid before the charges have even been announced. How do you know they’re baseless?
I agree that the number of charges doesn’t make a point one way or another, about the strength of the charges.
I’m asking how someone can be absolutely certain in their speculation about those charges.
Is the NYT saying the charges are particularly strong, or are they saying the charges are particularly weak? I haven’t seen that from them, but if they are then I have the same questions.
I’m not holding anyone here to a higher level of scrutiny than the NYT. I merely asked where someone’s confidence came from.
The New York Times thinks this is a huge mistake.
But, like, no one has answered the question I asked. How did you become confident that the allegations are baseless without seeing the allegations? That’s crazy to me.
You’re welcome to do it. It’s a free country, after all. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s rational in some way I don’t understand, or just baseless and overstated speculation.
It seems inherently irrational to me to state the strength of the allegations before we’ve seen the allegations (either meritorious or without merit), but I’ve been wrong before.
So far no one has stepped up and offered an answer to that question though.
> The New York Times thinks this is a huge mistake.
“Is it a mistake” is an entirely different question from “are the charges meritorious”?
Personally, I think they should be the same question, but lots of people think he shouldn’t be indicted even if he committed a crime, or that he should be indicted even if he didn’t. I think both are wrong, and the only mistake is giving him special treatment. He should be charged if, and only if, the facts and law demonstrate that he broke the law.
So, for me “is it a mistake” is a question that we can only start to address once the indictment is unsealed (and fully resolve once evidence by both sides is presented).
Braggs is case is being criticized heavily from the LEFT and the RIGHT. It is unprecedented and to most of the world similar with banana republics and like reeks of a setup.
You got the New York Post, the New York Times, The Rolling Stone, ABC, Fortune, Slate, The Hill, NBC, National Review, Daily Beast, Politico and more saying this is a bad idea. Don't you wonder why people more familiar with politics who are democrats AND republicans than you think that is ?
So you make America look horrible in the face of - your allies in the elite political circles - your allies internationally - your core base
All the while selling Trump on his ultimate brand as the "Rebel", of which he sells T-shirts off.
You cannot ignore the context around all of this, which weakens America significantly in already trying time as countries around the world are dropping the reserve currency USD and also belief in American Ideals.
Your appeal to the authorities of political figures falls on deaf ears for me. I do not give a single flying shit about the political calculus. That’s what makes it a banana republic decision. Nothing about the decision to charge or not charge should be based on politics. So, fuck the Democrats, fuck the Republicans, and fuck Politico. I don’t give a shit about any of their opinions.
Frankly, the appeal to people who know more “about politics” on this topic is anathema to me.
Show me the charges, show me the evidence, and show me the law. Everything else is for the birds.
Like... What? Rule of law is completely not considered, at all, Trump should be above the law because he's just too big of a popular figure. That's simply absurd to read.
You seem to be using "special treatment" differently between your sentences. Almost all crimes that get committed do not result in any indictments. Committing to indict if a law was broken is extremely unusual. Observing that a law was broken and then not indicting is the second-most-common case, behind only to failing to observe that a law was broken and then not indicting. Why is the normal case "special treatment" while the very rare case isn't?
- lots of people want to see Trump indicted come hell or high water. That's special treatment.
- lots of people think Trump shouldn't be indicted, even if he committed a crime, because he's a former President. That's special treatment.
- lots of people think Trump shouldn't be indicted, because it would inflame his base. That's special treatment.
Throw all of that out. Let's deal with the facts and the law.
If the prosecutor thinks they have enough evidence to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed a crime, then he should be charged.
If the prosecutor doesn't have the facts, or evidence, or law to support a charge beyond a reasonable doubt, then he shouldn't be charged.
Throw all the politics and "special reasoning" around Trump out. Charge based on the facts, evidence, and law. A declination even if the prosecutor thinks Trump is guilty, but they don't have the evidence to convince a jury isn't special treatment. That's—as you note—a routine declination. But a declination because you're afraid of the political ramifications of an indictment is wrong. Similarly, charging a weak case because you're afraid of the political ramifications of a declination is wrong.
That is not done in other cases. Why is it not "special treatment" to do it to Trump?
> A declination even if the prosecutor thinks Trump is guilty, but they don't have the evidence to convince a jury isn't special treatment. That's—as you note—a routine declination.
That's not what I'm noting. Failing to prosecute is the ordinary case for almost all crimes. It is absolutely routine for nonviolent crimes. So we have a prosecutor that thinks that Donald Trump really is guilty of whatever the charge is, and it's easy to prove it in court.
And the same prosecutor also knows that everyone in the government within three levels of the president really is guilty of very similar crimes, and those would all also be easy to prove in court.
Then he charges Trump and moves on with his life. That's not special treatment?
I think your hypothetical would be partially special treatment, but I don't think your hypothetical is accurate.
The one way in which it _wouldn't_ be special treatment, is I generally think it's most appropriate to charge top-down. That is, let's say at a company you know three people were all involved in the commission of a crime (maybe embezzlement, that's a popular white collar crime): The CEO, a mid-level manager, and a low-level employee. Assuming all three cases are the same difficulty to charge, and each person has approximately equal responsibility for the criminal acts, but you only have the resources to charge a single case, then I'd think the CEO would be the most appropriate person to charge.
But, assuming the prosecutor _had_ the resources to charge everyone, and only chose to single out one person, then I'd agree that is inappropriate special treatment.
> And the same prosecutor also knows that everyone in the government within three levels of the president really is guilty of very similar crimes, and those would all also be easy to prove in court.
I just...don't think this part is true. Especially the part around "would all also be easy to prove in court." I don't think it's particularly likely that the prosecutor thinks that. Especially given that this is a NY state prosecution, so most people within three levels of the President probably wouldn't have a nexus to NY or be subject to NY state laws.
So, I mostly concede that your hypothetical would be special treatment, but your hypothetical doesn't strike me as particularly likely (note, that it's not impossible, and if you convinced me it was accurate, I'd say we should bring the other charges).
That's why we have grand juries, to make sure a crime is truly serious before revealing in public the alleged crime.
