I am asking here because all the political subs don’t allow a question, and US politics used to seemed so simple until to understand this man came along.
Because this needs to be done 1000% right, there is no margin for error, everything has to be done in an iron clad manner that cannot be dismantled by half-assing it. Indicting a former president is a first in the history of this country, and this former president is nothing short of a cult leader with millions of unshakable followers, many of whom are armed to the teeth and ready to burn this country to the ground for him. So this has to be done very friggin carefully.
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I wonder if that’s a typo and a maga webmaster meant to slip in a sneaky “fuck Biden”?
unshakeable followers
You spelled ignorant morons wrong
Holy shit you’re in a pickle with this one America.
In addition to being done right, he has to be pampered. I hate him passionately, but I really mean that. Subjecting him to the indignities of stuff like handcuffs, a mugshot, an orange suit, etc will turn him into a martyr in the eyes of his cult followers. And while the rest of us would enjoy seeing it, that’s not necessarily bringing out the best in us either. Donald Trump is an enormous pot-stirrer and unless you really want the pot to boil over you need to tiptoe around him, as unfair as that is.
turn him into a martyr in the eyes of his cult followers
they’re gonna continue to be terrorists no matter what we do and I’m sick of bowing to their terrorism
Choosing not to aggravate them is not bowing to them. Remember we’re talking about how we’ll prosecute Dear Leader. Get him where it counts, even if it has to be done quietly.
So why do we have to be so afraid of his followers that we are giving him special treatment to dissuade their violence? Instead of, you know, fighting back or having them jailed too. 🤦
Nearly 63,000,000 people voted for trump in '16.
If even 1% of them are crazy fucks, that’s 630,000 people to deal with. That’s not something to take lightly.
Doesn’t make it right, but it’s another layer of complexity.
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What’s it matter? Because a large portion of those millions of followers are going to be in positions where they can do damage. You want to swing every single one to believe that the law was carried out in a manner true and faithful.
Imagine, if you will, if somehow the federal government passed a law banning firearms for private use. Right now. Do you think the police in most places would actually go around and try to seize firearms? Fuck no, and not just because they aren’t suicidal morons. Most of them think people should be able to own firearms. It would be chaos as some attempted to follow the law, and others did everything they could to sabotage it.
Now extend that to the military/national guard (and if it was “millions of followers” burning the country down, the military/national guard would get involved) in the event of Trump conviction and an imminent/happening revolt/riot. Imagine how many it would take to create mayhem inside of bases/squads/etc. Even if you want to be really positive and say that the military had plans for contingencies where they can effectively stop traitorous members, it would still take a chunk of operating efficiency.
So, think of the way this is being handled as an effort by a large group of people to head off complaints that could be made and accusations about incorrect handling that would give cretins something to latch onto and endlessly jabber about, thus preventing a potentially swayed individual from coming to the conclusion that yes, Trump was lawfully convicted without conspiracy because he actually fucking broke the law many, many times.
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How is it that different from indicting a sitting president…
I admire your optimism.
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This is probably a correct assumption, plus it also keeps it relevant. More of his supporters/underlings going to jail and it keeps the heat on. It drew it out for how long and now the nation is ramping up for another election and Trump’s indictments start flying in.
They are also worried about setting dangerous precedents in the process of closing these loopholes we didn’t think needed closing (like the largely ceremonial congressional ratification of votes on Jan 6,or the peaceful transition of power in general) and dismantling an enterprise whose director continually aims to obstruct a good faith process to the bitter end (Trump’s attacks on legislative and judicial branches, specifically DOJ and it’s bureaus).
Also, he’s not exactly “free.”. That being said, it is truly infuriating, and detrimental to all of us, consciously and subconsciously. It’s like Republicans are living out the ending of “Requiem for a Dream.”
The indictments have boosted Trump’s popularity though.
Is there any evidence that Trump has gained fans because of this? I cannot fathom how that could work.
“gained fans” is problematic because it’s subjective, but it’s being widely reported that his polling has improved with the indictments. This is the first hit in search with some details but there are many articles like it.
