2024 Election Ethics Train Wreck

Regarding That Verdict in Manhattan…

/ Jack Marshall / 110 Comments

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.

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I Love It! The Perfect Cap on the Unethical, Damning, “Let’s Get Alito!” Flag-Flying Fiasco!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Oh, this is too good. If the Ethics God is responsible for this, she’s a genius.

You know that supposed “Stop the Steal”-connected flag that the Alito vacation home had flying over it briefly last summer? The flag that “proved” that the conservative Justice was either a serial mad flag-flyer who had engaged in “the appearance of impropriety” by showing his sympathies for the January 6 Capitol rioters twice, previously with an upside-down U.S. flag, or had wrongly “permitted” his wife to express such sentiments via flag twice, the first time almost four years ago? That flag?

That flag, the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, has been displayed along with other historic U.S. flags outside San Francisco’s City Hall for more than half a century. Along with 17 other flags representing different moments in American history, the flag favored by Mrs. Alito (of course the flag conspiracy purveyors are certain that the Supreme Court Justice is lying and that he is the real culprit, just because) appears in the Pavilion of American Flags in Civic Center Plaza.

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Ethics Dunce: The Biden Campaign

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

This might be the easiest Ethics Dunce pick ever; at least I am certain that there couldn’t have been an easier one. When I heard which ever Democratic Party hack it was introduce Robert DeNiro as a featured speaker for the Biden campaign’s Trump Hate presser outside the Manhattan courthouse where this kangaroo kaper is inching to a conclusion, I thought, “No! They can’t be this crude, obvious and stupid. They just can’t be.”

They were, and they are.

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Final Ethics Observations on the Media’s Alito Flag Set-Up

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

…the main one being that the distress signal is appropriate, because the Axis of Unethical Conduct proved with this fiasco that it is ruthless, shameless, untrustworthy, and will do anything in 2024 to mislead the public if it might mean a few extra votes for Democrats. Or maybe the main one is that your friendly neighborhood ethicist was right about this story from the very start, which is why Fredo asked to make another appearance as my spokesman.

And this, my friends, is why we can’t have nice things.

Or a functioning republic.

Let me not get to far ahead of myself. Right now, the whole, biased, corrupt, anti-Trump, anti-conservative, Biden-protecting propaganda-spewing mainstream news media, the third partner in the Ethics Alarms-dubbed Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance,” and Desperate Democrats completing the troika) is doing a mass Jumbo (“Flags? What flags?”) regarding what was its favorite earth-shattering scandal a week ago. This sudden amnesia was brought on because the Washington Post, perhaps seeking to embarrass its old rival, effectively eviscerated the Times’ “Get Justice Alito!” scoop, which EA first discussed here, and subsequently here, here, and here. (Don’t make me describe it again: I was sick of it days ago.)

Two days ago, the Post revealed that it had known about the first flag episode more than three years ago and had decided that it wasn’t newsworthy (because, as the revealed facts showed clearly, it wasn’t). Now-retired SCOTUS reporter Robert Barnes traveled to the Alito’s home on January 20, 2021, the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration, to follow-up on an anonymous tip he had received from some Alito-hating asshole neighbor about the flag. After investigating, Barnes and the Post concluded there was no story, because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, Alito’s wife, not the Justice, as part of her dispute with her neighbors.

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Oh-Oh! Now It Seems That TWO Historical Flags Someone Else Has Used As Free Speech Were Seen Flying Over a Justice Alito Residence! Clearly, This Violates the “Obscure Flags” Section in the Judicial Code of Ethics….

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The contrived Justice Alito flags controversy has exactly one valid use: it shows that the panicked Axis has lost all sense of proportion and self-preservation, that its ethics alarms are deader than Generalissimo Franco, and that between now and November nothing can be ruled out, from violent uprisings to horrified leftist wackos tearing off their clothes, painting themselves mauve and running amuck coast to coast while shouting dirty limericks. Good to know.

Here’s the New York Times, which launched the previous “Bad flag, BAD flag! “scoop (as of this moment, the Times has published nine—NINE!—articles about the flags):

Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.

This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.

Three photographs obtained by The New York Times, along with accounts from a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by, show that the Appeal to Heaven flag was aloft at the Alito home on Long Beach Island in July and September of 2023. A Google Street View image from late August also shows the flag.

In two words, so what?

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Unethical Quote of the Week: NBC’s “Meet the Press” Host Kristen Welker

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“Will you accept the election results no matter what happens?”

—Kristin Welker, “Meet the Press’s” latest star in an interview of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla), demonstrating that she’s not much of an improvement over her Democratic Party operative predecessor, Chuck Todd.

“Will you accept the election results no matter what happens?” If Welker were brilliant, which she is obviously not, I would give her credit for a masterful “when did you stop beating your wife” “gotcha!” question. As it is, I’ll credit her for giving us an invaluable example of how much the mainstream media is committed to enabling an undemocratic Democratic Party.

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Ultra-NYT Partisan Propagandist Provides A Terrific Example of the Ravages of Bias, Denial, and Bubble Dwelling

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I find this article incredible, even from Ezra Klein, one of the most openly and proudly biased partisan hacks in captivity. How could he write this swill? Is he really that delusional? How could the Times publish it? Do the editors not see how foolish it makes the paper look?

