I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about the verdict in the falsely dubbed “hush-money trial” that came down with unseemly speed yesterday. As with other high profile trials where I have not been on the jury or in the courtroom, I don’t have a legitimate basis for much ethical analysis of the trial itself, including the competence of the attorneys or the judge. The Kyle Rittenhouse prosecution was an exception, because of the blatant prosecutorial misconduct in that case that was evident from direct quotes (and the defense’s ethics were dodgy as well).
The position that it was unethical to bring this case to trial as a form of what has been dubbed “lawfare” by critics is already locked in for me, and that is the most important feature of the case. As to the substance of the charges, the absurd number of counts in the indictment were obvious over-charging, an unethical prosecution trick but one that isn’t ever punished. The fact that Michael Cohen was the “star” witness against Trump should have, in my view, made the prosecution’s case insufficient to sustain a conviction on its face. Maybe others in historically significant criminal trials have been convicted “beyond a reasonable doubt” based on the testimony of such a throbbing habitual liar—the Lincoln assassination conspirators and Sir Thomas More come to mind—-but the former was a pro forma military tribunal affair where the defendants’ rights were severely restricted and there was never any chance that they would not be convicted, and the latter took place in England under the direction of a vengeful despot.
The fact that the verdict came down so quickly in what was a very strange and complicated case—with judge’s instructions to the jury that would take me a couple of days to read and understand—strongly suggests a jury that had made up its mind already. I believe that it was wrong not to sequester the jury: I did see a lot of the broadcast media coverage, and it was generally disgusting. The ugly cheerleading for a conviction on all the channels except Fox News, which sounded like an arm of the defense team, couldn’t help but bias the jury.
Oh—those jury instructions are here. Good luck.
Last night, one of Trump’s attorneys said that the former President was “very involved” in choosing the jury. Well, Trump’s an idiot, and this time, far from the first, his hubris bit him in the…face. Putting two lawyers on the jury was insane. I’d estimate that in the nation as a whole, at least 75% of all lawyers detest Trump—heck, his own lawyers hate him—and in Manhattan, where Trump is even more spectacularly unpopular, I’d guess it’s closer to 90%. Lawyers on juries have undue influence: I know, because I’ve been a lawyer on a jury. Sure, one effective, fair, articulate lawyer who could break down the case for laymen might have been able to explain to jurors why the case was political and the prosecution’s theory was weak, but that was reckless gamble to bet on. After my experience with my ethics lawyers professional association and their unconscionable analysis of the recent Alito flag “scandal” as well as my conversations with my sister, I no longer have sufficient faith in most lawyers’ abilities or inclinations to avoid bias guiding their judgment in all matters related to Trump. I have a bit more faith in the analysis offered by legal experts like Prof. Turley and Andrew McCarthy, neither of whom are Trump admirers and who have shown the ability to be independent in their assessments of partisan-poisoned issues in the past.
There is no question in my mind, however, that the guilty verdict is a disaster on many levels, no matter what happens going forward. The case was election interference and designed to be. Even if it ends up having exactly the opposite effect the Democrat totalitarians who engineered the “lawfare” strategy to rescue Joe Biden and themselves seek, the damage to the nation, the democracy, the legal system and the public trust is incalculable. I hope it can be repaired or at least mitigated, but I sure don’t know how.
I’ll leave you with the ethics-tinged observations of three legal analysts.
First is hyper-partisan conservative Mark Levin, whom I cannot stand listening to on the radio because he is so extreme in his rhetoric and has one level: angry and nasty. However, he is a brilliant man and a genuine expert in American history, legal history, and the law. His long tweet yesterday (before the verdict) was illuminating:
It has been 6- weeks since this star chamber, kangaroo court proceeding started, preventing President Trump from campaigning on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays in the critical few months before the general election. This case has prevented hundreds of thousands of voters from hearing President Trump at rallies, meeting him in person, and the usual and normal activities a presidential candidate engages in to reach and persuade voters. This trial has forced President Trump to pay untold sums of money to defend himself, funds that would otherwise be used in campaign events and advertisements. Meanwhile, the court’s extreme gag order has prevented President Trump from speaking to voters about the full array of events taking place in the courtroom, while his political opponents can fashion statements and advertisements aimed at persuading voters that Trump should not be elected and Biden should be.
For these reasons and many more, it is the voters who are being disserved by this unlawful abomination. To put it bluntly, the is no law, state or federal, that has been broken. The statute of limitations on the state law had already run anyway. There is no federal campaign issue, which is why no federal campaign law has been specifically cited at any time during the trial.
Moreover, no other American, let alone presidential candidate, has been subjected to such a preposterous case, which further underscores its purpose.Furthermore, there is no state jurisdiction in a case that supposedly relies on a federal campaign law to create 34-state felonies, which federal authorities have examined and never charged. And the violations of President Trump’s due process rights are so numerous as to be impossible to comprehensively list here — from the filing itself to the jury instructions and everything in between.
All of this is directed at the voters — that is, to influence and interfere in the federal presidential election by a state prosecutor, a state judge, in a state courtroom, with a jury chosen from a limited jury pool. That’s the purpose of this entire exercise.
As I watch TV lawyers and others talk about Trump’s appeal options, I am surprised that they ignore a federal path to the Supreme Court. At issue is our federal voting system for president, the office of the presidency, and the ability of any local prosecutor to bring charges, even preposterous charges, against a presidential candidate. Appealing a guilty verdict through the state judicial process on, let’s say, a guilty verdict on a state issue, would be understandable. But it does not address the more significant constitutional issue: what I will call reverse federalism, that is, the seizing of federal jurisdiction by a state. This issue will not go away as other local and state prosecutors find political benefit in continuing this kind of lawfare. The entire poisonous effort must be addressed, and only the U.S. Supreme Court can do that. The federal, presidential election process is at stake as is the office of the presidency. No appeal to higher state courts will not resolve what is now a horrendous federal election problem created by a single DA and acting state judge. The damage has already been done, and every day that passes the damage increases.
For this reason, and others, Bush v. Gore is the only path the Supreme Court has provided for review. The Equal Protection Clause was used by the High Court when the Florida Supreme Court continually altered the state voting system in an apparent effort to deliver the electoral college votes to Al Gore. The High Court found, among other things, that in doing so, the state court was imposing an “unequal” application of the election law on voters depending on what county they resided in, in violation of the 14th amendment.
In the case at hand, the principle of equal protection also applies. In fact, it is even more compelling than it was in Bush v. Gore. A single Democrat-elected DA, who ran for office campaigning that he would get Trump, a single Democrat-appointed acting judge, who is conflicted by his donations, associations, and daughter’s fundraising on the case, together are preventing the putative Republican nominee for president from running a campaign for president (at least severely handicapping the campaign) for the first time in our nation’s history. Never before have a DA and state judge so abused their offices as to even attempt to influence or interfere with a presidential election. The TV lawyers and others are gnashing their teeth over this, and rightly so. They are appalled at what they are witnessing inside the courtroom — the motions, the rulings, the judge’s behavior, the jury instructions, etc. They are laying out reason after reason the case will be reversed on appeal, while lamenting that state appellate review is too slow to matter for purposes of the election. Former federal prosecutors opine that they have never seen a pro-prosecution judge like this. Defense attorneys are stunned at the multiple due process violations. Like a choir, the sing again and again about the damage this is doing to the rule of law, the justice system, the federal electoral process, and the federal election system, but they are blind to taking the only legal step that can be taken to at least attempt, in a serious, substantive, and federal constitutional way, to bring this case to the foot of the Supreme Court’s steps, so that the High Court can at least decide whether it needs to intervene, as it did in Bush v. Gore, or should allow local and state officials bulldoze through our federal election system and, more specifically, through the public’s ability to choose a president, the most important and powerful governmental official in our country.