In all due time, the charge will be public and we will see the evidence ourselves. The news event is that the prosecutors have crossed one of the major hurdles of a typical criminal court case and have convinced a grand jury to proceed.
I’m also generally much more skeptical of state level pre-indictment processes which generally aren’t quite as buttoned down as federal pre-indictment processes (though, that’s a pretty broad generalization).
But, the indictments will come out soon, and the evidence supporting them eventually, so time will certainly tell.
It’s funny, Republicans used to often wax in about the sanctity of the rule of law. For some reason, the entrancing powers of Mr. Trump led many to throw that away to stand behind the demagogue.
We should demand better. I live in New York. 2/4 most recent governors left office as part of a deal to avoid prosecution. Prominent legislative leaders were convicted and removed from office.
Regardless of party, there needs to be a standard. Breaking the law and laundering money to buy the silence of a sexual dalliance is a serious crime. Former NY Governor Spitzer was facing federal charges for money transfer violations of his own money to solicit an escort.
Mr Trump seeks to make this a political matter because that distracts from the heart of the matter — his actions. The people who in good faith donated to his campaign wanted to “make America great again”, not pay hush money to porn actresses.
As New York Judge Sol Wachtler said in 1985, “If a district attorney wanted, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.”
Explanation at https://abovethelaw.com/2016/02/criminally-yours-indicting-a...
... because there is a law on the books that says "it's a crime to do this thing" and this person pretty clearly did that thing.
Like, from a political perspective, I'm in the boat of "uggggh, I wish it wasn't this thing that is the first thing he is charged for". But from a legal perspective ... this is a thing you're not allowed to do ... which he did ... so ...
I honestly wouldn't put any faith in a jury choosing to indict. As famously once said, you can convince a jury to indict a ham sandwich. I'm waiting to see what the charges actually are and the evidence for them.
(1985 quote)
> In a bid to make prosecutors more accountable for their actions, Chief Judge Sol Wachtler has proposed that the state scrap the grand jury system of bringing criminal indictments.
> Wachtler, who became the state’s top judge earlier this month, said district attorneys now have so much influence on grand juries that “by and large” they could get them to “indict a ham sandwich.”
We still don't know the specifics or the extent of Trump's legal issues, as the Grand jury is still ongoing for this case and others.
Perhaps he had some sort of defense. I hear that's how courts work. Along with dealing in findings of fact and law, rather than speculation about whether it's vaguely fair or vaguely unfair.
I'd imagine a billionaire who is also a former President of the United States also has the resources to muster a defense as effective as a non-billionaire former Senator, if there's an effective defense to be made.
Whatever he told them, along with whatever other evidence was presented, it was sufficient for them to indict.
The Grand Jury indicted Trump, not Alvin Bragg.
I'll be waiting with my popcorn, because one way or another, this is gonna be good.
They got Michael Cohen for this, and Trump was mentioned in his proceedings as “individual one”.
If you pronounce it a joke or predict the disbarment of Bragg now, you aren’t doing it based on the merits of the case.
It’s often difficult to disconnect the actual crimes from wanting Justice generally for a person’s net life behaviour… which isn’t how this works IRL nor how it should work. Whether other crimes and social taboos should be better enforced is another matter entirely.
They are targeting the record keeping.
> JOHN MILLER: I am told by my sources that this is 34 counts of falsification of business records, which is probably a lot of charges involving each document,, each thing that was submitted as a separate count and a couple of matters.
https://youtu.be/xvbwKtrdcmc?t=457
Trump has a long, long, long history of illegal accounting incidents many of which he's gotten in trouble for in civil court. This is just the first time it's been in criminal court.
When the story rolled around the first time, people did indeed make the argument that the payment itself was illegal.
The campaign finance laws require expenditures that help your electoral chances to be declared as campaign expenditures.
They also prohibit declaring any expenditures that help you in your personal life.
This leads to the obviously terrible result that while you're campaigning for office, it's illegal to pay for anything that simultaneously helps you electorally ("the voters will never hear about my affair with a stripper!") and in your personal life ("my wife will never hear about my affair with a stripper!"). If you don't declare the campaign expense, you're violating the disclosure laws. If you do declare it, you're embezzling from the campaign.
It’s a very bizarre legal theory, and also I believe entirely untested and hugely problematic as you say.
Edwards used actual campaign donations to payoff his mistress to the tune of $1mm and they brought charges and he was found not guilty by the jury.
Here we have a long-standing “fixer” for Trump doing something he had always done and had a history of doing for Trump, with or without a campaign ongoing.
Calling it a campaign finance violation for a business partner to do the legal things that they always did is absurd on its face, besides the fact that such a law would put every politician everywhere in legal jeopardy, and yet surprisingly this theory seems to only be trotted out against Trump!
Not a great look.
The US government is not allowed to participate or facilitate a criminal prosecution that would deny a US citizen their constitutional rights there has been a Supreme Court case about this already ironically in 1998 which was also one of the triggers for voting no.
On a side note the ICC is terrible, any party can bring up a case, there is no separation of duties, no defined scope and no right of appeal.
The ICC is nothing more than virtue signaling, and should never been established in its current form the world was just too high on its own supply of late 90’s hopium at that point to care.
I looked into it more and while 7 voted against, 21 abstained so votes don't tell the whole picture. Between China, Indonesia, India and The US you're talking a major chunk of the world population.
Anything China does is "a major chunk of the world population". Same with India.
Treaties have and do grant the Federal government additional powers. They cannot diminish powers or add something that is taken away.
And non self executing treaties are meaningless they pretty much mean that the US government promised something but it is not compelled to do anything about it and there is no mechanism that would require it to comply.
The US constitution is supreme it takes precedence over anything the legislative branch might legislate and any action the executive branch might take.
Alien tort is also not accepted when interpreting the constitution so you literally cannot interpret the constitution from the point of view of international or foreign laws.
They obviously do not. If they did, you could basically abolish the Constitution with one with only the presidency, a bare majority of the Senate, and the cooperation of a foreign power. An actual Constitutional amendment must meet a much, much higher bar.