Briefly, the narrative that it’s a politically motivated witch hunt is resonating with voters.
If the trump era taught me only a couple things, one of them is that polls aren’t really very useful.
Yeah I don’t doubt there are some folks who now are more motivated to vote for trump… however that really exceeds the number who turned away from him?
What other criminal in history survives literally infinite evidence against them, and not just with their existing supporters, but also that evidence actively somehow turns NEW people in their favor? AND those new people outnumber the people who finally realize the truth??I just had a literal nightmare and this scenario feels right at home in the fucked world my mind conjured.
Yeah, but also remember that if there is one thing history taught us, it is that a non popular voted president can win still. Many of us were in disbelief when it happened with this guy.
Also, don’t underestimate the fact that people may disagree with Trump, but they only have to disagree/hate Biden more in order to vote for this guy.
So yes, I do agree that his polls may be increasing or rather, I never underestimate that they could be.
All fair points. I’m not resting on my laurels though. I’m just against the idea that we should be timid about prosecuting the motherfucker because of polls
one of them is that polls aren’t really very useful
IDK about this. We’ve certainly learned that polls are poor predictors of election outcomes, but can they at least reveal trends like “approval is increasing/decreasing” ? IDK.
Maybe, but it’s hard not to feel really cynical about any positive change a poll seems to indicate.
I watch a lot of automotive content on YouTube, and it’s been interesting seeing right wing ads evolve (and yes, the fact that I like cars means they think I’m conservative bums me out, I also subscribe to bicycle stuff and climatetown, but whatever).
There’s a new one that is basically “Trump will lose to Biden again. Vote for anyone but him in the primary.” Kinda warmed my heart a bit.
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If you look at everything a politician does and think “How does this get them more money or power?” then things make more sense. There are a few exceptions but roll around with the pigs long enough and they get muddy too.
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Well, aside from what others are saying…
Try to picture Trump on the phone with the Proud Boys, giving them explicit instructions or discussing strategy. Even if he did talk to them (which I doubt), surely it’d be his usual “We’re going to do great things, great things, we’re all great people, we’re gonna turn this thing around, it’s going to be beautiful!”
When Russia collaborated to help Trump get elected, do you figure they talked on the phone in person? Or emailed back and forth? Motherfucker couldn’t make it through a one-page intelligence briefing, I’m not even sure he can write. Surely it was Trump’s people working with Putin’s people (several levels down in both cases).
You need to prove that Trump personally and intentionally violated the law. It’s not enough to show that shady shit was going on around him. And that’s hard to prove, since he generally was working at a remove. And this is a guy who’s been in and out of courtrooms his entire adult life; surely he has some instinct for what kinds of things to avoid.
Except when he was clearly hear saying he wanted the Georgia officials to find exactly enough votes to win, on a phone call to them.
I think my personal favorite was when he said on tape that he had stolen classified documents, they were definitely classified, that he could have declassified them and definitely chose not to do that, and that the person he was showing them to ‘shouldn’t look too close’ at them
Yes! He stepped right into that one.
The two indictments about Jan 6th and the plot to use fake electors offer a detailed look at a conspiracy. This isn’t just mob talk about “it would be awesome if this happened” – there is evidence of a coordinated effort to create fake electors and attempt to steal an election. The act of creating fake electors is a crime. The conspiracy to create fake electors is a crime.
All of these things are a crime. The problem is, in America, people who have power are held to a higher standard. Trump will get all sorts of concessions, and slow this down like mad. What he also has is an entire network carrying water for him. Because of Fox News – which was started to avoid another Nixon, he gets to both sides this.
Right. So to start out you prove there was a conspiracy, and you convict some of the members, and then finally you have enough evidence to go after the leader.
Trump wasn’t directly involved in illegal stuff (in most cases), he was doing it through underlings. So you need to start with the underlings, and roll him up last.
Look into RICO laws, it makes it much easier to convict people of those types of nebulous crimes. They were pretty much invented to take down mob bosses who “never personally did anything illegal.”
The GA indictments include RICO charges.