Read this thing. I have a pay wall free link here, though I almost feel like it’s an insulting gift for you. The headline is “Seven Theories for Why Biden Is Losing (and What He Should Do About It).” Theories for why Biden is losing? Who needs to search for theories unless their heads are so burrowed into their nether regions that they can lick their intestines. Theories? Here are facts:

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Alternate Realities in the Manhattan Trump Trial, Except Only One of Them Is Real…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Donald Trump for 34 felonies that are exactly one misdemeanor on which the statute of limitations has run is not just an unethical case, it’s a revealing one. It should let the objective members of the public know, if they have the opportunity and inclination to pay attention, just how undemocratic and trustworthy the 21st Century mutation of the Democratic Party has become.

“Dangerous” is also an adjective that belongs in that sentence.

I’ve been beginning mornings lately jumping back and forth between the coverage of the trial on CNN and MSNBC—you know, the Pravda channels—and Fox News, which would be claiming that Trump was as innocent as the driven snow even if he were as guilty as O.J. It is astounding how completely divergent the impressions one is given from the Left and Right sources are—that, and horrifying. The public has no reliable way to get the information it needs to figure out “What’s going on here?” because all of the coverage is agenda-driven. Very few members of the public have the time (or education) to puzzle it out either.

Interestingly, Abe’s observation—the one that begins, “You can fool some of the people…“—again seems to be holding true, and God Bless America for that. A recent poll suggests that a majority of the the public regard Democrats and the Biden administration as the true existential peril to American liberties and freedom, and not Donald Trump. Might it be that the spectacle of four dubious prosecutions in Democratic Party strongholds by Democratic prosecutors all taking place in an election year and aimed at putting the likely GOP nominee and former President behind bars before an election the Democratic resident of the White House looks poised to lose suggests a slight totalitarian bent, mayhap? Perhaps? Ya think?

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Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Sen. James Lankford (R-OK)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

We just have to stop electing narrow, single-minded, critical thinking-challenged people to Congress. A basic understanding of the law and rudimentary knowledge of American history would also be nice, but that might be asking too much.

Falling neatly into the net the Biden administration and its prosecutor lackeys have set up for the gullible and easily misled, Sen. Lankford told The Hill that the trial of former President Donald Trump for falsifying business records (you could be excused for thinking it was a sex crime based on the accounts being broadcast on cable news channels like CNN and MSNBC) has been “painful and salacious.” Lankford said, “It reminds me of the Clinton administration and all the conversations that were happening around that time period with Ken Starr and all the things that came out.”

Why would that be? Because both Clinton and Trump are men? Politicians? They both have arms, legs and a head? There is no substantive parallel between the two situations or cases. Trump is being tried under a criminal statute that has nothing to do with sex. Clinton wasn’t tried at all, he was President when the conduct at issue in his impeachment occured, and the Lewinsky scandal proved that he engaged in perjury, lying under oath in a court room proceeding while he was President. Clinton also violated the sexual harassment law he had previously signed while being fawned over by feminists. Bagging female interns when you are President of the United States is an extreme example of abusing a power disparity for sex. Then Clinton, also while President, lied about his conduct and used subordinates to cover up his mess.

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Mother’s Day 2024 Ethics Warm-Up

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Happy Mother’s Day. It’s not going to be a happy one at the lonely Marshall house, though my sister and I will be having dinner to celebrate her motherhood as well as the two dead mothers in the family. She talked me out of bringing Grace’s urn to the dinner, as I expected she would. I’m still tempted.

In more dark news, it seems a cruel twist of fate that the major event in U.S. history that occurred on this date was the discovery of the kidnapped Lindbergh baby, dead. Happy Mother’s Day!

On to the ethics inventory…

1. About that Trump trial…I haven’t written much about Alvin Bragg’s blatantly political and partisan prosecution of Donald Trump in New York. I’m not there and it’s not being broadcast; meanwhile, the news media is setting new records for completely slanted and biased coverage: going back and forth among Fox News, MSNBC and CNN is like visiting parallel universes. But even a legal analyst on CNN confessed that the prosecution had yet to prove any crime had been committed, and it seems clear that the judge’s decision to allow Stormy Daniels to testify extensively about the alleged sexual activities engaged in with the former President guarantees a guilty verdict being thrown out. From what I can determine, the judge should throw out any guilty verdict as a matter of law, because guilt beyond a reasonable doubt cannot be legitimately found when the two primary witnesses for the prosecution are as inherently unbelievable as Daniels and Michael Cohen, who is a disbarred lawyer, a disgruntled former employee of Trumps, and an admitted perjurer. Jonathan Turley, who has registered his utter contempt for this case (recent posts here, here, and here), had a funny line about waiting to see if the courthouse is struck by lightning when Cohen takes the oath before testifying.

It is so clear, in listening to the MSNBC and CNN commentary on the trial as well as print and online accounts like Maureen Dowd’s column“Donnie After Dark” that the real objective of this trial is to humiliate Trump and expose his “bad character.” This is not an ethical or legitimate use of the justice system, but Democrats are committed to it. How desperate they are. I was thinking about this even as I laughed at Jerry Seinfeld’s movie sharply tweaking Democratic icon Jack Kennedy’s serial adultery and sex addiction: after JFK, after Bill Clinton, and with a their own current President credibly accused of rape and caught on film sniffing and touching young girls as his own daughter’s diary documents them showering together, this is the best they can muster to impugn Trump? And how many Trump supporters are under the delusion that he has embraced high moral and ethical values in his private life? if anything, Trump’s handling of the lawfare assault on him has raised my opinion of his character. His determination and resilience are amazing. He epitomizes the lesson of “Laugh-In” comic Henry Gibson’s favorite poem (by Frank Lebby Stanton), “Keep A-Goin’.”

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