2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck

A Show Of Hands On The Trial And Conviction Of Douglass Mackey

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Douglass Mackey was convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn last week of Conspiracy Against Rights during the weeks before the 2016 election by circulating false and misleading tweets that, I think it is fair to say, were aimed at tricking naive, stupid or ignorant Hillary Cinton voters into failing to cast valid votes. The verdict followed a one-week trial before United States District Judge Ann M. Donnelly, and now Mackey faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

This is an immediate and significant law vs. ethics conundrum.

Mackey was part of an apparently loosely organized effort by Trump supporters in 2016 to use misleading and false tweets and memes like those above to fool Hillary Clinton supporters into believing that they could vote for the Democrat in the Presidential election via text messaging. The question raised by the conviction is whether such internet-based election dirty tricks actually violate the federal civil rights statutes. The relevant one in this case makes it “unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).”

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Ethics Villain: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, And Other Observations On The Trump Indictment

/ Jack Marshall / 83 Comments

Last week’s indictment of Donald Trump, engineered by a hard-Left partisan Manhattan D.A. who had made his intentions known when he was running for office, didn’t change any of the ethical calculations here that were recorded when that indictment seemed imminent almost two weeks ago, or in the update, when it appeared that Alvin Bragg might have lost his nerve and decided to be an ethical prosecutor after all, here. I reviewed both posts to see if I would change anything, and I would not, but the final line of the March 18 essay still resonates: “The indictment will remind people of why he won in the first place.” Bragg’s exercise in politically-driven law enforcement will drive far more voters to Trump than it strips away. This makes his actions as politically and pragmatically irresponsible as they seem to be legally and ethically indefensible.

It is necessary to include the caveat “seem to be” because we haven’t seen the indictment yet. Maybe Bragg has legitimate cause (other than “he’s a bad guy and must have done something illegal”) to bring criminal charges against the ex-President, though virtually no unbiased legal analyst with any legitimacy thinks that’s likely. If he does, then his pursuit of Trump may be unwise, and its passion may be fueled by bias, but it is not unethical.

From another perspective, however, even if there were valid and legitimate reasons to charge Trump in this case—and I will be surprised if there are—if there ever were a situation where prosecutorial discretion and restraint were screamingly called for, this is it. The ripples and waves emanating from this indictment and, heaven help us, the arrest and trial will cause so much havoc in our political system, legal precedents, societal divisions, and national discourse that it cannot even be quantified or predicted. They could easily result in Donald Trump being elected again, or arguably worse still, in Joe Biden being re-elected. Whatever happens as a result of Bragg’s conduct, it is certain to be bad for everyone except, maybe, the fanatical Trump Deranged, who have already demonstrated a willingness to destroy the Constitution, the Rules of Law, democratic institutions and ethical standards to get their prey.

Also:

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A Perfect Explication Of The “2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck” By Someone Other Than Me

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Nicely timed to compliment yesterday’s post officially christening the Stormy Daniels-Donald Trump Prosecution Ethics Train Wreck as yet another extension of the horrifically destructive—and still rolling—-2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck is a post on a substack I had never heard of called “The Ivy Exile,” ironically a title I could use myself. It includes an excellent explanation of that most disastrous of all recent ethics train wrecks, though I have been attempting to explain it for seven long years.

Ethics Alarms’ intense concentration on the phenomenon, which I believe is the most dangerous and significant cultural ethics breakdown in American political history, exceeding even the Red Scare and the McCarthy Era, has been costly. So many people hate Donald Trump so much, or are so committed to the progressive excesses he has significantly curtailed, that they rejected this site because it has insisted, and will insist, that core ethical and democratic values must apply to all regardless of their character or perceived misconduct. The efforts by what I have branded the Axis of Unethical Conduct, the “resistance,” Democratic Party and mainstream media to scar and defile American tradition and process in order to undermine, punish and remove a duly elected President, and its disastrous influence on the public that has promoted bright-line legal and ethical breaches that would once have been unthinkable, have so polluted civic discourse and political culture that it may never recover.

Yet many previously rational and intelligent people, once followers of this blog as well as my social media contacts, reflexively chose to regard my insistence that ethics and democratic mandates must apply to Mr. Trump (as the prime offender the New York Times would say) exactly as they must to any other President, political figure, American or human being as evidence that I had become a MAGA fanatic, a “Trumpist” and/or a fascist.

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The Absurd Dark Star Of The Latest “Get Trump!” Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

For the record, the official Ethics Alarms title for the now nearly full-speed second-wave ethics train wreck emerging—again!—out of the biggest and longest-running ethics train wreck of them all (unless you count the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck, which you probably should), the 2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck, is the Stormy Daniels-Donald Trump Prosecution Ethics Train Wreck. I was going to do a full review of the all-star list of current passengers thus far— Trump and Daniels, of course; Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, George Soros, Senator Elizabeth Warren and all of the Democrats foolish enough to shatter the rules of ethics estoppel by bleating “No one is above the law!,” the cheerleading mainstream media, Ron DeSantis, Kevin McCarthy, Rand Paul, Rachel Maddow—assuming that the indictment would come down today and Trump would be arrested.

