OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
I'm surprised at your surprise. That's just what a plea deal is. "I will plea to this lesser charge that does not accurately depict reality so that I don't risk jail for a greater charge and you don't have to go through the trouble of a jury trial."
In the 9th episode of series 15 of "Law and Order: SVU", a serial rapist offers to plead guilty to a rape which he did not commit, while refusing to plead guilty to a series of rapes which he actually did commit (the reasons for this are complex and irrelevant to the question). The prosecutor and police seriously consider accepting his offer, even though they know he didn't commit the crime he wants to confess to, because they don't think they can prove the crimes he actually did commit. This doesn't sound to me like something which would be legal. Could a prosecutor really agree to a plea bargain deal which would involve the defendant confessing to something which the prosecutor knows they didn't do?
Answer:
Such things are in fact legal in some US jurisdictions, as part of plea bargains. In fact such pleas are not uncommon. More usual is the case where a person pleads guilty to a lesser crime, so as to qualify for a lower sentence, when all involved know that the lesser crime was not committed by anyone. It is simply a device to get a compromise sentence and avoid a trial.
In some jurisdictions the Judge, in the course of accepting a guilty plea, requires that the accused admit specific facts that form a minimal legal basis for conviction of the crime pled to. In others no such admission is made. But even where such an admission is made, the truth of such an admission is not usually checked. The Judge will generally make sure that the accused understands the effect of a guilty plea, the rights given up by such a plea, and the possible range of sentences that will result. If the Judge believes that the plea constitutes a miscarriage of justice, for example that a totally innocent person is yielding to improper pressure from the prosecutor, the Judge can refuse the plea, but this is very rare in practice.
There aren't limits to plea bargaining than what each side accepts based on their risk tolerance.
Cohen plead guilty to a campaign finance violation. A campaign finance violation is indeed a crime it is possible to commit. No one in the process, however, had to double check that what Cohen did actually counted as a campaign finance violation.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
It doesn't matter. Let's say Cohen bought Trump a new suit. They went back and forth talking about how this suit would make Trump look more like an every-man, this other suit made him look more powerful, this one made him look healthier, and how those different impressions would impact the different demographics of voters.
It still would not make the purchase of a suit a campaign contribution. The motive being related to the campaign does not make it a campaign contribution.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
He confessed to a crime in the sense that there is a law on the books that he confessed to break. That doesn't mean that he actually violated that crime. For example, let's say I wanted to murder a bank teller because of a personal beef. After my crime, I plead to attempted bank robbery and un-premeditated murder so that I can avoid being tried for pre-meditated murder. Bank robbery is a crime, but I never actually tried to commit it. I just plead to it because it keeps me from the electric chair.
Michael Cohen confessed to a crime he didn't commit given the facts at hand. People do this to avoid long sentences for possibly other crimes they committed. Michael Cohen is a convicted perjurer and was trying to avoid going to trial for tax fraud:
Cohen was facing multiple tax and fraud charges that could have landed him in jail for the rest of his life, even if he beat the campaign finance allegations. By pleading guilty, he limits his jail time to just a few years.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
That is how you see it. I read it as Trump had his New York business correctly state that he was paying Cohen for legal expenses.
Opposition research clearly wouldn't happen except in the context of a campaign, and thus is a campaign expense. Paying someone to sign an NDA to keep their mouth shut about an affair is not a campaign expense. As former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith wrote:
It is true that “contribution” and “expenditure” are defined in the Federal Election Campaign Act as anything “for the purpose of influencing any election,” and it may have been intended and hoped that paying hush money would serve that end. The problem is that almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to “influence an election,” from buying a good watch to make sure he gets to places on time, to getting a massage so that he feels fit for the campaign trail, to buying a new suit so that he looks good on a debate stage. Yet having campaign donors pay for personal luxuries — such as expensive watches, massages and Brooks Brothers suits — seems more like bribery than funding campaign speech.
That’s why another part of the statute defines “personal use” as any expenditure “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.” These may not be paid with campaign funds, even though the candidate might benefit from the expenditure. Not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
He pleaded to it as part of a deal to avoid being prosecuted for other things. Read my link, it is directly related to that question.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
Consider also in Camp: this is terrible:
Trump did not do anything that was technically illegal. There is nothing illegal about paying someone to sign an NDA. A former chairman of the FEC is on the record as saying this expenditure does not count as a campaign expenditure. Smith also commented:
Suppose Trump had used campaign funds to pay off these women. Does anyone much doubt that many of the same people now after Trump for using corporate funds, and not reporting them as campaign expenditures, would then be claiming that Trump had illegally diverted campaign funds to “personal use”? Or that federal prosecutors would not have sought a guilty plea from Cohen on that count?
There is, at the least, reasonable doubt that this action was illegal, and the standard for convicting someone of a felony is beyond a reasonable doubt.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
Yes, a fine is the typical response to misclassifying campaign expenses, not a felony.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
Literal answer to your question: Trump is accused of falsifying the checks he wrote to his lawyer when he wrote on the checks that they were for legal expenses. He is also accused of falsifying his accounting books for his business when he recorded that the checks paid to his lawyer were for legal expenses.
Edit: sorry, above I said "accused" but the more factual thing now would be to say "convicted." My mind's having a hard time downloading the latest update.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
NY Governor Hochul could pardon Trump.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
His mortgage on his primary residence counts as a campaign contribution because people are less likely to vote for a homeless person. /S
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
Can you explain what changed your mind? I'm agnostic on the topic.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
I get most sleepy when I put the kids down for sleep, around 7:30 PM. At that point I can either fall asleep for 10 hours or if I hang on and do something mindless I get a surge of energy by 8:30 and find it impossible to go to sleep until 10-11.