The TV lawyers and others simply throw up their hands. This is the difference between analysts and advocates. It is also the difference between Democrat-Party and leftwing lawyers and “our” lawyers. I was president of Landmark Legal Foundation (I am not chairman) for years. Our exclusive focus was on difficult legal and constitutional matters. We have been plaintiffs and we have provided scholarly briefs to state and federal courts, and often federal appellate courts and the Supreme Court. We have litigated against numerous federal departments, including the DOJ, the IRS, Treasury Department, the EPA, the Interior Department, etc. We have litigated in dozens of states. We have challenged tax laws, campaign violations, administrative regulations, voting laws, etc. We have filed ethics complaints, briefs against presidents and major organizations and institutions. And we have done this for almost 50-years. Most of all, we have frequently found ourselves on the opposite side of the radical left, which is not shy about using the legal system as it is today — for lawfare in a presidential election.
The Manhattan case is intended to interfere with the normal and routine campaign process to Trump’s detriment and Biden’s advantage. Too many lawyers will not bring themselves or are simply by experience and knowledge not able to bring themselves, to the point of using the legal system in a legitimate and, indeed, necessary way to confront what has occurred here. More to the point, by their actions, they are intending to deny millions of citizens, especially those who have not decided how they will vote in November, in what is expected to be a very close election decided by a handful of states, full access to and participation in a federal, presidential campaign process in which candidates use multiple methods and means to reach them and persuade them. Elections are how we select our top governmental officials. Unconstitutional interference by anyone or anybody must not stand.
Finally, if there is a guilty verdict of some kind, that is what the state court sought by its own conduct. The label “convicted felon Donald Trump,” which the Biden campaign is reportedly intending to call the former president, clearly is intended to influence enough voters to impact the election results. The long state appellate process cannot fix that, and certainly not in time. Indeed, the matter becomes even more urgent. In my view, if there is a guilty verdict, Bush v. Gore and the Equal Protection Clause must be considered, even though we cannot predict in advance if the Supreme Court will take it up (it won’t have the opportunity if it is not asked).
Next is Professor Turley, critical of the case from the start (and he was in the courtroom) who wrote (in part) yesterday and today, before the verdict:
At the start of closing arguments, most honest observers were still wondering what the prosecutors were alleging as to the crime that Trump was allegedly concealing with the falsification of business records.
Then came the closing arguments. Around the country, it is standard for the government to go first with a closing to allow the defense to respond. The government is then given the privilege of a rebuttal after the defense rests. In New York, the defense must go first, giving the government free rein over its closing with no risk of contradiction from the defense. With the exception of objections, any abusive or improper arguments are left to the judge to address.
In the case of Judge Merchan, that protection was all but absent as the prosecution engaged in flagrant violations from offering testimony on unestablished facts to directly contradicting prior instructions. In one of the most egregious moments, Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the jury that it is an established fact that former Trump counsel Michael Cohen committed a federal election law violation on the direct orders of Donald Trump. Merchan had repeatedly said that Cohen’s earlier plea could not be used to imply the guilt of Trump. Merchan overruled an objection and Steinglass proceeded, as he did earlier in trial, to repeat the false statement.
Merchan did nothing as Steinglass told the jury that Hope Hicks cried in court because she knew that she had destroyed Trump’s defense (Hicks has never explained why she cried). Merchan did nothing as Steinglass falsely told the jury that the media and political campaigns do not do what Trump did in seeking to kill and plant stories. (This ignored, for example, that the Clinton campaign did precisely that repeatedly in the very same election, including with the false Russian collusion allegations)…
….the court allowed the jury to be told repeatedly that there were federal campaign violations committed by Trump. That is not true. Putting aside that the federal government found no basis to impose a civil fine, let alone bring a criminal charge, the court barred a legal expert who could have shown that no such violation occurred. The jury does not know that. Instead, the judge allowed them to be repeatedly told a false fact that could make it difficult for anyone to acquit.
However, the instructions then went in for the kill and turned the jury deliberations into a canned hunt. Consider just a few highlights from the curious aspects of these deliberations.
First, the judge has ruled that the jury does not have to agree on what actually occurred in the case. Merchan ruled that the government had vaguely referenced three possible crimes that constitute the “unlawful means” used to influence the election: a federal election violation, the falsification of business records, and a tax violation. The jurors were told that they could split on what occurred, with four jurors accepting each of the three possible crimes in a 4-4-4 split. The court would still consider that a unanimous verdict so long as they agree that it was in furtherance of some crime.
Second, the judge said that he would instruct the jury on the law but then omitted the key elements that established there was no federal campaign violation….Moreover, even if Trump’s legal settlement money could be viewed as a federal campaign contribution, it could not have been part of a conspiracy to influence the election since any reporting of a contribution would have had to occur after the election.
Third, not only can the jury disagree as to what occurred, but one of the three crimes is so circular as to produce vertigo in the jury room. The prosecutors zapped a dead misdemeanor back into life by claiming a violation under New York’s election law 17-152. The argument is that the crime was committed to further another crime as an unlawful means to influence the election. However, that other crime can be the falsification of business records. So the jury (or some jurors, at least) could find that some documents were falsified as an unlawful means of falsifying other documents.
Finally, Merchan is allowing conviction based on a “general intent” to defraud “any person or entity,” a dangerously vague concept in this novel criminal case…
Given the instructions and the errors in this trial, it would seem that an acquittal is almost beyond the realm of possibility.
..and after:
I am obviously saddened by the verdict, but not surprised. Until the very end, I was hopeful that there would be a hung jury, a result that could restore some integrity to the New York criminal justice system. However, I previously noted that the jury instructions made conviction much more likely. I referred to the deliberations as a legal “canned hunt” due to instructions that made conviction a near certainty….
Finally, here’s substack pundit John Lucas, also a lawyer, who adroitly expresses my problems with the case from an ethical, historical and democratic system perspective:
[T]hose gleefully cheering the result do not care about the damage that they have done to the nation….this New York judge, jury and prosecutors have flung this Country into a downward spiral from which we may never recover. I hope that I am wrong, but I fear that I am not.
… The rules are now set. When Republicans have the chance, they will play the game. Many, perhaps most, will think that a response is mandatory and that “taking the high road” is no longer an option. Instead, it would be regarded by the “progressive” left — that is to say those now in charge of the Democratic party — as weakness if they roll over and fail to respond. This is an existential threat to the stability of our political system and nation. That risk makes this the most dangerous day in the history of the Country, at least in our lifetimes. Henceforth, weaponization of the justice system against a political opponent will be the norm. Political grudges will be resolved by political opponents in cherry-picked courtrooms where conviction is most likely. All this confirms that when controlled by scoundrels, our judicial system is becoming more like what we expect in places like China, Cuba or Venezuela, where political opponents are routinely imprisoned or worse.
Where do we go from here beyond a never-ending fight where the latest victors attempt to bankrupt and imprison their adversaries? Solving that problem has just become exponentially more difficult.
Exactly.
Ethics Alarms 
Well, by golly, maybe we can console ourselves by viewing the jury verdict as proof that The System Works. The Dems constructed a strategy to use the legal system to bring down Trump and so far the system is working as planned.
This is sort of what the New York Times is arguing this morning. A triumph of the system!
Ya know what also worked? The Nazi system of justice! The Soviet system of justice. Show me the man; I’ll show you the crime!
“The damage has already been done, and every day that passes the damage increases.”
This summarizes the status quo as far as I am concerned. A successful appeal a year or eighteen months from now cannot and will not undo this travesty, certainly if it costs Trump to lose to the empty suit that is Joe Biden. What will an appellate court say to Trump and the country? Will things be set right by a “Sorry about that!”
I’m headed outside to turn my flag upside down.
That’s why Trump needs to plead irreversible harm and get anything expedited.
Mine is upside down and at half staff already.
Here was an interesting comment on a Reason.com article, written by someone calling himself Z Crazy
https://reason.com/2024/05/30/the-verdict-against-trump-suggests-jurors-bought-the-prosecutions-dubious-election-fraud-narrative/?comments=true#comment-10583535
What the fuck does this say to the rest of the world?
It says, we have our panties in a knot over someone paying off a porn star, but are A-OK with the mass slaughter of children in Libya and Iraq.
Here’s what I say.
If you support punishing Trump for paying off some ‘ho, but not punishing Dubya and Obama for mass murdering more children EACH than Dyland Harris, Eric Klebold, Adam Stanza, and Nicholas Cruise COMBINED,
then you have no business whining about all the school shootings and gang violence in the ghetto!