Yeah. But RICO charges require that you’ve got cooperation and guilty pleas from lower-ranking members of the organization, and they’re willing to point the finger at the leader and say “he’s the one who told me to do it”. So, yeah, that’s part of the reason why he’s the last one in the group to see the inside of a courtroom.
lower-ranking members of the organization
the preferred term nowadays seems to be “unindicted co-conspirators”
Are you joking? Numerous people have already turned on him, and those are only the ones we know about so far. You’re a fool if you think all of he people involved (many of whom Trump simply never paid, or immediately threw under the bus at his first convenience) are going to stick by him till the end.
Oh, they’re not going to stick with him! He’s finished, IMHO. But the question was why it took so long. It’s because the other conspirators had to go first to build the case.
Surely it was Trump’s people working with Putin’s people (several levels down in both cases).
Surely you have information that contradicts the investigations then right?
That’s bc collusion was made up by democrats as a way to deflect from why Clinton lost on 2016. It’s not that she’s an old corrupt fucker that nobody likes, it’s bc the ruskies came in and sabotaged her so drumpf could win (according to dems at least)
You act like the two options are mutually exclusive.
They’re not, at least not inherently. But afaik there’s no evidence of Trump or his administration working with Russia. Russia did interfere through social media ads and troll farms spreading disinformation, but unless there’s something I’m missing, the idea of collusion between them and Trump is just speculation
Other than the Manafort/Kilminik stuff and Roger Stone being found guilty of obstructing the investigating of ties to Russia (surely you don’t to that if you don’t need to) there were only less-than-conviction-worthy actions by straight up everyone in his circle.
The roger stone stuff sounds pretty sus, I haven’t heard about that or the manafort/kilminik stuff, I’ll look that up
Ladies and gentlemen; may I present… another fucking snowflake.
There’s a massive steaming pile of bad shit you can call out Trump and his administration for, working with Russia isn’t one of them. If that makes me a snowflake then merry Christmas, hope you find president Hillary under your tree :3
Russia directly helped Trump. Hillary is a piece of shit who no one wants to vote for.
Both are true. Try and cope with it.
no you have to make sure that he was involved with the conspiracy to break laws you don’t have to prove that he actually did anything as long as he was involved with the conspiracy that’s the whole point of Rico and conspiracy charges to begin with
You can go to jail for being head of a criminal organization or conspiracy. This requires that 1) prosecutors prove that the conspiracy was in fact illegal, and engaged in illegal activity, and 2) that you were in fact the head of that conspiracy. That all requires cooperation from other defendants. So it takes time to build a case like that.
what do you think they’ve been doing the last few years?
I, uh…I think they’ve been building the case against Trump by getting convictions, confessions, and plea deals from his underlings. Which is what I said in response to the initial question: why isn’t Trump in prison, even though a lot of his underlings are? Because that was a necessary prerequisite to making the case against him, since he probably wasn’t involved in the day-to-day activities.
I never said anything like “these are things they aren’t doing”. I’m just explaining the timing.
Finally, some good fucking answers.
When you’re a billionaire, you can do whatever the hell you want in Murica.
When you’re a billionaire, you can do whatever the hell you want.
Nah, it does depend a bit on the country. Didn’t several russian billionaires (aka oligarchs) … erm… have accidents last year? So I don’t think money helps you a lot in a system like that. It gets them further, no question. But ultimately it didn’t matter.
The country’s political system didn’t kill them. A more powerful billionaire killed them.
Unless you’re a Chinese billionaire and say something bad about Winnie the Pooh
If you come for the King, you best not miss.
This is what it boils down to. All this time, I kept seeing all the shit he did and kept wondering the same question. But the flurry of indictments over the past little while has answered it: they were biding their time, making sure all their ducks were in a row, so they could all collectively take one giant, perfect, swing for the fences. We can only hope they don’t miss.
It has been a taboo to go after previous politicians, so all prosecutors are trying their best to ensure that they’ve followed every procedure to the letter, which has taken a while.
We are also dealing with a person with a long history of doing whatever he can to stretch out court cases.
