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Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

nytimes.com

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Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#881

Post by tim333 »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #625

NY grand juries (regular people) do all of the actual work without prompting from the DA. The only thing the DA does is provide witnesses and physical evidence and read the laws relating to the evidence. The grand jury asks all the questions of the witnesses and reviews all the evidence. Then they vote to indict or not in private. The DA asks if they voted and how. They report their votes. At no point is the DA coerc…

No great fan of Trump but the case against him seems weak. The law should be there to prosecute criminals, not to have a go at politicians you don't like.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#882

Post by sowbug »

msrenee wrote: post #862
twic wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, Eugene Debs ran for president while in prison in 1920: https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/debs-received-millio...

If he is convicted of a felony and does run for president again, then he won't be able to vote, right? Maybe it'll be an impetus to create a clearer path for convicted felons who served their time and don't reoffend to regain their voting rights. Probably not, but it would be nice.

Many but not all states put conditions on such voting. As you might expect, the severity of a state's restrictions correlates with its political leanings.

https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-ri...

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#883

Post by sowbug »

ChatGTP wrote: post #685
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…

No at all a Trump fan but another one of these things that could easily backfire and make him look like a hero. It wreaks of some type of attempt to politically assassinate him before the next election. Like I said, not a fan, just kind of seems suspicious.

*reeks

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#884

Post by happythebob »

codeddesign wrote: post #798
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…

Hillary Clinton: Charged with $113,000 for breaking campaign finance law. Obama: Charged with $375,000 for breaking campaign finance law. Regardless of how you vote, this is a political stunt and witch hunt. Next Biden will be indicted when he leaves office, then the next opponent, and so on… This is an extremely dangerous precedence that will do nothing but fuel both sides.

This topic is a joke, since when does Hacker News consist of posters who don't understand the concept of a Grand Jury?

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#885

Post by meghan_rain »

eldritch_4ier wrote: post #530
meghan_rain wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be perfectly clear, I am not a fan of Donald Trump, and personally think he is likely guilty. I'm just commenting on a specific aspect of the case that I find interesting. Why is it necessary to state this? I find these kind of statements very interesting. They tell us a lot about unspoken rules, societal taboos, Overton windows etc etc

Everyone assumes there's a 2nd degree hidden intention. "You would only defend Trump on anything if you were a huge fan of his!"

Exactly

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#886

Post by it »

sanderjd wrote: post #431
it wrote: post #392

Oh, this is interesting. By the same reasoning, would a grand jury indict companies who pay former employees they fired not to speak ill of them?

No, because that does not violate campaign finance laws.

Oh I see. I wonder if he will be allowed to settle, as Hillary Clinton's team did for "intentionally obscuring their payments through Perkins Coie and failing to publicly disclose the true purpose of those payments" with the Steele Dossier. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/31/hillary-clin...

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#887

Post by ModernMech »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #115
photochemsyn wrote: post #67

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 progra…

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?

On what grounds would the DA of Manhattan have for prosecuting Bush and Cheney?

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#888

Post by yamtaddle »

jshen wrote: post #422
stuckinhell wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#889

Post by leereeves »

_pigpen__ wrote: post #728
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…

The bar should be fairly air tight. Cohen has already served time for this crime. Moreover, he was charged with acting in conspiracy with “Individual 1”. While Trump will face a separate trial, with all that entails, in practice there was already a successful trial for at least some of Trump’s crime. In your example, both payments would be legitimate business expenses.

> Cohen has already served time for this crime.

No, he hasn't. He pled guilty to seven unrelated financial charges and to one charge related to the payment to Stormy Daniels: making an excessive campaign contribution.

That last charge doesn't apply to Trump, who is allowed to contribute as much as he wants to his own campaign.

And Cohen's plea tells us nothing about whether recording the payment as "legal expenses" is a crime.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#890

Post by leereeves »

w0m wrote: post #877
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…

> for a former president and polarizing figure, you would think the bar on prosecution would be air tight. This i the crux I think - It's clearly a crime, but should he be held accountable or not due to notoriety? personally, I think public figures (especially politicians) should be held to a higher standard than mere-mortals; but many seem to believe the opposite. You don't want your arrested/prosecuted? Don't elect…

> It's clearly a crime

What, exactly, is "clearly a crime"?

The accounting issue is at worst a misdemeanor, unless the DA can show that the payment to SD was a campaign finance violation.

But if it was "clearly" a campaign finance violation, why haven't federal prosecutors charged him with that?

Bragg is a motivated prosecutor trying to find a way to prosecute Trump for a charge he has no jurisdiction over, while the prosecutors who do have jurisdiction don't think it's worth prosecuting.

And that's dangerous. Prosecutions should not be motivated by politics.

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