Congress does get extra power when a law is passed as a treaty. Issues that are state business under the 10th Amendment become federal business.
But it’s nothing like a constitutional amendment.
Are there potential circumstances where the US Constitution might conflict with obligations under the Rome Statute? Maybe; that certainly fairly regularly happens in practice with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, but the US has signed and ratified that treaty.
We actually were a signatory (and one of the prime movers for regularizing the ad hoc processes which we had also been a prime mover for creating in Yugoslavia and Rwanda) of the Rome Statute under Clinton, though the signature was effectively withdrawn under Bush.
I thought the point of the US was to allow the president to do some sweet real estate deals? From https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html
> His stories about George Washington, none of which I knew, are even more fascinating. Bueno de Mesquita claims, quite plausibly, that a huge part of George Washington’s motive for fighting the Revolutionary War was to protect his substantial, and critically placed, landholdings in the Ohio Valley.
Remember that the 'Royal Proclamation of 1763' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Proclamation_of_1763 :
> The Proclamation forbade all settlements west of a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains, which was delineated as an Indian Reserve.[2] Exclusion from the vast region of Trans-Appalachia created discontent between Britain and colonial land speculators and potential settlers. The proclamation and access to western lands was one of the first significant areas of dispute between Britain and the colonies and would become a contributing factor leading to the American Revolution.[3]
> British colonists and land speculators objected to the proclamation boundary since the British government had already assigned land grants to them. Including the wealthy owners of the Ohio company who protested the line to the governor of Virginia, as they had plans for settling the land to grow business.[15] Many settlements already existed beyond the proclamation line,[16] some of which had been temporarily evacuated during Pontiac's War, and there were many already granted land claims yet to be settled. For example, George Washington and his Virginia soldiers had been granted lands past the boundary. Prominent American colonials joined with the land speculators in Britain to lobby the government to move the line further west.
More context from https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html
> [...] his story made me realize that a large part of my belief in GW is romantic: because I learned about him so early in life, that romantic view is harder to shake and I’ve been less willing to put GW under the public choice microscope than with any current or recent president.
> An excerpt about GW’s wealth:
>> His last position, just before becoming President, was President of the Patowmack Canal Company–the Potomac Canal, as we know it, from the Potomac River. What that canal did was bring, make it possible to bring produce from the Shenandoah Valley–which George owned–up to the port in Alexandria, which had been built by Lawrence, by the Ohio Valley Company, in which George had a direct interest, and shipped goods out. So it was a very profitable undertaking–or so he thought it would be, in the long run, for him. And that’s what motivated him. Most people think of Washington as–besides a great hero, which he certainly was–as kind of a gentleman farmer. Economists have estimated the worth in real dollars adjusted for inflation, not appreciated, of George Washington’s estate, in contemporary terms; and it’s about $20 billion dollars. He is by far the wealthiest President. He is the 59th wealthiest person in American history. Three of the American founding fathers are in the list of the top 100 wealthiest Americans in all of history: Hancock, who was wealthier than Washington–made his money smuggling; and Ben Franklin, who was not quite as wealthy, who made his money because he had a monopoly on the printing press. These are the folks who led the Revolution. Thes...
I think that's overstated.
First of all, it was the Magna Carta which established that the king was not above the law, so in that sense the founding of the United States was more "and we don't need a king".
Second, there are frequently legal discussions in the present day as to whether a sitting president can be charged with a crime, so there is at least a substantial idea that there is some "sovereign immunity" (quotes because that's not what sovereign immunity refers to)
Third, the founders were also well aware of the threat of political motives for prosecutions and wanted to diminish them with various balance of power checks and balances.
The social/civil consequences of this sort of criminal indictment before election is enough to kill a presidential campaign and has enough times in history. As it should be.
This is behaviour before/after presidency when the stakes are far lower.
That juice is not worth the squeeze.
Don’t worry… we’ll be okay whatever happens. It’s never as bad as what the FUD pushers wished would happen (“feared” would be the wrong word here).
The nut jobs will create problems, the others will complain but not act. Overall the others far outweigh the nut jobs.
Frankly even some hardcore supporters I know are tired of his shtick and lean DeSantis.
Trump is being indicted by a grand jury, not the DA. Half the people in his orbit have done time in prison for committing crimes that just happened to benefit him.
Many top Democrats are fuming?
Name them.
This just plays to Trump's strength as the ultimate rebel.
In terms of game theory, this is a very different game than Nixon or Bush. Trump annihilated the Bush Legacy, and is hated by both sides of the establishment.
That is similar to the immunity given to the sitting US President. What is different is that monarch is not really expected to obey the law either. For example, the Prime Minister was fined for illegally not wearing a seatbelt. If the king didn’t wear a seatbelt, it would not be a big deal - the royal family freely ignore traffic laws (and more serious laws) without consequences. Queen Elizabeth did agree to start paying taxes, but there was never any suggestion that she be compelled to pay taxes, merely that it would be the right thing to do.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Windsor_Castle_fire
There are also all the laws the monarch / monarch’s lawyers interfered with e.g. police can’t enter Sandringham Estate without an invite, leaseholders on the Duchy of Cornwall are excluded from buying their freehold
The thing about Britain's constitutional arrangements is that there are many things which 'can't' be done, which it turns out simply 'aren't' done.
What is sovereign immunity?
Sovereign immunity is a centuries-old doctrine dictating that the monarch cannot be prosecuted or subject to civil legal action under the law. Its origin lies in doctrine and convention, rather than statute, and there is no law setting out the rules underpinning the concept.
It stems partly from the medieval concept that the monarch is the source of justice, and can therefore do no wrong. It also relies on an argument that because the courts belong to the Queen she cannot be compelled to appear in them, since she would, in effect, be prosecuting herself.
Since at least 1800, the monarch has also had a legally distinct private persona, created to allow them to have independent wealth and property that could be inherited by their children. However, the lines between the two are somewhat blurred, and sovereign immunity has typically been interpreted to apply to both the public and private identities of the monarch.
