Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump • Hacker News Board

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#981

Post by TearsInTheRain » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #532

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 years of investigations, two special prosecutor, two impeachments 3-4 non federal investigations all for different crimes... its almost comical to list all of that out and still have people think this isnt purely political.

"he was exceptionally criminal so they investigated him a lot more than normal" is a weird thing to use as evidence of political motivation.

So your opinion seems to be that investigations can never be political? Keep in mind that Trump is being indicted for a misdemeanor that they are contorting into a felony to avoid statute of limitations issue. I think everyone has to make up their own mind when an investigation is political and imho this one is comically so. So much so that i really struggle to see how any one can in good faith claim otherwise

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#982

Post by fuzzfactor » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

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…

>the reality is Trump, his attorney, and possibly others committed crimes and this grand jury is holding him accountable.

>As law-abiding citizens, is this not what we expect and has it not been the foundation of our judicial system for 247 years?

Well it's what I've been expecting for 50 years, ever since he started coming to South Florida in the 1970's as a quintessential unknown fake millionaire, where the locals recognized right away what his still-strongest defining characteristics were; that he cheats at golf and couldn't be trusted in a real estate deal.

You should have seen what it said in our local paper (The National Enquirer) way before he was on TV, when he was associated with only scandals and bankruptcy. This was a known gossip tabloid and some things might have been exaggerated but surely even more things made it under the radar and were never reported at all. For a few years now I've been wondering where the archives for the National Enquirer are anyway. It would give today's reporters a lot of potential ideas of people who still might be good to talk to.

Now in the 21st century he's still the furthest thing from a life-long Republican, and could never reach high enough to even shine the shoes of Ronald Reagan who was more of an actor than a president himself.

And if you want to invoke great Republican Presidents like Eisenhower or something, ask yourself if you were a Republican what kind of person would you rather vote for, Honest Abe or Dishonest Don?

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#983

Post by graeme » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

misssocrates wrote: post #425

graeme wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Quick question, who is the most criminal president in US history? Your post is a lot of meta talk and very short on actual....crimes. The idea behind this indictment is that Trump broke the law as a citizen. Not that he did stuff in office that people dislike. Which law did Obama break which you think he evaded prosecution for on account of being president. Please be specific.

Be specific about the charges in this case? How confident are you that they couldn't find something on every single President?

You could find something about almost anyone. See “two felonies a day”

My question was something which he would normally be prosecuted for, but wasn’t on account of being president.

> evaded prosecution for on account of being president

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#984

Post by firstlink » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

dbbk wrote: post #676

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 gist of it is, the hush money payments were covered up by filing false business records claiming it was for "lawyer's fees". That's the first issue. The second issue is that it can be considered an improper campaign contribution because it was to benefit the campaign. In order for it to be a felony, you need to connect the two together. Otherwise it's a misdemeanour. In terms of it being a "weak case", I would ju…

> lawyer's fees

This seems to be a very popular way to label questionable payments during presidential campaigns, given that both major candidates did it in 2016.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#985

Post by padjo » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 6:52 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.

Liberal democracies prosecute former leaders for crimes all the time. And civilised countries don’t need their citizens to be armed.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#986

Post by Blackstrat » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

gaganyaan wrote: post #977

Blackstrat wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it humorous how a simple list of factual statements can be down voted by some people here.

You're spreading misinformation, that's why. One easy google search away: https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-stormy-daniels-2018-st... > AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. The signed statement with the denial was publicly released on Jan. 30, 2018. Not long after, Daniels recanted the statement and said that an affair had occurred. She said her denials were due to a non-disclosure agreement and that she signed the…

Spare me AP fact checkers. Folks here need to be far more skeptical of “authorities”. It doesn’t matter if she recanted. It is a factual statement that her law firm released the letter. Nor are any of the others inaccurate. As I said, hating Trump is one thing. Corrupting the system to harass political opponents is another.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#987

Post by gaganyaan » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

Blackstrat wrote: post #986

gaganyaan wrote: post #977

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're spreading misinformation, that's why. One easy google search away: https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-stormy-daniels-2018-st... > AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. The signed statement with the denial was publicly released on Jan. 30, 2018. Not long after, Daniels recanted the statement and said that an affair had occurred. She said her denials were due to a non-disclosure agreement and that she signed the…

Spare me AP fact checkers. Folks here need to be far more skeptical of “authorities”. It doesn’t matter if she recanted. It is a factual statement that her law firm released the letter. Nor are any of the others inaccurate. As I said, hating Trump is one thing. Corrupting the system to harass political opponents is another.

Again, cherry-picking facts to push your favored narrative is misinformation. It does matter that you conveniently forgot/left out/whatever that she recanted. You were downvoted because people don't feel like wasting time dealing with bullshit.

Please stop doing that, or at least stop whining about it.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#988

Post by brigandish » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 12:10 AM UTC

pseingatl wrote: post #572

unixgoddess wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same question here...

Because only the well-funded can establish precedent. At least until Dobson , precedent was generally applicable, respected by lower courts and enforced on police and prosecutors.

Precedent can be and is open to change - and should be in the case of bad precedent - and did you mean Dobbs?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson_Women%27s_Hea...

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#989

Post by hajile » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 1:34 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #376

bsuvc wrote: post #84

Hacker News is better without unrelated political news.

The problem is that people draw the related/unrelated line very differently. The site mandate is intellectual curiosity, not political battle—but that still leaves quite a few stories with political overlap. If you look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html you'll see the phrase "interesting new phenomenon". The current story surely qualifies as that. I've posted various explanations about this over the…

This has NOTHING to do with intellectual curiosity.

Just try stating that Trump is innocent from another account and watch your comment get flagged and downvoted into oblivion.

This kind of thread can be a lynch party, but nothing else. Anyone with any other thoughts will be silenced and punished by the majority.

Re: Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

#990

Post by TeeMassive » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 2:05 AM UTC

freen wrote: post #670

TeeMassive wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cohen and Stormy Danielle changed their stories. What they say is unreliable. https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-stormy-daniels-admit... https://nypost.com/2018/08/23/how-long-before-cohens-lawyer-...

Only thing that matters: what is said under oath. The rest is marketing/BS.

> Only thing that matters: what is said under oath

You mean that what a witness has said outside of court can't be presented as evidence?