Third Arrest for Trump
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I guess attempted thwarting is a serious matter.
But he was simply following Ms. Clinton's advice to never concede, never.
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That is one of the many good things about this indictment. It’s not about Jan 6th, it’s about the very real attempt to thwart the 220 year old tradition of peaceful transfer of power.
As I’ve said numerous times, Jan 6 was merely the cinematic denouement of a months-long effort to overthrow an election. The charges relate to the latter.
I didn’t see the presser, it’s a shame if he made it about Jan 6th. But he got the charges right. .
@Jon said in Third Arrest?:
That is one of the many good things about this indictment. It’s not about Jan 6th, it’s about the very real attempt to thwart the 220 year old tradition of peaceful transfer of power.
As I’ve said numerous times, Jan 6 was merely the cinematic denouement of a months-long effort to overthrow an election. The charges relate to the latter.
I didn’t see the presser, it’s a shame if he made it about Jan 6th. But he got the charges right. .
Jack Smith is looking tired. Many long hours at the office these days, I'm sure.
Anyway, you're right. This is half about punishing Trump's actions and half about warning other candidates who lose an election in a landslide if they try to prevent the certification of the results.
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He can’t. NY and GA are out of his reach
The zenith of American politics would be for him to put a round in the chamber of his pistol, apologize to god and man, put it deep in his mouth, and pull the trigger.
@Jon said in Third Arrest?:
He can’t. NY and GA are out of his reach
The zenith of American politics would be for him to put a round in the chamber of his pistol, apologize to god and man, put it deep in his mouth, and pull the trigger.
No way, he would need it to be a Trump Bullet (TM) using a Trump Pistol (TM), apologizing to the author of the Bible (held up in front of a church with his Apprentice glare).
Link to video -
National Review, no fan of Trump says that the indictment should not stand:
The indictment of former president Donald Trump by Biden Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith on four felony charges arising out of his efforts to undo President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election is momentous — not just in its potential impact on our politics, but in what it could mean for the rule of law.
We have on many occasions condemned Trump’s appalling actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election. They were impeachable. He came close to being convicted in a Senate impeachment trial; with 57 senators finding him guilty, he was saved only by the Constitution’s two-thirds supermajority mandate for conviction and disqualification.
Now, through a special counsel it appointed for this precise purpose, the Biden Justice Department is attempting to use the criminal process as a do-over for a failed impeachment. In effect, Jack Smith is endeavoring to criminalize protected political speech and flimsy legal theories — when the Supreme Court has repeatedly admonished prosecutors to refrain from creative theories to stretch penal laws to reach misconduct that Congress has not made illegal.
In our constitutional system, Congress is trusted with the duty to check egregious executive misconduct. Its failure to convict Trump understandably galls many of his opponents — left, right, and center. This feeling is accentuated by their sense both that Trump is unfit for the presidency and that there is a very real possibility that he could be elected president again.
Hence the pressure on the Justice Department to hold Trump accountable in a way the political system did not. But criminal prosecution is an inapt substitute for the congressionally driven political process that the Constitution set up to address gross abuses of power.
Public office is a privilege, not a right. That is why a president may be ousted, without all the protections of criminal due process, for violating the public trust. In contrast, criminal prosecution is designed to address private wrongs, not derelictions of public duty. It endows the accused with enhanced protections because at stake are rights — liberty, property — not the privilege of political power.
Whether misconduct rises to the level of an impeachable offense is indefinite, left to the people’s representatives to assess based on what the facts and circumstances say about a public official’s fitness for duty. Criminal offenses are the antithesis of that. They must be defined by statute with sufficient clarity so that the average person knows what is forbidden, and a defendant is presumed innocent. A guilty verdict must be supported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt — proof not only that the person performed the statutorily prohibited acts, but also did so knowing that his conduct was illegal.
Here, it is not even clear that Smith has alleged anything that the law forbids. The indictment relates in detail Trump’s deceptions, but that doesn’t mean they constitute criminal fraud. As the Supreme Court reaffirmed just a few weeks ago, fraud in federal criminal law is a scheme to swindle victims out of money or tangible property. Mendacious rhetoric in seeking to retain political office is damnable — and, again, impeachable — but it’s not criminal fraud, although that is what Smith has charged. Indeed, assuming a prosecutor could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump hadn’t actually convinced himself that the election was stolen from him (good luck with that), hyperbole and even worse are protected political speech.
As for obstruction, Americans, presidents included, have a right to attempt to influence Congress, even based on dubious or imagined evidence. To establish obstruction, Smith must prove that Trump’s efforts at persuasion were corrupt — again, in the sense that he knew his badgering and lobbying had no factual or legal merit. The concept of corruption is meant to reach clearly criminal conduct, such as evidence manipulation or witness tampering. It has never been understood to reach wrong-headed legal theories. To apply it that way, as Smith proposes, would chill not only political speech, but the constitutional right of a defendant to mount a legal defense.