The comments at Reason do not speak well for the libertarians. The deterioration of The Volokh Conspiracy’s comments since it moved there is stunning. This comment seems pretty typical.
Wow. Ann Althouse is PISSED. She’s not mincing words, or toying with them, as she is often wont to do:
“So [Jonathan]Chait is openly saying that the legal system isn’t fair and Trump was convicted for being “a bad guy.” You want us non-haters to just accept that, as if it’s a form of world-weary sophistication? No, you will have to bear the weight of the consequences of persecuting a political opponent. You should not get off easy.”
I love the “just accept it as if it’s a form of world-weary sophistication.” She’s put her finger on the “if this were France, no one would care” mantra popularized during the Lewinsky/Clinton affair. One of the toxins introduced into the polity by corrupters like Keith Olbermann.
The man we need is Mike Davis.
https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannons-show-mike-davis-threatens-rain-hell-these-biden-democrats-and-warns-them
***START QUOTE***
MIKE DAVIS (ARTICLE III PROJECT): What’s going to make my year next year is when President Trump appoints Mark Paoletta or Jeff Clark as the Attorney General and the other one can take the White House Counsel job. And John Sauer is President Trump’s Solicitor General. And John Eastman is going to run the Office of Legal Counsel. And Your Excellency, Viceroy and Gov. General of D.C. Mike Davis is going to help them rain hell on these Biden Democrats.
I would say to these guys, lawyer up. I would lawyer up because guess what? This is a criminal conspiracy that these Democrat prosecutors and Democrat White House officials, Democrat Judges, Democrat witnesses, Democrat operatives — they’re running an — Andrew Weissmann, buddy? You’re running a criminal conspiracy to violate the civil rights of President Trump, his top aides like Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, his lawyers like Jeff Clark and John Eastman, his supporters on January 6.
…
This is lawfare. This is election interference. And there are going to be the most severe legal, political and financial consequences come January 20, 2025.
***END QUOTE****
I hope they expand their reach to include all Democrats.
Hopefully, they can establish a regime where those who breathe even one syllable of dissent against Trump, or the American way, gets targeted for prosecution of crimes real or imagined, using dubious legal arguments and forged evidence if necessary, regardless of what statute, evidence, Brady v. Maryland, or the United States Constitution say.
The rules have changed.
I did not choose to change the rules, others have changed them for me, with the full support of academic, media, and entertainment elites.
We need to do this to these subhuman vermin Democrats or they send us to the gas chambers!
I am certain that you would love to live in a Trump led fascist regime, where anything that isn’t praise of Trump will be prosecuted by lifetime imprisonment if the judge is having a good day.
That is not the way to save the United States. Might as well join the Dems in persecuting anyone and everyone they find inconvenient if you wish the destruction of American values to be permanent, which your comments constantly indicate.
Maraxus’s rules are the rules now.
There is no denying it.
https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=161693&sid=bf1e964b2d36e629e063999b4953f65a
I care not what this Maraxus says if he advocates the same anti American actions you constantly push here.
Here is what Republican police officers and Republican prosecutors and Republican jurorsm have a holy, moral duty to do, now.
Police officers, when investigating crimes, have a duty to bury evidence of guilt, and forge and fabricate evidence of innocence, if the suspect is a Republican.
Conversely, if the suspect is a Democrat, they have a duty to forge and fabricate evidence f guilt and bury any evidence of innocence.
Prosecutors must start charging Democrats with felonies, especially capital felonies. They should not let evidence, statute, Brady v. Maryland, or the United States Constitution stand in the way. If they have to use creative legal theories, so be it. If they have to suborn perjury, so be it. If they have to collude with police to fabricate evidence, so be it.
Republican jurors have a duty to acquit if the defendant is a Republican, even if he openly confessed in court.
Republican jurors have a duty to convict Democrats, even if video evidence from three angles prove innocence beyond a reasonable doubt.
The rules have changed.
I love the old rules.
I did not want to change the rules.
Other people, with the support of media, academic, and entertainment elites, changed the rules for all of us.
Do you remember Maraxus?
Because I will never forget Maraxus.
https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=161693&sid=bf1e964b2d36e629e063999b4953f65a
***START QUOTE***
You’ve asserted that public officials must be held to a higher moral standard than the rest of humanity. First, I’d like to know why that is the case.
She did uphold the law. She was arrested, went to court, pled guilty to the charges (i.e. she accepted responsibility for her actions), and was punished accordingly. She could have pulled a Perry and attempted to use her position to get out of the DUI charge, but instead she had enough integrity to accept responsility for her actions.
See, when we elect a district attorney, we trust them to do one thing: prosecute crimes. So long as they prosecute crimes, and do that properly and well, they’re doing what we asked them to. They are doing the bare minimum of what we expect from them- correctly using the powers of their office to perform the assigned duty. Driving drunk may reflect poorly on the DA’s character and mean they should not have been elected… but it doesn’t mean they have failed to do the actual job the public trusted them to do. We didn’t elect this DA to be sober, we elected them to prosecute cases.
Seriously, she made a bad decision and followed it up by doing the right thing. What’s blowing my fucking mind is apparently we have shitheads on this board that are attempting to justify Rick “The Dick” Perry making a blatant attempt to shove a shill appointee into one of the few effective anti-corruption enforcement agencies in the state of Texas.
Plus, if you actually read my arguments (which I doubt), you would have to notice that IT DOES NOT MATTER whether Lehmberg has lots of integrity or no integrity. Perry is not being charged with “thinking Lehmberg has no integrity.” He is being charged with misusing the power of his office and threatening to misuse taxpayer money, in order to coerce an elected official into acting in a certain way.
It DOES NOT MATTER that you think Perry was justified in doing so because this particular elected official was dishonorable and inferior. It is not Perry’s place to hire or fire Lehmberg, and it is not his place to threaten to defund a law enforcement operation in an attempt to blackmail her into resigning against her will.
Your appeals to “common sense” do not impress me. Give me a good reason why a moral failing, which incidentally has nothing to do with investigating corruption, should automatically disqualify a person from holding office. You assert without cause that this is the case. Please provide evidence that Lehmberg’s DUI has harmed the PIU’s integrity in any way. If you can’t do this without repeating some version of your “DUIs are rly bad guys” silliness, then maybe you should just go away.
And as for The Hammer, that’s true. He did get his conviction overturned by the Texas Supreme Court, an elected body that consists almost entirely of conservative Republicans. They didn’t think DeLay actually did all that stuff, and Texas doesn’t really have much in the way of campaign finance laws anyway. It makes no matter, though. He was still a cancerous growth on Congress’ asscheek, begging for a public fall from grace. And when he got convicted the first time around, we as a nation are better off for it. Ronnie Earle did humanity a favor when he realized that DeLay broke campaign finance laws, and he did us an even greater one when he got DeLay convicted. Whether or not “justice” was actually served against him isn’t so important. The fact that he no longer holds office though? That’s very important.
Of course! And the people on the Travis Commissioner’s Court would have tossed Lehmberg out on her ass a long time ago. They’re not doing it because there are, frankly, more important things at stake. In a state like Texas where the GOP has historically run roughshod over the Dems, they cannot afford to lose powerful positions like this. Considering the number of cases coming out of the PIU, including, incidentally, a Perry-allied ex-official who channeled millions of dollars to some of his big contributors, the Travis DA’s office has more influence than just about any Democrat in the state. If Perry didn’t have the right to appoint her replacement, and he almost assuredly would have appointed a fairly right-wing replacement, I’m sure the Travis County Dems would like to tell Lehmberg to take a short walk off a long pier. Unhappily, there are more important considerations at hand.
***END QUOTE***
Back in 2014, this was an extremely fringe belief. There was no way Maraxus’s ideals could become mainstream.
Now it is clear that the Democratic Party adopted Maraxus’s ideals.
The Democratic Party is the party of Maraxus, now.
In the animated series Gargoyles, there is a character called Demona, whose schtick was vengeance against those who hurt her and her kind.
To deal with Maraxus, we must become the party of Demona!