We take it for granted now, but it was a beginning of constitutional order - king and government should follow certain laws and rules for how to run the country. And the UK is after all a constitutional monarchy, no longer at mercy to the whims of an autocratic monarch.
It is so tragic and disappointing.
In Germany for example we have sort of an "updated" version, with lessons learned. But one thing I actually want changed is that members of parliament have actual real immunity. Not in the practical sense - immunity for individual members has historically always been waived by parliament at the slightest whiff of an investigation. But the example of Trump teaches us that it is a fallacy to trust in the decency of politicians and unwritten rules.
The danger of this half-assed prosecution to the republic is fucking enormous, I'm actually scared.
The only way we're getting out of the larger situation is for Republicans and independents to realize that Trump is/was just another basic grifter capitalizing on frustration with the system. Just because someone is despised by the people at the country club doesn't mean they're your friend. While we're hungry for reform, this doesn't mean that every type of change is a step in the right direction. And despite the suffocating dynamic, there's actually a damn good reason we've come to expect that politicians should be a bit neutered. Ultimately true conservatism for the American status quo that we've come to take for granted, as much as it pains my past self to write that.
“Jan 6th but an actual insurrection with guns and political/military leaders”
Or
“Southwestern sheriff decides to expel illegal immigrants on his own, requests ‘MAGA patriots’ to come on down and get deputized, atrocities ensue, feds get involved and it spirals into a state vs federal fiasco (which sounds fanfic but Abbott and DeSantis are clearly sympathetic to the idea)”
I honestly think that the second scenario or at least another Malheur Wildlife Refuge/Waco style standoff is only a matter of time - and judging by DoJ’s public priorities, they’re extremely concerned about it as well.
A big part of the rule of law is treating people equally. Given the lead up, this is probably a question of selective persecution.
That doesn't mean he did or did not do something illegal. The difference is Hillary/etc. can't be prosecuted for anything.
How many campaign finance skeletons do you think most of the big politicians have in their closets that will never be investigated much less prosecuted?
I'm trying to keep this comment impartial. But I want to note that right now there is a huge belief that the media and companies and the wider "acceptable" social narrative are biased against a lot of the core beliefs that people on the right align to. I too hold that belief, and I've yet to see sufficient proof to convince me otherwise.
You combine these two wide points, and I'd argue that we should sympathize with those people and not call them "crazy conspiratists" for trying to shed light on this. It's actually a difficult to prove and isolate, second-order type of conclusion.
However, to engage in a counterfactual: would I expect in the scenario that a different president not eligible for reelection were to generate the same fact pattern as Trump to also be indicted? Or another scenario: a politician who is eligible for reelection to a different lower office?
Yes, in both cases.
In other words, by virtue of Trump's position I think special care and thought was taken to make sure things are on the up and up. I think prosecutors are smart people and generally are aware and thoughtful about the position they are in. I do not think they are pursuing this issue with extra vigor because Trump is Trump.
What I don't love is the timing of it. It makes it easily dismissible as political theatre. Wait until after the election.
> ... And the district attorney should set out why he finds it necessary that the records be produced now as opposed to when the President leaves office. At argument, respondent’s counsel told us that his office’s concern is the expiration of the statute of limitations,11 but there are potential solutions to that problem. Even if New York law does not automatically suspend the statute of limitations for prosecuting a President until he leaves office,12 it may be possible to eliminate the problem by waiver.13 And if the prosecutor’s statute-of-limitations concerns relate to parties other than the President, he should be required to spell that out.
> ...
> 12: See N. Y. Crim. Proc. Law Ann. §30.10(4)(a) (West 2010) (statute tolled when defendant outside the jurisdiction); see also People v. Knobel, 94 N. Y. 2d 226, 230, 723 N. E. 2d 550, 552 (1999) (explaining New York rule for tolling the limitations period when a defendant is “continuously outside” the State and concluding that “all periods of a day or more that a nonresident defendant is out-of-State should be totaled and toll the Statute of Limitations”).
There's nothing "rebellious" about being a wealthy real estate baron and casino owner. And nothing "rebellious" about supporting him, either. It's rather, kind of the opposite.
I can't explain it, but I always have to gauge engineers going awol during a meeting with Asian partners.
As commenter poster alluded: a country with only two political parties, both of which are basically conformist on the same foreign policy and economic objectives... Where "conservatives" think anything left of Atilla the Hun is communism, so accept pathetic living conditions, corruption, and barbarous behaviour is A-OK.
Absolutely not a "rebellious country"; a country notorious for police brutality and individual acts of authoritarian violence.
Really more the tyrant than the rebel. Sorry you don't like the mirror I'm holding up.
There are literally courses in Asia about dealing with American Rebel Culture in Business.
If you treat your life as one big show, any accountability will seem like theater, but that doesn't mean you get to avoid it.
He's always sold him self as the ultimate "Rebel", and a half assed prosecution on something so minor to the grand scheme of things solidifies it. Human Nature 101 which seems to be something hackernews engineers don't understand as much as I'd like as a manager of many engineering teams.
I really don't understand how he drives his enemies to make so many basic mistakes, but he does.
Your mistake is thinking a disastrous president that lost re-election somehow understands the modal voter. He doesn’t even understand the modal voter in swing states.
In countries like Ukraine and Georgia, they have recently jailed their presidents or opponents. Yanukovich jailed Timushenko. Saakashvili was jailed.
This can wreak a lot of havoc in a country. Look at how the supporters of Imran Khan are reacting, as his opponents always try to arrest him:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Imran_Khan_arrest_attem...
Nixon was pardoned, but he also resigned and quit politics.
Political leaders are easy to replace, which means that the bar for replacing them should be low. If a leader is accused with crimes and the charges seem plausible enough, they are expected to resign to avoid a divisive trial. Similarly, unless the charges are particularly serious, the other side is expected to pardon the accused. Then the former leader is expected to quit politics and stop being a problem.