But it did not, and he wasn’t. (You would think, wouldn’t you, that after specializing himself in deliberately changing his plans once the news media engaged in what Ethics Alarms calls “future fake news” and announced that he was about to do something outrageous, Trump wouldn’t fall into the same trap by announcing that his arrest was imminent.) Instead, this post will focus on the Manhattan’s Democrats’ current “Get Trump!” Javert’s “star” witness, the ridiculous, slimy, reptilian, formerTrump fixer, Michael Cohen.

It was in 2015, back when I assumed that there was no way on earth sufficient numbers of Americans would be reckless enough to vote for Donald Trump in a primary, never mind an actual election, I first discussed Trump’s lawyer-fixer, Cohen in a Rhode Island legal ethics seminar, using him as an example of the archetypal untrustworthy lawyer, and declaring Trump as foolish for employing someone so clearly dishonest as well as incompetent. It wasn’t hard. Cohen had just given an interview in which he made the legally wrong claim that it was legal for a husband (in that case, Trump) to rape his own wife. Then he threatened The Daily Beast, saying…

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The Times Asks: “Is There a Future for Late-Night Talk Shows?” Ethics Alarms Asks: “Is There A Future For News Media That Has Been Made This Stupid By Bias?”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The New York Times John Koblin and Benjamin Mullin apply all of their skill and experience to examine the apparent phenomenon of late night talk shows facing massive changes, and perhaps even extinction. “[A]s streaming has ascended, and network TV audiences and advertising revenue has dwindled, worries that late-night shows could be the latest genre affected by sweeping change are hitting virtually every corner of the entertainment world,” they write.

What’s going on here? Well, these career-long TV analysts conclude,  viewers no longer have a “deep bond” to single late night hosts. Ratings have been sinking because of streaming, and so many alternative options for late night viewing. The cost to produce some late-night shows”is no longer feasible in an era of sinking ratings.”Late-night shows have also struggled to make the transition to streaming video, another consideration weighing on executives,” we are told, in part because “the topical opening monologue, a staple of the genre, has virtually no shelf life in streaming libraries.” Current  late-night network hosts “don’t seem to want a lifetime appointment” unlike their predecessors like Johnny Carson, jay Leno and Letterman. “I think the Carson playbook of 40 years talking to celebrities is probably a thing of the past,” a former late night producer told the Times.

Is that it? I guess so: this long examination of factors and trens couldn’t find any other reason for the genre’s decline.

Funny…the reason I haven’t watched a late night talk show in almost eight years must be unusual: these media reporters don’t detect it. Funnier still, a substantial percentage of the readers who commented on the story seem to see the main reason for the rejection of such talks shows—the same reason I have—very clearly.

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It Looks Like Donald Trump Was Betrayed By Another One Of His Lawyers, Someone Else…Or Himself

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Just because Trump is paranoid doesn’t mean almost everyone around him isn’t trying to stab him in the back.

From the New York Times:

Shortly after turning over 15 boxes of government material to the National Archives in January, former President Donald J. Trump directed a lawyer working for him to tell the archives that he had returned all the documents he had taken from the White House at the end of his presidency, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

The lawyer, Alex Cannon, had become a point of contact for officials with the National Archives, who had tried for months to get Mr. Trump to return presidential records that he failed to turn over upon leaving office. Mr. Cannon declined to convey Mr. Trump’s message to the archives because he was not sure if it was true, the people said.

The story was leaked to, naturally, Maggie Haberman, the full-time Trump Fury on the Times staff. She’s currently peddling a book full of anti-Trump tales, gossip and embarrassments. A lot of her stories over the last six years have been about what the President supposedly said behind closed door, or suggested, or asked others to do, none of which actually came to anything but the point is to make Trump look bad, dangerous or stupid. Of course, ethical aides, associates and lawyer don’t tell hostile reporters (or anyone at all) about such conversations because they are in the positions they are because the President trusts them. Donald Trump has been betrayed by such people more times, I would estimate, than all of the last six Presidents combined. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“If we — we individual Americans — can’t handle random snark from varied unknown sources, how can we live with the internet? Who cares if some foreigners are writing crap intended to deceive us into feeling more roiled up and divided than we’re able to do damned well on our own, often with the nudging of the New York Times?”

—Bloggress Ann Althouse, commenting on the strangely prominent front page New York Times story, “Russian Trolls Helped Fracture the Women’s March.”

The day after I complained about how often Althouse has been picking the same topics to write about as I am lately, she did it again. This time, I saw that front page story about 2017 and immediately thought, 1) “Who cares?” and 2) “Boy, I’m sure glad I stopped paying 90 bucks a month for the paper version of this full-time, declining, hyper-partisan propaganda rag.” And as I started to post about how the Times deems it front page worthy to go back five years and try to prove that Russian social media “disinformation” undermined an anti-Trump demonstration that was ridiculous to begin with, something made me check Ann’s blog.

