961–970 of 1001 posts
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.
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I just want to point out that the last time a similar case was brought was against Cohen for this exact same crime. Cohen was convicted and served time in federal prison. In his trial, Cohen testified that he broke the law at the direction of somebody only referred to in the public disclosures as “Individual 1”. The only plausible person this can be is Donald Trump. So, regardless of what you think of the case. Leavi…
Just a clarification: Cohen plead guilty as part of a plea deal. So the case never went to trial with an adversarial argument of facts between Prosecution and Defense. Therefore, we don't really know how good the case was. The fact that Cohen is a lawyer would seem to indicate that the case was solid enough that he was concerned he would lose on merit. However, a friend of mine who is managing partner in a legal firm…
Misdemeanor charges are criminal charges.
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> running your family as a syndicate Evidence? And offspring doing something on their own doesn't count. > illegal immigrants in order to sway voter demographics That's not how voting works. > dossier full of lies about your opponent Sure that one counts. Sometimes both choices are bad. But one candidate doing something bad doesn't mean you increase what the other candidate can get away with.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-reveals-biden-fami...
Hunter Biden's business partner outlines Joe Biden's involvement
https://nypost.com/2020/10/22/hunter-ex-partner-tony-bobulin...
Monthly encounters with migrants at U.S.-Mexico border remain near record highs
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/01/13/monthly-enc...
You'd have to be pretty naive not to acknowledge the long-term benefits to the Democratic party of increasing the Hispanic demographic. An incredible betrayal of democracy.
And as we know the Russian collusion dossier ran for years in the media. All complete lies.
And I haven't mentioned the pressure on social media companies to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story priority to an election (the facts of which were all true).
You'll note that at no point has anybody been held to account for any of the above.
But if you (alledgedly) paid some hush money to a woman 7 years ago (years past the statute of limitations) well, you're gonna be held to account then of course.
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 reason nobody is reporting on the actual charges (other than that there are ~30 of them) is because Grand Jury indictments are sealed until the suspect has been arraigned. There is speculation that many of the charges are related to falsifying business records to cover up the payment, which would explain the number of charges involved. If true, then this case has parallels with what happened with Bill Clinton in…
I always thought this was bullshit, despite being otherwise happy with bill Clinton’s presidential leadership. To me it seemed bill was in a position of power over Monica and it’s a clear case of statutory rape.
To me (as a personal opinion).
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They’re saying the charge is related to campaign finance violations, isn’t that a federal crime?
This is a state prosecutor. In the US system, state prosecutors can’t charge federal crimes, only state ones. Unlike some other countries-here in Australia, state prosecutors can charge federal crimes and federal prosecutors can charge state ones. Australia doesn’t have the hard separation between state and federal legal systems that the US has
The question asked is: can the President pardon Trump for the federal part of the crime, thus reducing the charge to a misdemeanor. The answer is “No”, because he has not been convicted in federal court, there is nothing to pardon him of.
However it does raise the question: Is it proper to convict someone of a state crime based on “criminality” where the criminality is a federal crime that they have not been convicted of in federal court? It seems unlikely.
In any case, I believe all of this is just media speculation and presumably there will be more clear-cut charges in the real indictment.
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From what I understand, it's a big violation of campaign finance laws, and it's what Michael Cohen already went to prison for. It's certainly not the worst of Trump's crimes, but it's weird that Cohen went to prison so quickly, but it took years before Trump himself was finally indicted. Surely if Cohen was guilty, then so was Trump?! The entire impossibility of prosecuting Trump is weird to me. There's a host of cri…
> There's a host of crimes to pick from The only reasonable conclusion to draw here is that the evidence of those crimes is even weaker than this (already pretty weak) charge.
There's a lot we don't know, and I would caution you against drawing "the only reasonable conclusion" from extremely limited evidence.
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From what I read, the indictment is sealed. Does that mean we don't really know precisely what the charges are yet? I'm willing to wait and see. Also, from everything I've read, well defended people are remarkably hard to convict. This is as it should be, as it may let some people go scot free, but protects the rest of us. Convicting Trump will be hard. It might fail. Does this mean that charges should not be brought…
How does it protect the rest of us if "well defended people" means "those able to afford better lawyers"?
I was thinking along the lines of protections such as presumption of innocence, and burden of proof, as making it hard to convict people. But it does require competent defense to enforce those things.
An example of easy to convict is countries where prominent dissidents are arrested for nebulous "corruption," and basically stand no chance.
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…
If this is perceived to be a weak case, will this help Trump in his election campaign? I understand even his loyal voter base are now sometimes embarrassed by his actions. For example, him storing confidential papers at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency finished. That is different from when he was first elected as President. At that time he couldn't do anything wrong. I am sure the right wing press will spin this as a…
People who gave Trump a chance in 2016, or stayed home because they didn't think he'd be that bad, changed their minds in 2020. Persuadable voters in Michigan and Wisconsin who moved away from Trump are not more likely to vote for him because he was arrested.
The grievance politics works exceptionally well among a certain block of voters, but he needs to make gains beyond this block if he wants to win. There's just not enough of them.
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> If this is perceived to be a weak case, will this help Trump in his election campaign? Trump organized a violent coup against his own government to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to his political rival. So will his indictment over an unrelated crime help his campaign? No. It's hosed from the start. Because he organized a coup against the government, and everyone saw it on TV.
Unfortunately a lot of people are HAPPY he did those things
It'll come down to the campaigns and the electoral college. He is not sure to be defeated but he will continue to be an underdog unless he broadens his message.
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 pr…
A word of caution, 11 of those counts likely correspond to the 11 reimbursements of Cohen. There are likely many repeated actions which all work together as a unit. So I wouldn't make too much of the number until we have more information.