Wrong. Prosecutors always start at the bottom. Plea deals for future testimony is extremely standard. Don’t let the reddit brigade convince you otherwise.
It’s a good question - all Constitutional scholars agree he has violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and is therefore ineligible to hold any political office (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/donald-trump-constitutionally-prohibited-presidency/675048/) but does America have the collective strength to admit it?
The laws for who goes on the ballot are set by the individual states.
I suppose the Federal Election Committee could deny his federal application, or the Attorney General of the U.S. could sue the FEC to force an injunction against his filing under the 14th? It’s not clear.
In any case, regardless of how it got there, it would end up in court and be decided by the Supreme Court, which is ultra conservative right now.
Bla bla bla.
It’s not ambiguous. You either follow the Constitution or you are a traitor to it.
I’m literally describing to you how that process works. It doesn’t matter by what avenue it happens, it’ll absolutely end up in front of the supreme Court, and then they’ll get to decide to agree with whatever decision was made or reverse it.
Unless they have a reason to lock him up to protect their own interests, the Supreme Court is probably not going to do shit. That’s WHY Trump picked them, as an “insurance measure”, and unfortunately it seems to be working.
“All”? If you can’t even get all dentists to agree you should use toothpaste, I doubt it. More importantly, he’s not convicted of anything yet
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odds are he will be
Scholars don’t matter and it doesn’t mean shit if the courts won’t convict him
He doesn’t need a conviction. He’s already admitted being involved enough in Jan 6 to be disqualified. That’s my point - the Constitution says he’s out.
You can argue (likely correctly) that the 14th amendment will be ignored but that’s a different issue. Will we defend the constitution or ignore it?
It still doesn’t matter what the constitution says if the courts never convict him of the crimes that would disqualify him from running. He needs to serve time and be prevented from running, but I don’t think either will happen
Minor point, but did you actually read the article? The 2 constitutional scholars from the Federalist Society say that he is already disqualified - it’s not necessary to “convict him” as he has already been involved and complicit in the insurrection.
This answer doesn’t address the question. Did you comment on the wrong post or are you just generally always this confused?
I mean, I would never talk directly to them. And you would never talk directly to them. But neither one of us would go on the record on video saying we could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot somebody.
There have been plenty of cases where he’s done some incredibly stupid things that he could easily have gotten away with simply by playing along. Hell look at the documents, he could have literally just made photocopies of them said my bad and It would never have even hit the press.
I think the legal system is just moving as slowly and carefully as possible to make sure he can’t lawyer his way out of these things.
Donald Trump is a fucking moron. But you didn’t answer the question asked, did you? Perhaps you and Donny T have a bit more in common than you’d like to admit?
Did you read the last part of the comment?
Because current US politics and justice system are a sham that only serves the rich.
How come there are still people who get the death penalty but later get found to be innocent, while when it comes to an ex-politician, they gotta drag the process out for years and years to find every single detail?
Not only that but we say corporations are people, yet when they are found to have knowingly caused actual human death, we punish them by making them pay a small fraction of the profits they earned through those same actions. Fuck capitalism.
If they arrest him, there is a major concern of right-wing terrorism.
Police departments don’t want that to happen because they’ll have to arrest their own.
Government departments will also start to point fingers at one another, as loyal maga fucks deep inside places may refuse to act or do their job.
The legal way is the most non-violent way to handle this, even if it does drag on and on.
I know this may be pedantic, but he was “arrested” the same day he was arraigned for the first three indictments (he will surrender later this week for the fourth one in Georgia). He just wasn’t handcuffed and isn’t being detained while he awaits trial. He was also booked at the courthouse instead of the police station.
and isn’t being detained while he awaits trial
I expect his secret service detail will act as an assurance that he won’t skip the country.
All true. Arresting him would also make the Secret Service’s job enormously more difficult.
Only if he is in GenPop which won’t happen.
Or easier, because they can just stand guard on his cell.