Clearly, she was genuinely ticked off by the story. Althouse doesn’t really write that much in most of her posts, but she did this time, seeing this as entirely contrived and pretty obviously another stretch to swipe at Trump (and the legitimacy of his election): after all, Times readers (and reporters) all think that he was in cahoots with Putin regardless of what the evidence says. Two of Ann’s points,

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Further Notes And Observations On President Biden’s “Soul Of The Nation” Speech

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

No, this doesn’t rate “ethics train wreck” status. The horrible episode was already hooked up to two ongoing ethics train wrecks: the extinction level  2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck, and its subordinate Biden Presidency Ethics Train Wreck. Moreover, Biden’s speech has some very positive aspects to it which are becoming immediately apparent. Those who praise it are outing themselves as hopelessly, cripplingly biased, ethically short-circuited and ready to embrace totalitarianism. Journalists who rationalize it are proving the critics of their rotted profession correct. This is all useful information, if depressing.

The speech also exposed the desperation and complete corruption of the Democratic Party for anyone to see who isn’t in an ethics coma. The smoking gun: the fact that Biden and Democrats began denying that Biden said what he said less than a day after he said it, and said it in a carefully (if stupidly) prepared and choreographed production framed as a major Presidential address. This exchange…

Fox News’ Peter Doocy: “Do you consider all Trump supporters to be a threat to the country?”

Biden: “I don’t consider any Trump supporter a threat to the country.”

…was not only a Jumbo, as Ethics Alarms declared last night, but as Professor Jacobson points out, one that makes the vocal knee-jerk supporters of the speech look like the unprincipled toadies they are. He writes, “I bet you thought there was nothing so pathetic as Joe “Wartime President” Biden’s hateful, lunatic, insane, demeaning, and otherwise civil-warish speech last night….Biden was categorical – “MAGA Republicans are a threat.” Immediately, the usual media and Never-Trump sychophants jumped on board with high praise of this eliminationist rhetoric. Guess what? Joe “Where Am I?” Biden just threw them all under the bus by walking back his comments. No, of course he didn’t mean to say that all MAGA-voters were a threat to the nation….” Continue reading →

The Washington Post Found An “Expert” To Explain Why Trump Is “Semi-Fascist”…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Some Big Lies die hard…particularly if the mainstream media is committed to keeping them alive. The “Trump is a fascist” smear was one of the first out of the box when the Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance”/Democrats/news media) reacted to being foiled in the glorious post-Obama re-making of America they had assumed was assured by setting out to cancel the verdict of the electoral system and sabotage a legally elected President of the United States. (Nah, nothing undemocratic about that!) The claim that Trump and his supporters are crypto-fascists has been nonsensical from the start (as President, Donald Trump eliminated many kinds of government control over individual liberties, and opposed others), and the absurdity has exploded as the Biden Administration and the Democratic Congress have embraced so many markers of totalitarianism, like legally favored groups, censorship by a captured media, political show trials, politically manipulated science and a “truth agency” (which, fortunately, never got off the ground. Then we have the attempted government intimidation of political opposition, lock-step partisan indoctrination in the universities and public schools, official disinformation (“Recession? What recession?”), the effort to punish judges for opinions that go against the party, demonizing the opposing party and, most notably, the targeting of political opponents for prosecution and imprisonment. Tonight, the President of the United States will give a national address accusing the opposing party of being a threat to democracy.

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What Do You Call Those Who Deliberately Encourage Hate And Division?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

A much-esteemed member of the Ethics Alarms commentariate alerted me yesterday that he would be eschewing the blog indefinitely because it was making him anxious and depressed. I’m glad he won’t be reading this post. It made me anxious and depressed.

Fresh off of yesterday’s note about the woman who asked “The Ethicist” whether she was ethically obligated to “out” a friend at work who harbored horrible conservative opinions—you know, like not believing that there is a Constitutional right to kill human fetuses—and news of another study showing that Democrats increasingly don’t want to associate with anyone not buying into their progressive, crypt-totalitarian world view (I can’t locate the recent one right now; a similar study from last December found that “5% of Republicans said they wouldn’t be friends with someone from the opposite party, compared to 37% of Democrats,” and “71% of Democrats wouldn’t go on a date with someone with opposing views, versus 31% of Republicans.”), comes more evidence that hate-mongering and Big Lies are working for the Left. They will destroy the democracy in order to save it, and promoting incurable divisiveness and distrust is just the way to do it.

The tough conservative blogger who writes The New Neo reported on a Washington Post opinion piece from last week headlined, “No, Trump voters aren’t incapable of changing their minds about him.” I confess: I saw the article and jettisoned it after this section in the third paragraph:

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