This all happens, because political leaders are supposed to care about national interests. Granting a disgraced leader a dignified exit and a chance for a peaceful retirement is often a good idea, as long as the former leader agrees to remain a former leader. On the other hand, pardoning active politicians is about as bad idea as anything can be. That way you get entitled leaders who consider themselves above the law.
Attempting to take a popular political figure out by blatant abuse of the legal abuse is a bit more concerning.
I assume murder. What else?
The issue here is that people went looking for a crime for almost a decade, singling out Trump in a deranged crusade. Bush levelled entire countries. Obama put the foundations of the global spying apparatus in place. Biden might be on the verge of igniting WWIII with the policies of escalation that the US is employing.
Then in that background, there is speculation that Trump is going to be arrested for something related to Stormy Daniels after the levels of effort put in to pinning something on him. The people who feel that is appropriate can't serious. Based on what we've seen of the Trump saga so far, this is probably abuse of process. If that level of effort was put into another politician, they'd be in jail too.
I'm sorry, I'll try to reword it to come across differently. My whole question is: Why hasn't he been indicted of bigger/harsher crimes already?
did he or did he not incite an insurrection on January 6th? there was an entire committee about it. he did, right? ok... so... not indicted, got it, moves slowly
did he have classified documents when he shouldn't have? yes. not indicted
did he do something wrong in regards to votes in georgia? yes. not indicted
i guess i just don't get it shrug it's as if like... based on the fact that he hasn't been indicted, you can conclude... he didn't do anything illegal, because if he did, he'd be indicted, right?
EDIT: To back this up, from Wikipedia:
Does it suck that it’s taking so long? Of course. Unfortunately, that’s how the system works.
At the federal level, Jack Smith is currently investigating the January 6th case, the related forgery of documents, and the classified documents. Since he's a special prosecutor if he declines to indict on the things in his remit he's required to file a report to Merrick Garland with his declination decision and reasoning. That hasn't happened yet.
Similarly for Georgia, a Special Grand Jury made a report recommending he be indicted. That then goes to a Grand Jury, which will make the decision on whether he be indicted. That Grand Jury hasn't sat yet, so that's also in process.
So, all of those things are in process. They haven't made a decision not to indict yet, so it's incorrect to draw conclusions assuming he won't be indicted for those things yet. It's too early to say, for each of the things you identified.
> did he or did he not incite an insurrection on January 6th? there was an entire committee about it. he did, right? ok... so... not indicted, got it, moves slowly
The latest on this is that Mike Pence is going to appear before that grand jury: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/28/judge-says-pence-mu...
So the correct status is not yet indicted.
> did he have classified documents when he shouldn't have? yes. not indicted
Latest status: Some of Trump's lawyer's records must be presented to the court:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/22/trump-court-rejects...
not yet indicted.
> did he do something wrong in regards to votes in georgia? yes. not indicted
Trump's lawyer there is fighting to avoid him being indicted (as you'd expect):
In a 483-page filing, Trump’s attorney Drew Findling urged a state court in Georgia to prohibit an Atlanta-area district attorney there from filing charges related to Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/20/trump-georgia-indic...
not yet indicted.
The legal system is slow, but I think it's fair to say that in all these cases the legal teams are being very careful because bringing a case against a former President is unprecedented, and they want to be sure it is a good case.
I think that's a perfectly reasonable question. The basic answer I'd give is that the bigger/harsher a crime is the longer it takes to build as a case.
The bigger or harsher a crime is, it usually has more protections and requirements in order to prove. It takes longer to gather the relevant evidence, longer to put together a theory of the case, and longer to button everything down and present to a grand jury.
It's kind of like asking why it takes developers longer to build the biggest/coolest features in a video games. It's a lot more work!
This was also a question that came up quite frequently when the first Jan 6th defendants were charged. The first wave of defendants were charged with things like "trespassing" and other fairly mild charges. A lot of people were upset about that. But they just came first because they were much easier cases to proves and make. Eventually more serious charges such as "assault with a deadly weapon", "obstructing congress" and "seditious conspiracy" were later charged and convicted in front of a jury.
So, I generally wouldn't be surprised to see the easier/simpler cases come before more complicated cases. That's not to say that he will be charged with bigger/harsher crimes. Maybe the facts won't bear those cases out, and they won't be charged. But the ordering doesn't seem like it should be particularly surprising.
Potentially we could see several other indictments. Such as the Federal cases for the classified documents and the Georgia case for interfering with an election.
This is just the first one. Doesn’t have to be the last nor does it mean he is instantly ruled guilty and is going to prison or paying a fine. He will have his chance in court to make a case for his innocence in the face of these specific charges.
The United States has many local prosecutors that operate independently within their jurisdictions and are not bound to hold their charges in deference to some other charges that may be more serious coming later.
It's not the job of all those intelligence agencies to do that. This is a law and order question, which must be handled by the legal system, not the NSA and CIA.
They very clearly have the capability to coordinate the entire media apparatus, law enforcement, etc to cuff a sitting Governor and quickly send him to a federal pit and down the memory hole for essentially the exact same sort of quid pro quo that was underpinning the first Trump impeachment.
Trump isn’t Phoenix Wright, he’s only still a free man because the Blob either can’t come to a consensus on “Blago’ing” him - or else the constant “The walls are closing in on Drumpf THIS time” drama is serving a larger purpose.
They will do ANYTHING to stop him out of fear, anger, arrogance etc. The problem here is Trump is an expert at reflection. This HAS ALREADY empowered his base, and strengthened Ron Desantis.
I think the hardest part to accept is nearly half the nation DOES NOT AGREE with progressive principles at their very core.
There's a reason we don't do popular vote; California and New York would pretty much pick the president every election.
Take a look at the geographic distribution of red v blue by county in the 2020 presidential election [1].
Relying on only the popular vote could devolve the country into a hunger games type dystopian hellscape where 90% of the country is controlled by a few dense urban clusters.
[1] https://brilliantmaps.com/2020-county-election-map/
Electoral college was a sop to slavers and should be deleted. It doesn't empower small states, it empowers large states which happen to be swing states.
Founders’ intent is pretty irrelevant to today’s problems. They ran forced labor plantations, hadn’t mastered electricity or germ theory of disease, and the biggest city was ~30K people.