We either fight like Demona, or go meekly into the gas chambers they will prepare for us.
There is no third option.
You must purge your computer’s clipboard of this maraxus nonsense. Every article in which you paste it makes the entire website more tiresome to read.
He should have been a mere footnote, a forgotten extremist in the darkest corners of the Internet.
Instead, the leadership of a political party adopted his rules for all of us.
If he is meant to be but a footnote, then quit grabbing him from the dustbin and parading him in a place of prominence every time you wish to advocate your anti American actions.
The Dem leadership already did that for all of us.
There is no more land of tolerance.
There is no more peace.
Not here.
Not anywhere else.
You either persecute, or be persecuted.
You either oppress, or be oppressed.
Life imprisonment would be mercy for dissenters.
What dissenters deserve is to be locked in an airtight chamber, filled with hydrogen fluoride vapor.
The democrats did what the democrats did. Nothing is forcing you to follow their example except your desire to be the oppressor instead of a guy who mostly reads about the goings on in the big cities.
Why are you pretending that the land of tolerance stille xists.
Tolerance is dead.
Either persecute, or be persecuted.
“Others may hate you, but those that hate you only win if you hate them. Then you destroy yourself. ” – Richard Nixon.
Tricky Dick’s greatest and most profound quote.
So why did not the Dem leadership follow his advice?
https://x.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1796374136513798642
How many Democrats is Todd Spitzer persecuting?
If your principles keep you from hurting those with whom you disagree, your principles are stupid.
Boy that’s wrong.
Let me fix it for you:
“If your principles keep you from hurting those who are actively trying to hurt your civilization, your principles are stupid.”
This was always going to happen, eventually, and by “this” I mean lawfare directed at political opponents. It just took time for the Left to sufficiently radicalize. We have seen this cancer slowly metastasize in our body politic as discourse became courser, the Senate Democrats began treating the time-honored filibuster as a Jenga puzzle, and the gradual dissipation of reason in favor of emotional gobbledygook.
The legal system was always going to show signs of the infection eventually, and when elected DA’s started running on an “imprison or bankrupt Tump” platform, the gloves were off even though many people didn’t know it. To be fair, Trump’s own “Lock her up!” commentary during the 2016 election was a harbinger, even though he did no such thing after being elected. Typical of Trump, hyperbole and wild statements never really intended to be put into action were internalized and executed by the Left.
I made a bet to myself that the jury would not deliberate beyond Thursday, an easy win in my view. All anyone on that jury had to do was make the argument that they had to convict Trump “for the good of the country,” sacrificing their integrity and the integrity of the legal system to the “greater good.”
Let’s face it — that is a difficult argument to ignore. Republicans employed it during the George W. Bush years to justify torture and worse. It is, of course, just an “ends justify the means” argument with the ends recast as “saving [democracy, the country, mankind, etc.],” but it has tremendous emotional power and appeal. We see the same thing in our entertainment, where Our Hero sacrifices something he holds dear, often his own integrity, to save the world.
Congratulations, Trump jurors — you confused what was actually in jeopardy, and by trying to save our country, you wrecked the only thing holding it together — our legal system.
“It just took time for the Left to sufficiently radicalize.”
Is this the ultimate destination of all diverse societies? An eventual bifurcation into belligerent camps?
Great question. There is certainly precedent.
Yes. A question I’ve always had: Why do societies seem to inevitably and eventually breed groups that attack the society? It’s as if societies are living organisms that develop cancerous growths that attack the host.
An analogous question: Why do people flee broken countries like Somalia or Haiti or Mexico to the United States and then immediately set about attacking the United States? I’ve always wondered why “Go back to where you came from” is such a disparaged idea. If you’ve got so many great ideas on how to run a country, go back to your home country from which you fled and fix it so you can live there and prosper and improve the lives of your fellows instead of having to flee to a foreign country.
They leave because they are dissatisfied with where they were. When they find the USA not to their liking either, they do what they could not in their totalitarian former country — use our own law against us.
An interesting, and direct, take. They’re malcontents! Hah! And they don’t change their stripes just because they change their skies. I like it. Why are western democracies so fucking gracious?
I generally disagree with this take – as a historic note – until very *recently* immigrants have almost entirely taken up the mantle of “becoming American” with zeal and love – so much so that their grandchildren were indistinguishable from Americans, or better put were fully American in a cultural sense.
I think the problems we see are modern and can be broken down into 5 “cohorts” –
So the questions are: how many of each group are there? With the real clouded question being that groups 4 and 5 tend to look the same – but at what ratio?
Groups 2 and 3 tend to look the same also – but at what ratio?
“so much so that their grandchildren were indistinguishable from Americans, or better put were fully American in a cultural sense.”
Which, to emphasize – the cultural sense is the only sense in which a person can be “American”. As we aren’t an ethnically based polity.
But as with any “fluid” interaction – the Americanization process only works if the “solvent” (America) isn’t overwhelmed by the “solute” (immigrants).
To speed up the tidal wave of retributive prosecutions:
Is it possible to use Regular Expressions in a FOIA request?
This may be needed if the conspirators of the last 6 years played hanky panky with spellings like with the COVID documents having discoverable words deliberately mispelled.
Though I suspect that an LLM could easily be trained to find documents with mispellings.
Document indexing is a curious field.
If you take a typical COVID document and it’s index, represented as each word on one axis and each document on another, you can graph that index across an array.
Then with analysis known as K-nearest neighbor and singular value decomposition, the similar analogs of that document are found. The document itself can become a query of the index.
“Statistically improbable phrases” is another fingerprint that can find related documents. I once saw Amazon calling this out to find similar books, but not sure if it’s still around.
Jack,
I have been contemplating this since I saw the verdict come down, and some of the comments on this blog have made me question this even more. Where can we go, ethically and effectively, from here to save the American experiment?
Tit for tat and further weaponizing the justice system is not ethical. It tears apart what little remains of the public trust in the system and will accelerate the fall of the republic. Republicans falling to the standard of the “Get Trump” Democrats is not a good solution. We need to keep aboveboard and the weaponization of politics is not aboveboard.
Going directly to a “forgive and forget” standard is not effective. This will make the Republicans look weak to the Totalitarian-favoring Democrats. If there is no response, no push back, the Totalitarians win, and our self-governing model is lost. There must be a response of some sort.
So what can that response be? Impeaching Biden for weaponizing the Justice Department won’t work. There would need to be a stronger majority in the House and a majority in the Senate for that to be anything workable, if it is actually Constitutional. In addition, this would not help matters, as impeachment lost its fangs with the Trump faux-impeachments.
The Supreme Court can’t just knock this down. There is already severe harm to Trump’s campaign, perhaps irrevokably so. No matter what happens, moving forward, this election is now in doubt. Biden’s statements against the Supreme Court will be given even more ammunition, even with a unanimous slap down, and there will be further calls to disenfranchise or pack the Supreme Court.
In addition to all of this, even if the chaos that this verdict and it’s predictable fallout causes can be blamed on someone or someones, they are just the front men for the deep state. How can we protect ourselves from the string-pullers who are determined that America fall?
I am not usually this negatively disposed towards the future, but the predicted “guilty on all counts” verdict has so many negative consequences. Where do we, as a nation and as individuals, go from here?
Yeah. I’m thinking. Whoever comes up with a good answer should win the Nobel Peace Prize, except the people who hand that out will probably want to give it to Alvin Bragg.
You know, Obama can still be indicted and tried for murder. His droning on an American citizen abroad was clearly illegal. If SCOTUS does not place that kind of crime in an immunity category, a Trump Justice Department could go after O. Mob justice.
Trumps lawyer’s mad that exact argument about Obama in their oral arguments before the supreme court.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2023/23-939_f2qg.pdf
See page 4.
“The Supreme Court can’t just knock this down.”
And, even if they did, you know that the Democrats will emphasize the Evil Conservative 6 majority as the determining factor, even if it’s unanimous.
The only way I can think of to restore the old rules is a complete, total, humiliating repudiation of the Democrats in November.
Otherwise, we would have to play by the new rules. And we have to play, as life is not a party game where we can just pack our toys and go home simply because the rules changed to something we do not like.