Money and power. He has (or claims to have) alot of money and alot of people on the Right still seem to follow him, but I think that’s more just based on momentum, there’s really nobody else on the Right that they have that’s as “charismatic” as Trump. The closest they have is DeSantis, and he’s just some wannabe fanboy with no personality. I personally think Trump is pretty much done and washed up, the GOP just doesn’t know what else to do at this point (certainly he still has a shot at the presidency, but I doubt it’ll work out). The Right had one really good shot at a violent coup on January 6, and the only reason they really managed to pull anything off was because Trump himself was in charge at the time and he was able to subdue the Federal response to it.
I think one of the main reasons he’s being treated with kid gloves is out too much caution of it appearing political. I think the DOJ is afraid of appearing partisan if the Democrat’s #1 political opponent were to be locked up (regardless of how slam dunk the evidence is). In any other country, we’d assume that it was a dictator trying to tighten their control of the political system by locking up their opponents, and that’s exactly what Biden/DOJ/Democrats are being accused of. Personally I think there’s going to be some amount of protest or violence if/when he gets locked up/sentenced/found guilty/whatever, they may as well just do it now to get it out of the way. The longer we wait and the closer we get to the election, the worse it’s going to get. It honestly won’t matter how much evidence is trotted out during the multiple trials, or how many judges/juries find him guilty, Republicans are still going to bitch and whine about it. He’s obviously guilty though, there’s more than enough evidence.
I don’t think Trump will spend a day in prison. Simply because they don’t want to set a precedent, that a u.s. president can go to jail.
Worst that might happen, is that he’s barred from running again.
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You would think. The reasoning is that you don’t want presidents being afraid of political opponents going after them for decisions they making while they’re president. Not that I agree with that logic. Trump needs to be made an example of.
State cases will definitely put him in jail. They don’t care about any of the political nonsense and honestly I’m not seeing the DoJ backing down either.
Honestly if they dont put him away i think it will only embolden his group to make them feel they all are untouchable.
Wouldn’t he have to be convicted of something in order to be barred? What criteria other than a conviction in a court of law could be used to disqualify him?
Not all crimes will keep him from being president. Any guilty verdict from Georgia will send him to jail for a minimum of 5 years, no probation, no home detention. The only charges that if found guilty that would disqualify Trump from being president are with Jack Smith. Essentially, Georgia will send him to jail if he lives long enough and it will be possible for Trump to set another first, the first president to serve from jail because he could not pardon himself for state crimes and the governor has very limited pardon powers in Georgia.
the first president to serve from jail
I know we’re in the weirdest timeline and all but this is just too bizarre to even consider. Imagine him being incarcerated for trying to undermine democracy while being the elected head of that democracy.
It’s already a pretty weird thing that a country as large as the US has managed to function well for 250 years with such major loopholes in its legal and executive systems and that nobody has bothered to exploit them until recently.
He will be found guilty and the given a presidential pardon by Joe Biden. Joe will make him verbally concede the election in return, maybe more.
You inhaled something but it wasn’t vegetables
Relax buddy it’s just a silly prediction :) I’m sure if a year ago I told you what was going to happen one years time, the reactions would be similar.
Nixon was pardoned and it’s the only comparable event in history, so it’s plausible. If there isn’t a remind me bot on Lemmy I’ll be sad… either way:
!Remindme one year “did Biden have Trump concede the 2020 election results?”
Sorry that seems… implausible.
:)
The rich and powerful are exempt from the rules
The rich and powerful are exempt from the rules
Close. They have the resources (money and connections with money) to fight back.
Nah they’re just exempted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelly_Miscavige
Most of their crimes are never even investigated.
Nah they’re just exempted.
… because they have money/power. You think the judge let him off free just for fun? The judge got paid (or threatened) one way or another. If the du pont guy didn’t have the money/connections he did they would have locked him up and not given it a second thought.
Same with Shelly Miscavige, there’s a lot of people with money involved. It’s an uphill battle. Nobody should be above the law, but it’s allowed because if you have enough money you can at the very least exhaust the resources of those trying to come after you.
They always get away with it.
*Most of the time. Not always.
Law is very different for rich people.
