191–200 of 1001 posts
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Not to mention finally becoming a signatory to the International Criminal Court. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Internat...
That cannot happen without a significant change to the constitution which will never happen.
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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.
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.
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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.
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. 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.
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.
What I don't love is the timing of it. It makes it easily dismissible as political theatre. Wait until after the election.
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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 credibi…
There was nothing wrong or illegal about the payment. No one has ever pointed to a charge that related to the payment itself that I’ve heard. They are targeting the record keeping.
This seems like an obvious call to civil war when we jail an ex-president who is the frontrunner for the next election. Jailing a person who could as likely as not be be supported by a majority of voters for the presidency would probably be the single most anti-democratic act to ever occur in the US. I never thought we could outdo secret trials, but here we are, doing a speedrun into total collapse. I'm just astounde…
> I'm just astounded that the centrist blob thinks that they can get away with this utilizing a largely right-wing military Trump pissed off all the higher ups at the military. And what would they do anyways? Start overturning jury results they don't like? That's effectively military rule, and they know that'd just end in disaster.
Absolutely true, but the vast bulk of the military lean Trumpy, and the generals will sort themselves out based on their self interests.
> And what would they do anyways? Start overturning jury results they don't like? That's effectively military rule, and they know that'd just end in disaster.
It's weird how you can talk about a military coup as if it's an impossibility that has never ever happened. What's never happened is the US indicting a president, and in this case it's arresting the frontrunner in the next election on an extremely shaky premise that most people I've encountered have trouble explaining clearly.
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I don't understand how anyone can justify this perspective. If a crime is committed, there should be consequences. I don't care who it is or what their status is. Instead of accepting it as status-quo, we should be going after everyone at every level, even more fiercely towards politicians.
It's like the political equivalent of digging through someone's comment history on social media, looking for something that can be weaponized to cancel them. If power balances shift slightly I'm sure the new regime will be able to find a crime Biden committed and indict him for it. And so on and so forth with revenge indictments everytime power shifts to the other party
Why is this a problem for you or I?
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>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…
>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.
1. First there are two alternative realities being played in real time in US: This arguably is the first time this has happened in US history (maybe civil war was another time) but two populations have become so isolated that they essentially live in 2 different realities. An amusing moment that depicts this occurred in John Oliver's recent segment where he plays a clip of Ron Desantis bragging that the UN hates the laws he passed and John plays it completely incredulous why would someone brag that he is hated by the UN. Since this audience is mostly liberal and understands the liberal worldview, please quiz yourself what worldview would brag about being hated by UN. If you cant understand, you literally can't understand anything about ~48% of the country, and if you're serious about politics you need to at least understand the 2 sides, ideally more than that. The fact is most of the US population barely understands the other side and so they will necessarily clash on most political issues.
2. There is a huge amount of democratic energy on both sides. There was always a lot of political energy on the left, since RooseVelt, Civil Rights movement, now LGBTQ, Black Lives Matter etc. It used to be a characteristic of the left. Now there is in fact a suprisingly large amount of political energy on the right, that first started with the Tea Party Movement in the 2010's and of culminating Trump who could essentially be considered a Populist Leader from the Right.
3. So we have two populations, with large political energies compared to any time in recent history, who also see the world so differently that neither can understand each other. The only reason this hasn't led to civil war like situation is because they both still to some extent follow the law, and still believe in Democracy as a schelling point for choosing who rules them. Now if you go ahead and jail the populist leader, you are going even closer to complete political fracture especially after a good chunk of the population believes the election was stolen from him. If you think this will convince any Trump supporters they're wrong (lol), I have a pipe dream to sell you.
Quick question, who is the most criminal president in US history? If your instant answer wasn't Obama (or if it was Obama because of drone strikes lol), you definitely do not understand the other side in any meaningful way to heal any political fracture this country is suffering with. So good job playing your reenactment in our version of Populares vs Optimates, and we all know how that ended
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I don't understand how anyone can justify this perspective. If a crime is committed, there should be consequences. I don't care who it is or what their status is. Instead of accepting it as status-quo, we should be going after everyone at every level, even more fiercely towards politicians.
We've had six years of sore losers (whose own "pied piper strategy" fouled them up) endlessly vacuuming up mindshare while a lot bigger things are going down.