Here is one idea I have for a prosecution by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Prosecute Patrice Cullors, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Charles M. Blow for the murder of Garrett Foster.
The argument is this.
They spread the lie about the police habitually hunting down and gunning down unarmed Black men, how the criminal justice system is systemically racist. And because of this lie, many people, including Garrett Foster, participated in riots. And because Foster was killed in one of these riots, Cullors, Hannah-Jones, and Blow are guilty of his murder.
Under the old rules, such a prosecution would be an outrage, a violation of freedom of speech. Any prosecutor who would pursue this prosecution would have deserved disbarment, and Paxton would have deserved impeachment and removal, in addition to disbarment. I would not have tolerated this even in the slightest.
But the rules have changed.
Another aspect of the case: Although he always speaks of hiring “the best people,” I think Trump is effectively denied competent counsel because no good, i.e. really competent, lawyers will risk their “standing” among their lawyer peers, and perhaps even their existing clients and the pool of potential clients, by representing Trump. Who are these guys representing him? Are they David Bois quality lawyers? I doubt it. It’s shameful. I’ve concluded today’s high-quality, high-priced lawyers are chicken shits only interested in the next fee. Gutless.
He should hire Alan Dershowitz.
John Adams is laughing at every one of those gutless lawyers from the grave.
I read an opinion piece that says that Biden should pardon Trump to calm the country down and that such a magnanimous gesture would go a long way to curing some of the divisiveness.
Maybe it would have at one time, but not now.
The Democrats oversold the Nazi lie. You can’t pardon Hitler, right? They would incense their base. And pardoning him won’t gain Biden any conservative votes either.
God help us.
Not sure Biden could pardon Trump for a New York State crime.
The Trump deranged would go to another level of derangement if Biden were to pardon Trump for anything, even a parking ticket. Biden would be impeached. Or they’d invoke the 25th Amendment in a New York minute.
Good point. I think the President is only able to pardon Federal crimes. And, yes, essentially, they’ve gone too far in demonizing Trump anyway.
This election is not about Biden and Trump anymore – it’s about the fundamental social fabric of the nation as espoused by the “civic religion” centered on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – a civic religion that has served us well.
How you vote tells us, now, less about what policies you wish to advance and more about whether or not you want the American experiment in ordered liberty to continue.
A vote for Biden or any democrat tells me absolutely everything about you that you *do not care at all* about the republic which has blessed us directly and BILLIONS more indirectly with increased freedom, tolerance, security and commerce.
A vote for Trump is the *ethical duty* of anyone who wants to poke the eye of totalitarian Behemoth that is the DNC as a demonstration of belief in our system and its reparability.
Anyone who doxxes those jurors would be ethics heroes for the ages, almost as heroic at the Twelve Apostles of Christ!
You can’t blame the jurors, ME. They were over their heads, the judge and the prosecution were slanting the case against Trump, they were talking to Trump haters every night and watching them on TV.
Too bad.
This is war.
Strict liability applies.
Well, you got one out of three right!
Looks like heroes are acting.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/1/2244106/-Pro-Trump-thugs-are-doxxing-jurors?utm_campaign=recent
They deserve a Presidential medal of Freedom, under the new rules.
You do not understand the meaning of the term ethics hero.
I most certainly do.
What would be wrong with doxxing these jurors?
What would be wrong with revealing the personal addresses of juror members because they reached a conclusion with which you disagreed?
Under the old rules, everything.
Under the current rules, everything.
You are making assumptions of what the current rules are today.
For what purpose?
Michael: I’m sure that was clear to you long ago, though. No? If it took this predictable result of the lawfare against Trump to make it clear to the dim bulbs out there, great…but this is not a new development. In fact, I though we were pretty obviously there in 2020.
Absolutely. There can be no doubt for anyone who both cares and is paying attention exactly what is at stake. But even then there were some who claimed the high road that neither could be voted for. But now? There’s no excuse for anyone.
If you vote for Biden, you vote for the dismantling of the republic.
If you vote for Trump, you oppose this path we’re going down.
It’s already started in the Senate:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/may/31/republicans-threaten-senate-nominations-legislativ/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=ZAmIoZOIjIoxpKrLfe%2FdDLoF4IyX69zfMeEe9uwftdTPW%2BAxF%2FkjwZBLRAUOMKz3&bt_ts=1717200170927
Also, how about a potential new “birther” controversy:
Is Juan Merchan, who entered the country at age six, a U.S. citizen? (Does it matter?) Were his Columbian parents illegals; did they ever become citizens?
Joe Manchin leaves democrat party.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-joe-manchin-leaves-democratic-party-registers-independent-rcna154885#:~:text=%E2%80%9CTo%20stay%20true%20to%20myself,Virginia%20radio%20host%20Hoppy%20Kercheval.
Interesting timing.
Reading the tea leaves…(at least in WV)?
Here is Steven Calabresi.
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/06/01/president-donald-trumps-manhattan-convictions-are-unconstitutional/
President Donald Trump’s Manhattan Convictions are UnconstitutionalThe first amendment protects the alleged payment of hush money to a porn star to influence an election outcome as the u.s. supreme court will eventually rule
STEVEN CALABRESI | 6.1.2024 3:32 AM
President Donald Trump was convicted yesterday of allegedly altering business records to conceal his alleged payment of money to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, in order to influence the 2016 presidential election. But, altering business records under New York State law is only a crime if it is done to conceal the violation of some other law. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleged that the documents were allegedly falsely altered to conceal a contribution of money in violation of federal campaign finance laws or in pursuance of winning the 2016 election by defrauding the voters of information they had a right to know. Neither argument passes First Amendment scrutiny.
The federal campaign finance laws were partially upheld in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976). In that case, campaign expenditure limits were ruled to be flatly unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech. Under Buckley v. Valeo, an individual like Donald Trump can spend an unlimited amount of his own money promoting his own campaign. But, the Supreme Court in Buckley did uphold contribution limits on how much an individual or a group could contribute to influence an election. Alvin Bragg argues that the Trump organization’s contribution of $130,000 to pay Stormy Daniels hush money exceeded federal campaign finance limits on contributions. The federal government itself has adopted a policy of not prosecuting hush money payments as illegal campaign contributions in the wake of its embarrassing loss of such a prosecution brought against Democratic Vice Presidential contender John Edwards who had paid hush money to a mistress with who he had had a child out of wedlock.
In 2010, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310, the Supreme Court held 5 to 4 that the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by closely allied corporations and groups like The Trump Organization. Under Citizens United, it was perfectly legal for The Trump Organization to pay Daniels $130,000 in hush money to conceal her alleged affair with Donald Trump.
The opinion in Citizens United was written by former Justice, and liberal icon, Anthony M. Kennedy, and it was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Justice Samuel Alito all three of whom are still on the Supreme Court. Given the Court’s current membership, it is highly likely that the outcome in Citizens United would prevail again today by a vote of 6 to 3. If Buckley v. Valeo was argued to be an obstacle to Trump prevailing, the Supreme Court would today, in 2024, and should today, in 2024, overrule the campaign finance contribution limits of federal election law as violations of the freedom of speech. Groups contributing to election campaigns can pay for advertising to promote candidates, and they can also pay hush money to keep bad or false stories out of the news. The effect either way is to help the candidate. You can contribute money to generate good publicity. And, you can contribute money to avoid bad publicity. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech in both cases.
Campaign finance limits prevent speech by people who want to engage in it. They have changed Congress so badly that today Members of Congress spend 70% of their time raising money rather then legislating or meeting with their constituents because of absurdly low campaign finance limits that have not been adequately raised to match inflation since those laws were enacted in the 1970’s. The post-Watergate campaign finance laws were and always have been flagrantly unconstitutional in their totality.
Federal Campaign Finance laws are an incumbent protection measure that makes it too hard for challengers to knock off incumbents who have much higher name id and who have franking privileges which allow them unlimited free correspondence with their constituents through the mail. That it is not to mention the power of incumbents to steer pork-barrel spending back to their own states and districts so that they will be endlessly re-elected.
