Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump • Hacker News Board

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#801

Post by r2_pilot » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

mise_en_place wrote: post #589

padjo wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t stop people like Pence and Lindsey Graham from cynically playing to the crowd by describing as outrageous charges that haven’t been made public yet

How would you like it if you were dragged from your house in the middle of the night for unspecified crimes. That’s what “sealed” charges are. With the way things are going, I’m sure you will find out soon. This is the type of stuff that happens in authoritarian regimes, not liberal democracies. All I can say is, I hope you’re armed when they’re at your doorstep next.

Oh no, I may possibly be arrested on nebulous charges regarding campaign finance laws(after pilfering classified documents, naturally, and calling election officials saying that I need a certain number of votes). And your advice is to have weapons when legitimate authorities come knocking. Somehow I think you may be overly paranoid about the possibility of this happening. It's certainly not something I lose sleep over at night. And I definitely won't be using force against them; we have a functional court system to provide an extra check against excesses like you presume to exist. For the record, I'm aware that the system isn't perfect by any means, but it's also nowhere as bad as you surmise.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#802

Post by twic » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #764

brutus1213 wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a lawyer, nor am I American. No horse in this except maybe a citizen of the world. This seems like a weak case to me. For a former president and polarizing figure, you would think the bar on prosecution would be air tight. If he goes to jail for a crime the population (or his support base) considers is trivial or if he does not get convicted, it raises Trump's stock to the stratosphere. Perhaps if he goes to jail…

> Perhaps if he goes to jail, he can't run for office? There is no restriction on a candidate for the US presidency vis-a-vis current or former incarceration. Anyone could constitutionally run a presidential campaign or even serve while in jail. This is because the Supreme Court has held that only the Constitution can set qualification requirements. [0] The sole, debatable exclusion seems to be the 25th Amendment, wh…

Indeed, Eugene Debs ran for president while in prison in 1920:

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/debs-received-millio...

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#803

Post by pclmulqdq » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

pdpi wrote: post #605

I commented on my understanding of the situation on reddit a while ago. Copy/pasting here: He paid off Stormy Daniels to keep her from talking about their relationship. Paying her to stay silent is 100% legal, there is absolutely no issue with an NDA like that. The illegal part isn't the what, it's the how. Political campaigning laws set a limited budget for how much money you can spend on campaigning, which is defin…

As I understand it, the amount that you can spend on your own campaign is unlimited (thanks to the first amendment), but the amount that other people can contribute is strictly capped due to campaign finance laws. Michael Bloomberg took advantage of this when he did his "primary blitz" in 2020.

If this was actually Trump paying his own hush money via his lawyer, then it makes Michael Cohen a liar (when he said that he paid it out of his own pocket, thus admitting to violating campaign finance law), but Trump seems to not be implicated at all.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#804

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #716

marcell wrote: post #389

I've scrolled through the top ~10 or so comments, and none of them, describe or comment on the nature of the charges against Trump. To be fair to the commenters, most stories are vague. The charges relate to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, but hush money is not a crime. It's also not a crime to have an affair with Stormy Daniels. So the most salacious parts of the story are not what the crime is. My understand…

The indictment is sealed so the actual charges aren't public, yet. Everyone is just speculating. Interesting items: - This is from the NY State courts so it is NY State laws in play (likely campaign finance laws), not Federal. If it were Federal it would be prosecuted by Federal attorney's in a Federal court. - A Grand Jury (for those that don't know) is composed of citizens, about 16-20 or something, that proceed li…

> A Grand Jury (for those that don't know) is composed of citizens, about 16-20 or something, that proceed like a court case understanding laws and evidence presented, including witness interviews, and the result here is that they chose to indict. This means that 12 (or more) citizens decided there was enough evidence that specific laws might have been broken to bring charges against him.

There's also a famous saying, though, that any prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich (interestingly, I never knew the original author of that quote was a judge who subsequently served 13 months in prison, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Wachtler).

But, the overall point is that the bar for grand jury indictment is intentionally low. I'm not going to speculate on aspects of the indictment because I don't know what they are yet (and it always amazes me how so many folks always dig in to be part of "their team" even before they know what the game is), but before the indictments I did see some legal experts who were definitely not Trump fans argue that it was not a case they would've brought.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#805

Post by dev_daftly » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 2:04 PM UTC

anonymousiam wrote: post #544

marcell wrote: post #389

I've scrolled through the top ~10 or so comments, and none of them, describe or comment on the nature of the charges against Trump. To be fair to the commenters, most stories are vague. The charges relate to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, but hush money is not a crime. It's also not a crime to have an affair with Stormy Daniels. So the most salacious parts of the story are not what the crime is. My understand…

The indictment was filed under seal, so why does CNN and the New York Times know what's in it?

