Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

The thing that surprised me yesterday was learning that being convicted of a felony doesn't prevent you from running for public office or the office of President of the United States! So it seems like a pretty impotent "hanging". I had assumed that barring him from running for re-election was the major motivation behind pursing these indictments, but I guess that's not the case. So that suggests that these moves are mainly about public opinion? If that's what it is, then this particular indictment seems like the weakest of the possible ones that have been talked about. Taking all this into account, I can't help but think that this kind of plays into Trump's desire to be the center of attention.

I'm under the impression that unfortunately such a basic level of maturity is unusual when USA politics and USA law are concerned, let alone the combination of both.

This is not true. Republican voters have been proven to be able to discern fake news when monetarily motivated. They only swallow lies for free. Here is the paper on it.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01540-w

> There is a huge amount of democratic energy on both sides.

This is not true, as the entire gain on the right has been on the back of disenfranchment, gerrymandering, populism and threats of anti democratic measures.

This goes from having no polls in democratic areas, to passing laws making it hard, confusing or impossible to register and get mail in ballots on time.

Having people with guns near voting stations, having the sitting president asking people "to find the votes", having the media peddle a stolen election when the president lost the popular vote twice.

None of that is democratic energy.Then again the GOP went to 2024 without a manifesto. First time in political history that a running party doesn't even make promises, but who cares, they were not there to win votes but to make others lose them.

> The only reason this hasn't led to civil war like situation is because

Its because one side is economically, and numerically dwarfing the other. What are states with the economy of a third world country and the population of a medium city gonna do if federal taxes stop propping up their economy. Since 2008 not a single Republican state has paid more in taxes than has taken in federal income. They are all sucking the tit of the federal gov and a "civil war" situation would end in about 5 minutes when their entire military doesn't get paid.

> Quick question, who is the most criminal president in US history? If your instant answer wasn't Obama

God you would have to explain this one. Because you have a tape of Nixon's aid saying they invented the war on drugs to convict black people and left wing protestors. And that is hard to top as both failed policy, criminal behaviour, loss of gdp, freedom, politically motivated state terrorism... like jesus to top that you would have to prove Obama did 9/11

No. It isn't.

> That's not a crime

Also not what he did.

> Now I can see how they can find some stuff in there to make SOMETHING stick

So you called it a weak case. Despite not seeing the 34 charges and severely misunderstanding the basic facts of the situation?

Maybe its not a weak case and you just do not know about it?

Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen paid 130,000 dollars to a pornstar to hush about sex she had with Trump in 2006 while Melania was pregnant. He did this weeks before the election. This can be considered campaign financing violation, similar to what Clinton did with the Steele Dossier. Despite this, he lied about it, and a number of other charges were discovered. So he pleaded guilty and got a 6 year ruling.

During this trial he admitted Trump told him to pay that money, this opened the investigation into Trump's involvement. The first discovery was that Trump had paid Cohen with money from his business to give him back the 130,000$. That is misclassification of business files to commit a crime, which is a felony, the investigation fo said felony opened up a ton of documentation into Trump's finances and business. The DA got access to Trumps taxes in 2020, and after over 2 years of investigation are now presenting 34 charges, all of which the jury found substancial evidence to indict.

What started it, a misdemeanor of paying off someone to not make you look bad right before an election, opened up the investigation into the entire trove of potentially illegal business fillings. Some of which appear to be felonies.

Lets see when the case is unsealead if it's so weak, but it is not looking good.