The First Amendment Freedom of Speech Clause also rules out of order Alvin Bragg’s argument that Trump defrauded American voters by preventing them from hearing about Trump’s affaire with Stormy Daniels. Theories as broad as this one is, of “defrauding voters” would end up eliminating the freedom of speech in American elections. Voters had no “right” to know about Donald Trump’s sex life. He was obviously not monogamous being married to a third wife, and voters who adhere to traditional values voted for him anyway because of the kind of stellar conservative justices he went on to appoint to the Supreme Court.
There was thus no predicate crime that Trump could have been concealing when he allegedly altered business records at The Trump Organization. Trump’s convictions in the Manhattan trial are unconstitutional because they violate the First Amendment as it was originally understood.
The U.S. Supreme Court needs to hear this case as soon as possible because of its impact on the 2024 presidential election between President Trump and President Biden. Voters need to know that the Constitution protected everything Trump is alleged to have done with respect to allegedly paying hush money to Stormy Daniels. This is especially the case because the trial judge in Trump’s Manhattan case wrongly allowed Stormy Daniels to testify in graphic detail about the sexual aspects of her alleged affaire with Trump. This testimony tainted the jury and the 2024 national presidential electorate, impermissibly, and was irrelevant to the question of whether President Trump altered business records to conceal a crime. The federal Supreme Court needs to make clear what are the legal rules in matters of great consequence to an election to a federal office like the presidency. A highly partisan borough, Manhattan, of a highly partisan city, New York City, in a highly partisan state, like New York State, cannot be allowed to criminalize the conduct of presidential candidates in ways that violate the federal constitution.
The Roman Republic fell when politicians began criminalizing politics. I am gravely worried that we are seeing that pattern repeat itself in the present-day United States. It is quite simply wrong to criminalize political differences.
Looks like some people are becoming ethics heroes for the ages.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/1/2244106/-Pro-Trump-thugs-are-doxxing-jurors?utm_campaign=recent
***START QUOTE***
“Dox the Jurors. Dox them now,” one user wrote after Trump’s conviction on a website formerly known as “The Donald,” which was popular among participants in the Capitol attack. (That post appears to have been quickly removed by moderators.)
“We need to identify each juror. Then make them miserable. Maybe even suicidal,” wrote another user on the same forum. “1,000,000 men (armed) need to go to washington and hang everyone. That’s the only solution,” wrote another user. “This s— is out of control.”
“I hope every juror is doxxed and they pay for what they have done,” another user wrote on Trump’s Truth Social platform Thursday. “May God strike them dead. We will on November 5th and they will pay!”
***END QUOTE***
Interesting tweet here.
https://x.com/ingelramdecoucy/status/1796336468354580675
I found EA years ago when I was getting increasingly upset at “cancel culture” and I found the analysis interesting, because it was coming from a more “ethics” POV than political.
But then the analysis started to get more political, the comments more radical, and Jack didn’t seem to notice.
Once Trump was in office, it seemed very obvious to me and others on EA, that Trump was problematic. But Jack would take this odd stance that it was really the left and the media who were the “true” enemies.
So the analysis here started to veer more towards anger and hate towards the media, than for balanced analysis where, maybe the media is wrong, but Trump is also wrong and wayyy worse. Dangerous even.
For instance, not once in this post about the Trump verdict, does Jack talk about if Trump actually committed a crime or not. Or how important it is to hold someone like Trump, a very influential and rich real estate tycoon, accountable for crimes.
According to this blog, holding Trump accountable for his many crimes isn’t important, its really a political hit job by the left to silence their political opponents. Even though there is no proof of that.
The reality as I see it is that Trump is a high-profile individual who has constantly spit in the face of justice, decency, and the law. Who has gotten away with it because of his money and influence, and who is now being held accountable.
This is good for America, even if Trump fans don’t think so. Trump had manipulated his fans into thinking he’s being attacked, he’s the victim, when really he’s being held accountable.
It’s genius on his part that he’s been able to pull the wool over your eyes.
I wont fall for it. People paying attention won’t fall for it. Thankfully the criminal justice system hasn’t either.
Very well said, Bob, and also some insightful comments from Mr. Nelson above. The Calabresi argument is one worth contemplating–a few of my conservative legal friends have made that case also. It’s a strong argument But Bob–I’m simply stunned, as you are, that a blog about ethics takes Trump’s side. He is by far the most ethically challenged President in American history. Just to review (and all of this is documented)
This is only a partial list of his ethical lapses. But to have a blog that is about ETHICS ignore all of that, and to focus on the evil of Joe Biden, who is a pretty typical politician in my opinion, no threat to the Republic or to our overall sense of ethics (not without flaws and blind spots of course–as I say, typical)
Also, and not for nothing–you have people pretending here that all of the charges against Trump were organized by the WH. There is simply NO EVIDENCE of that. NONE. And then promising to weaponize the DOJ in response to Biden’s weaponization. Calling for bringing up charges against ALL Democrats. And Jack says…nothing. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Building up a rage over Trump’s predicament, when anyone who has read a single biography of him from before his presidency could tell you that he has ALWAYS been on the line of illegal and legal his whole life. Fuck, he’s been involved in more than 4000 civil litigations and counting! That’s not normal for a real estate developer. That’s not normal for ANYONE.
Thanks, in particular, Bob,, for the tracery of how EA got here. I just got here, and I did notice that the archives seemed…less political, far less angry, far more reasoned, open to discussion, and more interested in…ethics.
So you introduced your Russiagate nonsense.
That alone is good enough reason to dismiss your entire comment.
So are you denying that his campaign manager had contacts with Russian intel long before the campaign, and continued to meet with one contact throughout the campaign, and passed along polling data? Because that’s in a bipartisan Senate Intelligence comm report, the Mueller report, and several other intel reports.
Are you denying that the Trump campaign met with a Russian prosecutor at Trump Tower? Because Trump and his sons agree that they did.
Are you denying that one of their foreign policy advisors had deep contacts with Russian intel, which actually was the cause of the initial FBI investigation?
And so on. I did NOT say that there was collusion, or that Russia tried to help Trump win. I just said contacts. As part of writing my first book, I visited 6 presidential libraries, as well as 9 paper collections of failed candidates. I went through boxes and boxes of campaign documents (this was all in 1998-2001.) I didn’t look for foreign contacts, but do you know how many I found? Zero. Presidential campaigns, normal ones, don’t have time to engage with foreign dignitaries or operatives. There are no votes in Berlin beyond expats, and even fewer of those in Moscow.
So if you don’t consider my views valid because I make a factual observation that Trump’s campaign had a highly unusual number of contacts with a hostile foreign power…well, I think that says more about your inability to answer the rest of my arguments than it does about my arguments.
So if you don’t consider my views valid because I make a factual observation that Trump’s campaign had a highly unusual number of contacts with a hostile foreign power…
The 1980’s called and they want their foreign policy back.
That was actually one of the things Romney was right about in 2012. Remember, he won that debate for a reason.
Or are you saying that Russia is no longer a hostile power? I know some on the right think Putin is a great defender of White Christianity, that he’s anti-Woke, and plus, you seem very enthusiastic for the kind of dictatorial regime he runs, where any critic can be thrown in jail or brought up on trumped up charges.
But I don’t mind being compared to Reagan on this point. Russia remains a force for tyranny in the world, and America at its best has always stood against Tyranny.
Bottom line: there is nothing illegal about having contacts with foreign dignitaries or officials, and in the U.S., guilt by association is supposed to be rejected as intrinsically unjust. Trump, as an international business man, was sui generis among Presidential candidates. It should not be surprising that he did not conform to previous “norms.”
Remember this? Not a meme, but a real conversation. Obama colluding with Russians, selling out the US on missile defense. Caught on a hot mic:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GNfWXhHWkAASDAn?format=png&name=360×360
Obama, to Putin’s placeholder, Medvedev: “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”
Medvedev: “I will transmit this information to Vladimir,”
William–that’s called diplomacy. Do you see me implicating Trump for, as president, talking to the Russians? No. I’m talking about campaign interactions before time in office.
Your comparison doesn’t work at all. We expect all presidents to talk to foreign governments. It’s part of the job.