1 person = 1 vote, get rid of all the rural planter rigs.
This is defensible, and I'm sure you would not balk at being called "anti-majoritarian", but lets be clear about what is going on.
Also, post-Civil War, this "we're a republic not a democracy" stuff really changed significantly. While it may have been absolutely true in 1776, it became much less true in the 1800s, and has continued to become even less so in the 1900s. It may have been better if the Constitution had been amended to reflect this (since it was happening anyway), but it's burying your head in the sand to pretend that the original conception is reality on the ground today.
The universe doesn't owe unpopular ideas equal footing. People who don't like what cities think might feel like the odds are stacked against them in a popular contest. They are correct.
We don't give new chess players extra queens, either.
I'll do it too:
Republicans have won 8 out of the past 14 elections, and won the popular vote as well as the electoral college in six out of eight [1].
Or, looking at it another way, of the past 14 elections, republicans won the popular vote by an average of 7.42%, while democrats only won by 5.28%, which if you took that pointless cherry picked data seriously could convince you that on average republican candidates are significantly more popular than democrats.
The fact is, this country is split fairly evenly along the nonsensical left/right axis.
A more interesting evaluation would be along the authoritarian vs antiauthoritarian axis. I think a much larger percentage of Americans fall along the antiauthoritarian axis, and that the noise in the left/right false dichotomy is a result of that more than anything.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presid...
If they didn't go to absurd lengths to chop up districts and make it harder for poor people to vote, it wouldn't even be a close fight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpamjJtXqFI
Your own link shows that Democrats have won the popular vote 7 out of the last 8.
Here are more complex ones:
"[Party A] is actively censoring speech that they don't agree with, calling it misinformation, even though their 'fact checkers' have shown strong political bias. Do you support this?"
and
"[Party B] wants to restrict your right to your body and self-ownership by limiting access to healthcare like abortion and gender affirming care for adults. Do you support this?"
These are the sorts of political "points" that both parties try to score. There are lots more examples.
What's the common theme?
There's an underlying message of "scary authoritarian government controlling me".
I think that most Americans, regardless of political party, have fairly strong antiauthoritarian leanings. I think both political parties attempt to exploit this in political messaging, but neither actually mean it.
By definition, a political party seeks power.
Of course, no one wants to point out their own power-seeking, so the only option is to point out your opponent's.
The sort of authoritarian instincts I was thinking of involve things more like: incarceration camps for people with national origins in the wrong place, immigration policies denying entry to people from the wrong place, ignoring Constitutional separation between church & state to allow "just a little" theocratic bleed-through (imagine if the "church" in question was a mosque), using the army for law enforcement, outlawing more strikes by "critical workers", seeking to restrain the behavior of corporate persons (previously established as subject to the first amendment by SCOTUS) ... and we could go on. Basically, "fascism light" - nothing too horrible, just round one of Pastor Niemoller's famous anecdote.
Wasn't that just a political play? Given that America as a society at large is pretty conservative, even within the Democrats base, pandering to opposing gay marriage gives a net positive voting.
Also, broadly speaking, being progressive means wanting change and being conservative means being more comfortable with the status quo. It seems obvious that of the 120 million people who weren’t motivated to vote, more of those would be latent conservatives. Or at least, it’s very hard to see a progressive majority in there.
Could be true, but it's certainly not "obvious". There are myriad reasons (especially in the USA) why people might not vote that nothing to do with their political opinions (ideology or intensity). I am sure that a significant number of the 120 million non-voters were "not motivated", but not all of them. And of the "not motivated", it is hard to know the real reasons why and what it means. Some of them, for example, would never vote, regardless of who ran or what the platforms were. Maybe some of them would vote for radical progressive if there was one with credible chance of winning. Maybe some of them would vote for a blatantly Mussolini-inspired candidate. Either way, it isn't obvious that motivation was the reason to not vote for all of them and it certainly isn't clear that they are more likely to be "latent conservatives".
Regarding the original point, Pew published some interesting stats on voter preferences:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/beyond-red-v...
According to this, progressives are a very small slice of the population, and nowhere near a majority even if you include adjacent groups.
Alas, we appear unlikely to find out, since no presidential/senate candidate is going to do anything truly populist with economic policy for fear of pissing off the big donors.
But anyway, I do not consider Trump as having been rendered ineffective, and he certainly isn't buried.
More centrally, there's no obligation of those with the (literal or metaphorical) printing presses to spread the good word Our Favorite Populist of the moment. In the USA, we ceded control of "the press" to the private sector, without any expectation that they would ever act against the interests of their owners. There's no reason why any multi-(m|b)illion corporation is ever going to champion Bernie Sander's policies. On the other hand, Trump's policies (from day one) were just fine for the largest news organization on the planet, precisely because they were never threatening to the status quo.
If people actually want to hear populist policies, they're going to have to pay attention to something other than corporate owned media, regardless of its nominal political orientation.
It's like if your baseball team lost a game and saying "yeah, but they had the fewest batters struck out!" OK... but that's not how the winner is determined, and both teams would have played differently if it were. We can't know what the outcome would have been, in that case.
ANYTHING, eh? Please tell me, what did they do? Trump won an election (thanks to the mechanics of the Electoral College), he served as president, he passed laws (some of which the courts overturned, as happens with most presidents), he handed out pardons (some wise, some not), and then he lost an election.
What is this "ANYTHING" that has been done to stop him?
The alleged crime happened 8 years ago by now. Some more recent misdeeds might still yield more indictments.
The jurisdiction is New York state, where Trump's status as former president is irrelevant (unlike insurrection related issues, which I guess are federal, and therefore for which his status as sitting president would've made impeachment the remedy rather than criminal prosecution).
There is a cooperating witness spilling the beans on this one. On his mini coup attempt, maybe they were a bit better at containing associates.
It’s why they didn’t stick him on emoluments, nepotism, tax dodging - even “improperly storing classified documents” somehow turned out to be a brush too broad.