Weird supplements that can help with Mitochondrial health and overall energy (besides the usual, and don't try them all at once but maybe try one at a time and see if it helps):
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Glycine
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Nicotinamide Riboside
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Sterylethanolamide
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Asprin
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Quercetin
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
Half of my family was not frontiersmen. They came to the East Coast fleeing starvation and lived in a city. My grandfather joined the police force, his four sons followed suit. His brother died in Korea. They are proud to be American. I think there is room in the American Story for tales such as these.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
We were all born guilty of original sin; we have fallen, and still frequently fall into lesser sins and failings. The point John is making is that we need Jesus as a savior because we cannot fight sin on our own. It's not a statement that everyone commits a personal sin every day, hour, minute? How often does one need to commit a personal sin to qualify for the present tense? Are you sinning right now?
I have sin in me, I have a weak will, darkened mind, and rebellious body given to me through the sin of my first parents. That doesn't mean I'm sinning right now.
I sin less now than I did ten years ago, and hopefully will keep that trajectory. My attachment to several sinful things has decreased, in some cases to 0. Is believing in improvement antithetical to the Gospel? I hope on the last day of my life I do not sin at all. Does that contradict 1 John 1?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
They need to love the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Founding Fathers. They need to be non-violent, prosocial, and always happy to help a neighbor.
The percent of immigrant population would ideally be between 5-10% to accommodate integrating them into our culture without American culture being upended too quickly. Currently the percent of the foreign born population is 13.9%
I would be very sad if the percentage dropped to 0%. We are a nation of immigrants after all. But I would hate for America to stop being America.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
I suppose to turn the discussion back to you, if you had clear video that Foster did not point his gun at Perry, and was just walking around, would you accept that he like Rittenhouse did not actually threaten someone and thus Perry shooting him was murder?
I think there is a higher standard to convict someone of murder when they have a legitimate self-defense claim, compared with the standard of having a legitimate self defense claim in the moment.
The standard for self defense is: Would a reasonable person have felt like their life or limb was threatened in that moment? So lets look at an alternative, what if Rosenbaum actually got his hands on Rittenhouse and killed him? Would Rosenbaum have had a legitimate self-defense claim? I don't think so, because of how far he chased Rittenhouse. But if it was a shorter distance, then maybe.
And both those things can be true, that both the killer and the slain could have had a reasonable fear for their life.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
So far I have given them four grandkids. So that's something. But I didn't start participating in the dating market until I was 25 and married someone they probably thought was a step down.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
Speaking for myself, I didn't see any point to dating in high school or college, because I always knew that I would move states afterwards and didn't want to have to breakup. In college my Mom would tell me that I could be a little less practical.
Now that it's been 10 years I realize that the whole point of my Ivy league education was to meet people and that dating would have been a better use of my time than doing my homework. But at the time I didn't understand.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
Nicotinamide Riboside: https://www.thorne.com/products/dp/resveracel
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
Pay a professional photographer to take and edit your photos, pay a "copywriter" on fiver to write your bio. That should handle 75% of it.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
I don't really mean for the average person to see percentages. Of course one could calculate percentages after the fact.
I mean for the politicians to only see a percentage on each line item. I mean for politicians to argue that X program should get .01% of the budget, while that program only receives .005%. Percentages are a way of declaring priorities.
And then, after the percentages are selected, the total budget compared to the tax revenue for the previous year is argued about and chosen.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
See edit:
I don't really mean for the average person to see percentages. Of course one could calculate percentages after the fact.
I mean for the politicians to only see a percentage on each line item. I mean for politicians to argue that X program should get .01% of the budget, while that program only receives .005%. Percentages are a way of declaring priorities.
And then, after the percentages are selected, the total budget compared to the tax revenue for the previous year is argued about and chosen.
In this vein, I think it would be a very different world if the lines in the budget were listed as percentages, and then the overall total was determined based on a factor of tax revenue. So a simplified version would look like:
War: 25%
Social Security: 25%
Bureaucracy: 25%
Debt: 25%
Total budget: 1.25x tax revenue for 2023.
And then the actual amount of money would get calculated based on these figures. Right now the numbers are so disconnected from anything the average person can comprehend.
Edit: I don't really mean for the average person to see percentages. Of course one could calculate percentages after the fact.
I mean for the politicians to only see a percentage on each line item. I mean for politicians to argue that X program should get .01% of the budget, while that program only receives .005%. Percentages are a way of declaring priorities. And you can't exceed 100%.
And then, after the percentages are selected, the total budget compared to the tax revenue for the previous year is argued about and chosen.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
Yep, make some sort of paid "Minimalist Phone UI plus timed app/website blocker" if you can program.
If you have the start-up capital, make a clubhouse. I think the trick to making a third space is to make it so that you don't have to pay every time you visit. Something with a monthly or even annual fee. Keep costs down by encouraging patrons to clean up after every event. Maintain a few vending machines, offer free clean water.
Have bookshelfs with a "take a book, leave a book behind" kind of policy. Board games, cards, a kitchen playset for young kids. Have scheduled learning/crafting events, but encourage people to come in even if there's nothing going on. Maybe have sex-segregated areas if you can manage.
Gyms aren't really pleasant places to linger. Coffee Shops and Bars become expensive if you visit every day and they aren't suitable for a whole family.
The second case is literally not a campaign contribution. "That’s why another part of the statute defines “personal use” as any expenditure “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.” These may not be paid with campaign funds, even though the candidate might benefit from the expenditure. Not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate."
Clothing does not count as a campaign contribution. Clothing is personal use. Humans have an obligation to be clothed even if they are not campaigning. And public figures have a commitment to hush up their affairs even if they are not campaigning.
Let's imagine the reverse world:
There is, at the least, reasonable doubt that this action was illegal, and the standard for convicting someone of a felony is beyond a reasonable doubt.
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