We’ve never in US history seen a campaign interact with a hostile foreign power, really at all, and certainly not this often.
Oh sure, of course implying to an enemy state that you could see your way clear to endangering our country and our allies if you’re not kept from being reelected is just “diplomacy” and nothing to do with your campaign. Maybe Barry just meant he would hear Vlad’s suggestions for the paint scheme of our missiles when he had more time to look at swatches.
Telling your followers to protest…peacefully…is still inciting an insurrection, though…right?
Great quote!
Previous norms ≠ being a terrible person, horrendous politician, awful President, and criminal
Trump was a successful President by historical standards.
I’m sorry, it’s not like I’m talking about courtesy calls saying “good luck Donnie!” I’m talking about operational campaign contacts. A Russian prosecutor promising dirt on Hillary. A campaign manager who handed polling data to a Russian operative. A foreign policy advisor so compromised by Russian intelligence officers that a foreign intel service warned our government about him.
Isn’t that the bottom line?
Prosecutors have brought charges against Trump not because he is a Republican, but because he is a criminal.
Trump is making it seem political to manipulate the public into thinking there’s some widespread Democratic conspiracy to lock up political adversaries.
That’s why you’re so angry. You think this is some attack on America, when really it’s a con man, conning you into thinking he’s innocent.
Jaciob Sullum, Jonathan Turley, Mark Levin, Brad Smith, Michael Tracey, and Glenn Greenwald already explained it.
The entire basis for the felony prosecution was the argument that the falsification of business records were for the purpose of covering up a violation of FECA.
The alleged FECA violation was the payoff of Stormy Daniels.
However, as the payoff was not a violation of FECA, it was not a crime, and, as such, the falsification of business records could not be a felony.
As such, the guilty verdict was wrong, and these jurors are ethics villains.
Brad Smith explains it.
https://x.com/CommishSmith/status/1796795736438272303
You should be ashamed of yourself.
I mean, the whole “payment to Stormy Daniels was a campoaign expenditure” idea was first floated in 2018.
I participated in online discussions on Reason.com. about that.
It was nonsense then, it is nonsense now!
Exactly. This is why so many Republicans, like Romney, warned their party in 2016 that they were falling for a dishonest man, prone to illegal and unethical behavior.
I’d like to focus for a moment on his non-payment of taxes, and his whole “I’m smart because I don’t pay taxes” schtick. One of the things that has separated the US from many other countries is the willingness of the people to voluntarily comply with the tax code. We don’t value how awesome that is. Take Greece. In Greece, most people cheat on their taxes, because they believe that the rich people cheat so much more. Why should a middle class person be honest? Here, by contrast, our tax compliance rates are immensely high. If they fall, it will mean that we need to radically increase the IRS budget to increase enforcement and make people afraid. That will be bad for the national budget, and for our society generally. Trump is so damaging in so many areas, but this one way is much larger than many people realize. Since Nixon, EVERY MAJOR PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE has released their tax returns. No law made them do this. It was just done to increase the people’s trust in their leaders. Trump? Nah, he took a big shit on that, the way he does on so many ethical standards. And instead of reducing his support in the GOP, they just…accepted it. And we know now why Trump kept his taxes secret. There were years when he paid ZERO taxes, because of some very dodgy loss accounting, which is what still could result in a major fine. Trust me, the IRS was looking into this before 2016, they were looking into it all through Trump’s presidency. When charges come down on that, it will not have anything to do with Biden. It is, since Nixon, against the law for a president to use the IRS to go after specific individuals in any way. But if/when it does happen, Trump will say it was done by Biden. Because, remember, he lies all the time. Which is, of course, another Ethical Problem I don’t hear about here on this blog about…ETHICS.
Great comment, thank you. Again, it seems comically obvious to me that Trump is not a good person. And not in the “normal” way politicians aren’t good people. Cheating on their wives (which Trump also does), but just in so many worse ways.
But one thing you touched on is Trump’s lying. I’ve heard Jack argue that Trump isn’t “lying” if he believes it’s true. It’s essentially a dodge IMO. It also creates this ridiculously high standard for when we get to claim someone is lying.
I also know Jack would argue that Trump not paying taxes, while maybe unethical, isn’t illegal and everyone, including you and me, pay as little taxes as we legally can.
And sure, maybe that is the case, but it definitely doesn’t make Trump some sort of hero for the working man/average American. That’s what I don’t understand. To me, Trump represents the worst in us. And after his attempt to steal the election, I KNOW he doesn’t care about America or the Constitution. He just wants to win, no matter how much damage it causes. And it’s done so much damage. We have someone on this thread calling the jury “vermin”. Think about that.
Trump isn’t the vermin, the jury who found him guilty is. That’s backwards!
So I have no idea how after the 2020 election, anyone could support him. Before? Sure. Now? Absolutely not.
1. Of course he’s not a good person. That’s not even in dispute—certainly not on Ethics Alarms. He’s also a particular kind of bad person, but Biden, Clinton, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and FDR, of our POTUSes since Hoover (who was a very good person) were also not good people—what matters with leaders is a) what the do and b) how well they play the role of leader.
2. “I’ve heard Jack argue that Trump isn’t “lying” if he believes it’s true. It’s essentially a dodge IMO.” No it’s called a “definition.” Lying is a deliberate falsehood with the intent to deceive. You can’t just call anything a lie that turns out to be untrue. Being wrong isn’t a lie. Exaggeration and hyperbole can be lies, but are often too minor to make an issue about, particularly when they are obvious. Nope, the increasingly popular, expansive, ultimately ignorant definition of “lie” doesn’t fly here.
3. Why are you talking about taxes?
“And after his attempt to steal the election.” How, exactly, was he going to steal the election, and what did he do that could have possibly had that result? This is just fantasy and talking points.
Well thankfully he failed but you can read the indictment to see how he attempted to steal the election.
I have no idea how these are “talking points” or “fantasy” when he literally tried to steal back the election to stay in power.
He failed because he didn’t do anything that could possibly “steal the election.” He got (bad) legal advice that setting up parallel electors in case the votes in various states were overturned was a prudent way to ensure the process proceeded. The electors had no power, so they couldn’t seize power absent court orders, which themselves would have been challenged. He didn’t try to call out the military, he challenged the votes in courts, lost, and then wanted to encourage people to protest. None of that steals anything. Al Gore’s scheme in Florida, calling for recounts only in Florida precincts with Democratic majorities, was closer to a “steal” attempt, but it still wasn’t close.
In college my freshman year, a group of students met nightly to “levitate Mass Hall.” They stood outside waving their arms and chanting “Up! Up!” But they still weren’t trying to levitate the building, because what they did couldn’t possibly accomplish that. Trump wanted to legally overturn the election. All he did after that failed was talk.
(And indictments, especially these indictments, aren’t evidence.)
Well thankfully he failed but you can read the indictment to see how he attempted to steal the election.
So paying off Stormy Daniels counted as stealing the election?
Whar was this?
https://x.com/mtaibbi/status/1797090753610473950
You really shouldn’t say “Exactly” to Bob—it just encourages him.
Why is that a problem?
He just happens to agree with me.
Too much here that is dubious, unfair or untrue to fisk thoroughly, but just a few notes:
1. If you really examined the archives, you would see that EA has never offered as much or as extensive criticism of any individual as Donald Trump, not even close. “But to have a blog that is about ETHICS ignore all of that” is wildly untrue and unfair, and frankly, you owe me an apology.
2. My position was and is that once Trump became President, all of what went before was irrelevant, just as LBJ’s political dishonesty, Harry Truman’s machine politician corruption, Chester Arthur’s cronyism and Clinton’ various sexual issues were irrelevant. But uniquely, his political opponents focused on what he said and what he “was” rather than what he did, was doing, and was elected to do (be President.).
3. As a great lover of the American Presidency and a student of leadership and government, yes, I am deeply offended and troubled by what has been tagged here as the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck. I regard it as the most dangerous and unforgivable , as well as unethical, attack on American institutions and democracy since the Civil War. My tone here often reflects that. I do not regret its.