So now Alvin Bragg is (supposedly) indicting him for campaign finance violations. Okay. He’s probably guilty. But both Obama and Hillary paid fines for the exact same crime. So did John Edwards, for a VERY similar situation to the Stormy Daniels thing iirc.
This isn’t whataboutism - my point is that, if this indictment goes forward with the rumored rationale, every single politician will now have to watch their ass on campaign funds for the foreseeable future lest the opposing party find out.
That’s a good thing for America and a very obnoxious thing for the entire political class. I suspect Alvin Bragg is getting many angry phone calls tonight from folks who would otherwise like to fire Trump into the sun.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/08/22/election-law-violatio...
Prosecutors in their respective jurisdictions should look for crimes and prosecute if they see malfeasance. In the case of NY, these are the charges that were at the top of the priority list for that one prosecutor. Multiple other prosecutors are looking at crimes in other jurisdictions and I would expect Trump to be facing charges in at least 2 and maybe 3 or 4 courtrooms on entirely independent indictments.
Presumably the reason Obama, Bush and Clinton won't be charged with crimes is that there isn't enough evidence that they committed any crimes for a prosecutor to seek an indictment.
IMO any case made against a DA's political opponents should rest on solid ground, not untested legal theories.
It's disturbing that so many people are willing to throw away the legal system in order to prosecute someone they don't like.
> IMO any case made against a DA's political opponents should rest on solid ground, not untested legal theories.
Exactly. It's an even bigger violation of the principle that "the law should apply to political leaders" to abuse the law in order to prosecute one.
I'm no fan of Trump, but any case against him should be strong, not something so weird that an acrobat would have trouble jumping through all the hoops. Unfortunately, Trump broke America, including his opponents, and now they're out for blood and are willing to go as low or even lower than him to get it.
Edit: it turns out you've been doing this a ton, unfortunately. I don't want to ban you for this in the current thread because people will just assume it was for partisan reasons, which it isn't. But if you don't start using HN in the intended spirit, we're going to end up having to.
This is also why it’s important to not use the law as a political tool. Otherwise trust in the law is undermined.
Plenty of governors have been put in prison but an ex-president is going to have secret service, even in prison?
This is a crime another person served time for so it's definitely a crime worthy of prison but of all the crimes, this is so damn stupid in comparison.
I'd settle for CEOs and Bankers going to prison for all the crimes they have gotten away with on a daily basis than even one president as despised as they are.
The founders of the United States were criminals and traitors.
"we must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately"
Honestly, what the US campaign financing system needs is a full overhaul, its full of legal and illegal-but-ignored corruption.
The UK Tories decided to copy it and wound up with Liz Truss. The Canadian Conservatives tried something similar and wound up with obscurity.
I think these GOP efforts inflict real harm, but the top-priotity obsession against trans people is so strange to me, especially when trans people are a tiny fraction of the whole population.
What happened to being the party of free speech?
I am serious, if someone honestly can explain the GOPs enacted platform outside of being "anti-woke" I'd be interested to hear it. I don't see a vision, I see the mob culture war politics they claim they fighting.
But seriously, taking an HN viewpoint, the GOP has stopped looking at any data other than polls a long time ago (and has only accelerated that trend over time). And real harm is being done to people in the meanwhile.
It’s not like there was some global conspiracy to target him all that time. He repeatedly scammed people, stole money, withheld payments, and worse.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-senator-and-presidenti...
Furthermore, I don't see how is this whole thread is related to 'Hacker News', or where this is 'intellectually interesting' as it is already reported in the news.
It is only for pure politics and a degraded comments section with flamebait.
We don’t need heavy handed moderation to determine what’s relevant to HN, like Reddit pretends it needs. The community does a good job and the mods step in when necessary.
And if HN occasionally doesn’t flag stuff and it bothers you then don’t click on it. We don’t always get it right.
And more importantly, that's not what Trump was indicted for. Indicting him for misusing campaign funds would be straight-forward, if they could prove it.
So the fact that they indicted him for something else seems to show that they couldn't prove he misused campaign funds. They actually indicted him for recording a payment to his lawyer as "legal expenses", because it was allegedly used to pay for Stormy Daniels silence.
What I don't understand is why this is different from the many other cases when people and companies pay to settle claims in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. Those are usually considered legal expenses.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/10/politics/trump-manhattan-dist...
This is one of the first paragraphs from your link!
“ The indictment has been filed under seal and will be announced in the coming days. The charges are not publicly known at this time, one source told CNN.”
It's not uncommon for the media to publish things that haven't been officially revealed. Leaks, you know.
<< On what grounds would the DA of Manhattan have for prosecuting Bush and Cheney?
Is it a real question?
On the off chance it is a real question, I am going to open with Iraq war, associated war crimes[1] and go from there[2] to people who wrote about it rather extensively and have some knowledge of the subject[3].
I am starting to think that there is wisdom in just waiting. Clearly, you can do anything if you let just enough time pass.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War#By_Coalition_forces_a... [2] https://www.youtube.com/embed/TY2DKzastu8?feature=oembed&ena... [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Clark
This has nothing to do about forgetting history, I lived through it and was calling for Bush to be prosecuted then. It's so weird to me that the people today who are saying "Well what about Bush!!" are mostly those who voted for him twice, at least in my circles.
I absolutely agree with you in terms of principles as they should be executed ( no one is untouchable ). I actually agree on the DA part too ( you are responsible for the area you are responsible for ).
However, between limited resources ( we only have X amount of time and money ) and high visibility investigation target that does have resources ( unlike most people in US, can fight back in regular court and in court of public opinion ), it is simply a bad idea to go for a relatively minor charge ( although I suppose we will know more come Tuesday ). The benefit to society is questionable. And DA has to prioritize.
So real question is why he did prioritize this case if that benefit is not entirely clear? And that is the problem I have with this. If the benefit in fact is 'we got him, because we just know he did SOMETHING', that in itself is problematic. It does not reinforce the 'justice is blind' belief. It does the exact opposite.