Because they leaked what they think is the most damaging information to their propaganda arm

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#806

Post by JustSomeNobody » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

marcell wrote: post #389

I've scrolled through the top ~10 or so comments, and none of them, describe or comment on the nature of the charges against Trump. To be fair to the commenters, most stories are vague. The charges relate to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, but hush money is not a crime. It's also not a crime to have an affair with Stormy Daniels. So the most salacious parts of the story are not what the crime is. My understand…

I found this [0] to be interesting, however, because I'm not well versed in law, I'm still unclear on a lot. Maybe a real lawyer could weigh in?

[0] https://www.justsecurity.org/85745/survey-of-prosecutions-fo...

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#807

Post by toss1 » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

marcell wrote: post #389

I've scrolled through the top ~10 or so comments, and none of them, describe or comment on the nature of the charges against Trump. To be fair to the commenters, most stories are vague. The charges relate to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, but hush money is not a crime. It's also not a crime to have an affair with Stormy Daniels. So the most salacious parts of the story are not what the crime is. My understand…

>>this seems like a weak case to me.

Said another commenter who, like everyone else outside of the DA's office, has literally no data on what is in the now-reported to be 34 indictments.

>> hard to parse the above, but it sounds very technical So, "I don't know what I'm talking about, generally don't like it, so I'll just call it weak.", is itself a very weak statement.

It is extremely unlikely that this reluctant prosecutor would go to the mat with a weak case around one event such as a payoff to one woman, even if it was done in a way to violate tax and campaign finance laws.

We know no details, but there are clues in the public domain. The same DA office already convicted the Trump Organization on 17 counts and got the maximum fines [0]. There were witnisses called before the Grand Jury who would have spoken to much more than a single payoff scheme. There were multiple women, and David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer, who was known to have paid for and killed multiple scandalous stories on Trump's behalf, and Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, who plead guilty in a 15-year Trump Org Tax Scheme.

Based on this, it is a reasonable inference to expect charges of a years-long conspiracy to commit tax, business, and campaign fraud.

I suppose if you consider white-collar crime "technical" and therefore weak, any such indictments would be weak.

But in terms of the actual strength of the case, based both on that DA's record of convictions, and the historic profile of this case (and the career-terminating consequences of losing it), they would not be bringing charges unless they thought they were extremely strong and they were extremely confident of winning.

[0]https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-organization-sentenced...

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#808

Post by jackmott42 » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 2:09 PM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #169

mbgerring wrote: post #55

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.

> 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 presiden…

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.

It is so tragic and disappointing.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#809

Post by Eisenstein » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

dev_daftly wrote: post #796

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine part of the strategy is to get Trump on the stand. He's going to lie (because he can't help it) and that opens him up to perjury charges. But there are bizarre aspects to this case. One is that Trump associates like Giuliani and Deripaska were raided, but there don't seem to have been any subsequent charges. Another is that there's so much on Trump - from tax dodging, to Jan 6, to links to suspect foreign…

The strategy is the democrats have been fundraising on this idea for years and the donors are getting upset

I haven't heard of this. Who are they raising funds from who are being promised an indictment on Trump?

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#810

Post by rayiner » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

ChicagoDave wrote: post #711

brutus1213 wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a lawyer, nor am I American. No horse in this except maybe a citizen of the world. This seems like a weak case to me. For a former president and polarizing figure, you would think the bar on prosecution would be air tight. If he goes to jail for a crime the population (or his support base) considers is trivial or if he does not get convicted, it raises Trump's stock to the stratosphere. Perhaps if he goes to jail…

[flagged]

> The GOP’s only power is in gerrymandering, voter suppression, and low-population “red” states that prevent the overall electorate from choosing preferred candidates.

The GOP won the 2022 House popular vote by over 3 million votes. There was no net effect from “gerrymandering.” The GOP won 51% of seats with 50.6% of the popular vote. Indeed, if we decided the executive based on who gets the most votes in the legislative election, like most countries, the GOP would have had two more years in charge of the executive branch since 2000.

As to Gen Z—they don’t vote and by the time they do, plenty will vote Republican. Millennials voted overwhelmingly for Obama. But in 2022, Democrats won the 30-44 demographic by just 4 points. The GOP also had their best year in decades among Latinos and Asians—losing Latino men by single digits.

And all that is with a national GOP that’s in the middle of a civil war. Look to Florida to see what could happen if they get their shit together. In Florida, a state Obama won twice, DeSantis won 56% of Hispanics and women overall. He even tied (at 47%) among women aged 18-29!