4. “And Jack says…nothing.” Also false and unfair. As I explained in this post, I don’t waste time, like the Trump Deranged, attacking every stupid, intemperate or offensive thing he says, though I have highlighted at least five since that post. One reason is that the obsession with Trump’s rhetoric is one of the ways the MSM warps the news: Biden, as I have pointed out many times, lies or makes misstatements at least as often as Trump.
Trump has been cited for unethical, inflammatory and stupid quotes here dozens of times, more than any other figure. Here are three from the end of 2023: here, here, and here.
Some snippets from me in those three posts: “We do know, however, that his reckless, sloppy, inflammatory, stupid rhetoric fuels the “Trump is a dangerous dictator” trope, and when he makes statements like the “poison the blood of the country” line, he deserves what he gets.” and “This is almost a year before the election, and Trump ‘s rhetoric is already becoming more reckless and irrational than what responsible and informed voters can reconcile with a competent, trustworthy candidate. He is apparently so emboldened by polls that he feels he doesn’t need to exercise any caution in his outbursts at all. If he were literate, Trump would recognize the dangers of hubris. He’s not literate, however, and he has a flat learning curve.” And…”Here is what the man who wants to be trusted to hold the most powerful job on earth sends out to the public…Yeah, that’s certainly a reassuring, statesmanlike, moderate and dignified Christmas message certain to reassure voters that if elected, he will use his power judiciously, wisely and without rancor or unrestrained passions…”
That’s “nothing”? That’s two apologies you owe me.
5. This “even to send a mob to stop the count (“fight like hell” …”peacefully”)” is really beneath you (I hope) and simply partisan propaganda. He did not “send a mob” anywhere other than to have a demonstration. The use of te term “fight’ in a political context is so common and routine that arguing that Trump meant it literally is clinical bias. Analogous rhetoric can be found from so many revered American statesmen throughout history that it is beyond cataloguing. Yes, no question: it was irresponsible for Trump to address that crowd of wackos at all, but what they did afterward is moral luck. They just as easily could have gotten drunk and gone home.
6. “Building up a rage over Trump’s predicament, when anyone who has read a single biography of him from before his presidency could tell you that he has ALWAYS been on the line of illegal and legal his whole life.” This is sadly self-indicting, Jerry, and is at the root of an inability to see the issue. This is “Trump’s a bad person and deserves how he has been treated.” Wrong. Trump was an elected President of the United States and absolutely deserved, needed, had to have an deserved to have the same level of respect and deference as any other elected President, and his presumed character, rhetorical excesses and business practices should not have been allowed to alter that. I have made that principle clear repeatedly; it is reflected in the works of Rex Tugwell, Fred Greenfield, Richard Neustadt, Doris Kearns and many others. The same partisan historians who kept complaining about Trump violating “democratic norms” were happy to see that one violated, to Trump’s detriment.
7. I see no evidence that Bob Ghery is a reliable chronicler of this site. There are commenters here who have read most of the nearly 17,000 essays on the site, and done so without a jaundiced eye.
And despite all this, you voted for Trump. So no, I dont think you’ve been critical enough of Trump. You are often more critical of the media and the people deriding Trump, thank Trump himself.
You also hand wave his most egregious and harmful offenses like him trying to remain in power. He’s not a believer in democracy, so there should be zero defense of him.
“And despite all this, you voted for Trump. So no, I dont think you’ve been critical enough of Trump. You are often more critical of the media and the people deriding Trump, thank Trump himself.”
Pretty weak, Bob. Why yes, I believe I do write more criticism of an entire corrupt profession that publishes millions of words a day undermining democracy by keeping the public that depends on them to keep them objectively informed so they can be responsible citizens than I do about a single political figure you and others are obsessed over.
And yup, I’d even vote for you if the alternative was the representative of a party that has abandoned its principles, historic values and ethics itself while making it clear that all it cares about is continued power.
You ask how it was supposed to happen? Jack, it’s right there in Trump’s speech. You say Trump didn’t tell the crowd to do anything, that they might well have gotten drunk, it was just chance that they marched on the capitol.
Seriously?
Jack, Trump told them to go to the Capitol, and confront Congress. He told them it was all up to Pence. So when they started yelling Hang Mike Pence, that was a coincidence?
“And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn’t, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our Constitution.
Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.
Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections. “
Also–Trump was meeting with lawyers and folks like Flynn who were telling him to declare military law and confiscate ballots. He was calling an election official in Georgia, ordering him to find a specific number of fraudulent votes. He called a leader in the Arizona Statehouse, asking them to decertify. He fired his AG for not supporting his election lies and plans. He met with an environmental law lawyer from DOJ, who told Trump he would use DOJ to keep Trump in office if he made him AG. Trump was going to do it but the entire senior staff at DOJ threatened to resign. Are you unaware of these facts, or what? It was a plot to destroy our republic. It wasn’t just some complaining and lying. It was a plot.
Jack, Trump told them to go to the Capitol, and confront Congress.
So what did that have to do with a riot?
Well, it seems I do owe you an apology. You have been appropriately critical of Trump at several points. I should not have tried to make broad statements about such a large body of work. I sometimes run into people who characterize everything I’ve ever wrote or taught based on 600 words in a newspaper. I want to say “but I’ve been very critical of Democrats! Here, see!” so I understand how I made you feel. Apologies.
Accepted, my friend. And I’ve done the same thing myself. I’ll try not to do it to you.
For instance, not once in this post about the Trump verdict, does Jack talk about if Trump actually committed a crime or not.
Jack quoted Mark Levin in his post.
To put it bluntly, the is no law, state or federal, that has been broken. The statute of limitations on the state law had already run anyway. There is no federal campaign issue, which is why no federal campaign law has been specifically cited at any time during the trial.
Moreover, no other American, let alone presidential candidate, has been subjected to such a preposterous case, which further underscores its purpose.
Glenn Greenwald also explains why this verdict is wrong.
https://rumble.com/v4ypeqe-trump-trial-guilty-verdict-the-legal-and-political-implications-ahead-of-th.html
Elie Honig pointed it out.
But when you impose meaningful search parameters, the truth emerges: The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever. Even putting aside the specifics of election law, the Manhattan DA itself almost never brings any case in which falsification of business records is the only charge.
Jacob Sullum pointed out how non-sensical the whole case is.
”To put it bluntly, the is no law, state or federal, that has been broken”
Besides the 34 he was convicted of. I have no idea what reality you’re all living in.
Or are you saying the laws Trump broke aren’t real laws? I have no idea what that quote actually means. Because just saying “he’s innocent!” Isn’t a legal analysis.
The “federal campaign law” is an odd non sequitur since the charges has to do with New York election law… which is a great example as to why going line by line with you people is pointless.
Where’s the discussion about the actual evidence that was presented?
If you think Trump is innocent of these crimes, that’s fine. But the jury who heard the actual evidence disagrees.
Besides the 34 he was convicted of. I have no idea what reality you’re all living in.
what I absolutely know, beyond any doubt, is that you are TDS-addled subhuman vermin with no rights worthy of respect.
The “federal campaign law” is an odd non sequitur since the charges has to do with New York election law… which is a great example as to why going line by line with you people is pointless.
The [ayment to Stormy Daniels did not violate New York election law.
But the jury who heard the actual evidence disagrees.
The jury was composed of subhuman vermin. I already explained why the verdict was wrong.
So did Jacob Sullum.
So dicd Jonathan Turley.
I think the person who resorts to personal invective in place of reasoned argument is usually the one losing the argument. “subhuman vermin” is Nazi language. Be better.
I agree that the Calabresi argument is coherent, and it will surely be litigated. I’m not a lawyer, so my opinion on the matter isn’t worth much. But even if that argument holds up, Trump still behaved with a great lack of ethics. It’s still a false entry in a business account, which is, even without an underlying felony, a misdemeanor. And many people would consider having sex for money with a porn star shortly after your wife gave birth to be…what’s the word? Unethical. Again, as I say, I could give a fuck where Trump puts his dick as long as it’s consensual. The myth that a bad husband or poor father will make a bad president is one of the most persistent in American history, and with no factual basis. Some of our best presidents have been shitty fathers and husbands, and some of our worst have been quite good dads and hubbies. https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/08/25/big-daddy-trump/