This is relevant, because, and this is very much a personal opinion, I am worried about where we stand as a society. The general trust in existing structures is already low. I can't reasonably argue this action adds to trust in those structures. In fact, I personally would argue that it does the opposite AND manages to play into existing narrative used by Trump himself ( 'system is rigged' ).
<< It's so weird to me that the people today who are saying "Well what about Bush!!" are mostly those who voted for him twice, at least in my circles.
I am admittedly a little weird in terms of US political landscape, but then I come from EU ( at the time I left, old country had a bunch of small parties, but that has been consolidating lately like in US ).
I don't want to add my voting history into the mix, but I can openly admit I never voted for either Bush, but I could be an outlier here. I just.. would like the rules to be applied uniformly ( and based on your argument, I get the feeling you want the same ).
<< The year is 2023, and before him he has details of a crime.
We go back to the priorities question. Should just about any charge be prosecuted? Would you accept jaywalking? How about public urination?
It is a practical question. Trump is a (1)former president AND (2)current presidential candidate AND a (3)likely presumptive nominee given point#1.
Is that crime worthy of indictment? It is a crime, but is it.. bad enough to make it worth DA's time and money.
And this is how we get to this particular indictment.
Is it bad enough? Public opinion already weighed on it once based on the available leaks so the case better be ironclad.
Like I said. Priorities and the reality of the situation.
edit: I decided to add something I don't typically do here ( add a jokey youtube video mildly aligned with my stance[1] ). It is annoying how well they capture the lines of tension.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCXFCoe2sbc
The unfortunate matter though is the damage they did to this country was fairly bipartisan, which I believe plays a large part in Bush's rehabilitation in the public image after leaving office. At least he didn't make mean jokes like some people.
Also most of the creatures in the state department during the Bush years, including of course Bolton, and also others, Frum in particular.
And of course, let's not forget Hillary, who is silent as a rock right about now. Since you know, breaking the law is now en vogue to prosecute.
It was impossible for him to do so because he was never testifying under oath.
See: <https://www.c-span.org/video/?311436-1/senate-intelligence-c...> for a recording of what I believe is the Senate hearing to which you are referring.
Also consider the following quote from the Congressional Research Service about how the Senate chooses to place folks under oath:
> By statute, any Senator is authorized to administer the oath to a witness (2 U.S.C. 191). Committee rules commonly allow testimony under oath at the discretion of a committee’s leaders. (In practice, most committees rarely require witnesses to testify under oath at legislative hearings. Sworn testimony is more common at investigative hearings and confirmation hearings.)
(via: <https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RS/98-392>)
Now, the NSA's lawyers absolutely _did_ lie under oath to the Supreme Court.
What happened because of that? Absolutely fuckall.
So, even if Clapper was testifying under oath, I'd expect absolutely nothing would have happened. (Don't forget that this is mostly the same Congress that gave every telecom company that (very, _very_ much illegally) permitted NSA warrantless access to their phone and data networks _retroactive_ immunity from prosecution.)
To make my position on this clear, it absolutely _should_ be standard practice for folks testifying on matters in front of Congress to be sworn in and give testimony under oath.
The fact that it's actually very uncommon ("It's not done because our Honored Guests might think that we're impugning their honor and integrity!" is more or less the excuse I've heard for not doing it.) says (to me) quite enough about how disinterested Congress is in justice and integrity.
That said I do agree that _more_ testimony should be made under oath and that we should in general consider testimony not under oath is much more suspect. But I don't think there is a generally correct approach here.
I thought this was settled years ago
I mean, Saddam was the one making these claims the loudest (to look strong).
However, I'd be interested in learning more from those here who do have that knowledge and are willing to share perspective on these sort of events.
In general, I think it's valuable to be curious about things you're not necessarily interested in.
HN is a place I come to escape the rest of the internet.
I hope it doesn't get ruined by politics, like everything else in the world seems to have been.
I already understand the status quo, so I don't enjoy hearing arguments which defend the status quo.
[0] https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page
The admission here is that the only reason why this was upvoted or on the front page is because the only good news is Trump schadenfreude and the opportunity for launching cheap attacks here.
The only 'bad news' is any good news that benefits Trump. (Which never makes it on top on HN anyway, and it shouldn't and vice versa because it is pure politics and creates a complete mess of the comments and dang knows it.)
Just look at the wave of flagged comments everywhere in this thread. It tells use that there is good reason why such news like this should not be on top of this page. (It is not intellectually interesting, it is partisan and a heavily divisive flame-bait topic.)
It never helps pouring fuel on the flames.
Edit: The comments above yours (at the time of writing) are mostly okay, but as I read further down, it ventures into the territory of 'such and such person and party is bad' which I think HN is not a good place for that kind of discord.
But no, back in those days this board was absolutely dominated by ancaps and other libertarian types. The socialists and other progressives only really started getting active in the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street. Like any other causeheads, they tirelessly fill these boards with their messaging. The only thing that they really come together to agree on is "fuck the poor". You see it whenever posts about homelessness, zoning or rent regulation pop up.
Lectures are fun though. At least here in the United States, we're so serious about bigotry that even a statement that can be misinterpreted will destroy your career. Then Europeans deride us for being a divided, racist country...meanwhile all across Europe you have major political parties getting large double digit percentages of the vote running on hateful anti-immigrant platforms, major political candidates pulling stunts like burning the Quran as a party demonstration and football players getting racist expletives shouted at them during their matches. And we haven't started talking about Asia yet. That gets even more special.
So please, tell me more about how this is limited to the United States.
I've posted various explanations about this over the years - a bunch are at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869, which shows how far back political discussion goes on HN, as well as the argument about politics on HN.
If anyone reads those past explanations and has a question about this that I haven't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Just try stating that Trump is innocent from another account and watch your comment get flagged and downvoted into oblivion.
This kind of thread can be a lynch party, but nothing else. Anyone with any other thoughts will be silenced and punished by the majority.
It’s all a farce, both sides. The media needs to stop making Trump relevant so that we all can move on.
There are worse things coming down the pipeline than Trump anyway, it seems he was just a trial balloon for the fascist era we're heading into. I just wish he'd go away already.