Finally, Smith is charging Trump with a civil-rights violation, on the theory that he sought to counteract the votes of Americans in contested states and based on a post–Civil War statute designed to punish violent intimidation and forcible attacks against blacks attempting to exercise their right to vote. What Trump did, though reprehensible, bears no relation to what the statute covers.
In his press conference announcing the charges, Smith — for good reason — did not dwell on his questionable charges. He instead emphasized the Capitol riot. Anyone witnessing his remarks would have believed that Trump had incited a forcible attack on the Capitol. Of course, Smith has not charged him with any such thing because he doesn’t have the evidence to tie him criminally to the riot. The prosecutor was making a political statement, clearly aimed at swaying the jury pool in blue Washington, D.C., where the Justice Department brags daily about having charged more than a thousand rioters.
There is a reason Smith does not have a solid statutory crime to rely on. To criminalize the conduct for which he seeks to convict Trump, Congress would have to write sweeping laws that could easily be wielded by one party against another to punish objectionable political conduct. That would undermine both electoral politics and the rule of law.
This indictment shouldn’t stand.
Emphasis mine.
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It’s just pure poetry that Jan 6 is the “legal” justification for indictment for crimes not having directly to do with Jan 6.
The complexion of TDS would be drastically different if Capitol security had been better. There isn’t a single TDS sufferer in the world who would have wanted better Capitol security that day. The Jan 6 card allows for anything, including destruction of legal norms, as we see. Obviously this will all come back the other way, in tribal warfare.
Education is extremely important.
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It’s just pure poetry that Jan 6 is the “legal” justification for indictment for crimes not having directly to do with Jan 6.
The complexion of TDS would be drastically different if Capitol security had been better. There isn’t a single TDS sufferer in the world who would have wanted better Capitol security that day. The Jan 6 card allows for anything, including destruction of legal norms, as we see. Obviously this will all come back the other way, in tribal warfare.
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From Google:
18 U.S.C. § 242
This provision makes it a crime for someone acting under color of law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.@Jon said in Third Arrest?:
From Google:
18 U.S.C. § 242
This provision makes it a crime for someone acting under color of law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States."Cage the Fat Man?"
Wrong:
18 U.S. Code § 241 - Conspiracy against rights
If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
The judge in this case has a history of sentencing above guidelines.
There's hope for you Jon!
Hang him!
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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We had a sitting President refuse to accept his re-election loss. I have no problem with the DOJ throwing the full weight of the law against him to prevent this from happening again.
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We had a sitting President refuse to accept his re-election loss. I have no problem with the DOJ throwing the full weight of the law against him to prevent this from happening again.
@89th said in Third Arrest?:
We had a sitting President refuse to accept his re-election loss.
He must have accepted it at some point, he appears to have moved out.
Since it didn't happen, you won't need the DOJ to prevent it from happening again.
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We had a sitting President refuse to accept his re-election loss. I have no problem with the DOJ throwing the full weight of the law against him to prevent this from happening again.
@89th said in Third Arrest?:
We had a sitting President refuse to accept his re-election loss. I have no problem with the DOJ throwing the full weight of the law against him to prevent this from happening again.
The issue at hand, explained nicely in the National Review piece, is about whether this is the full weight of the law, or an overreach of the law. Regardless of how satisfying a smiting of Trump may feel, there will be ripple effects if we criminalize dishonest political messaging.
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We had a sitting President refuse to accept his re-election loss. I have no problem with the DOJ throwing the full weight of the law against him to prevent this from happening again.
@89th said in Third Arrest?:
We had a sitting President refuse to accept his re-election loss. I have no problem with the DOJ throwing the full weight of the law against him to prevent this from happening again.
Excuse me, but did Trump leave office at the appointed time or not?
Now, if you'd like to talk about politicians thinking and believing an election was stolen, and actively using legal means and the art of public persuasion to overturn what they consider bogus results and then you are actually stupid enough to think that the DOJ should throw the full weight of the department into those situations...
Well, stud duck, you need to screw your hat down tight and take another dally around the saddle horn, because you have saddled up an absolute idiot of an idea, with an 18-wheeler load of examples of people that need to feel "the full weight of the Justice Department".
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Did Trump leave the Whitehouse? Was there some military coup I'm unaware of?
Have you decided to become the Minister of Misinformation, where you trample on all speech you do not agree with?
Are you a big fan of Lincoln's actions in 1862, when he suspended habeus corpus? Even doing so after SCOTUS ruled that action unconstitutional?
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Departing the White House is possible while not accepting your election loss. It's like someone who gets evicted but is screaming that their fake rent check was valid the whole way out.
As I've said many times. Imagine if Obama lost in 2012 and acted the way Trump did. You would be singing quite a different tune whereas my tune wouldn't change. I'm a Conservative but Trump's antics after he lost is 100% unacceptable and unnecessarily created the mess he's in now. But I guess it's all about ratings, baby.
