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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27864 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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This is a very narrow appreciation of the case and zero appreciation of the context.

Prosecutorial discretion is employed literally everyday in America. And it is up and down the socioeconomic chain and goes left and right. In Baltimore, they sometimes decide not to prosecute multiple felons on gun charges because ... racism or something. When it comes to campaign finance laws, as I understand it, it's close to impossible to run a national level campaign without accidentally breaking the laws a few times - which is why these are almost always handled by the FEC with, at most, fines and public disclosures.

Alvin Bragg wanted to shoot his shot with this case and he did. As @jeroboam said, no one believes this case would've been brought against any other politician besides Trump.

So, while what happened inside the narrow walls of the courtroom may be all on the up and up (which, right now, I believe more than I doubt) ... and while a good deal of blame here should be on Trump's defense team for going full retard ... the facts are that targeted prosecutorial discretion brought a case into a courtroom that would've never made it off a legal pad in any other context. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, Mr. Shapiro.

It's rare to see someone run afoul of the building consensus rule, but "no one believes..." is a clear example.

You're otherwise being reasonably level-headed, so I'll simply request--please don't make a habit of it.

Mods gonna mod, so I'm not mad about that.

But, is this selective enforcement?

Here's the post that I cited that uses the same language: https://www.themotte.org/post/1019/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/217119?context=8#context

Probably because I saw your post and reported it but did not notice or report the other post.

Sorry, I didn't realize you were directly quoting.

I'm not seeing any reports for @jeroboam's version, so either it was cleared by another mod, or it never came to our attention. Either way, the request applies to him.

As @jeroboam said,

Mod fail. Nobody’s perfect.

The judge allowed testimony (Cohen’s plea deal) heavily prejudicial to Trump because the prosecution wanted to impeach its own witness (sure Jan) but wouldn’t allow Trump to introduce evidence that the DOJ and FEC looked at the alleged violation and passed. That seems on the up and up?

Or how there is literally no evidence that Trump was even thinking about the so called predicate literally none in evidence. Which means there should’ve been a directed verdict.

You seem to have more detailed awareness of the case, I'll admit that.

I'd like to point out I think we're on the same side, my guy.

Yes we are. My background is in law (though not litigation let alone criminal) so this has interested me greatly. Couple that with time on my hands due to paternity leave…I’ve gotten obsessive.

As @jeroboam said, no one believes this case would've been brought against any other politician besides Trump.

I believe this case would have been brought against other politicians besides Trump. A very similar case was brought against John Edwards. That case failed to secure a conviction, but it was nonetheless brought.

Unfortunately, I think citing the Edwards case proves my point ... it is very similar to the Trump case for a lot of not good reasons

Many in the Democratic Party legal establishment were baffled by Breuer’s decision to green light the case, particularly because of suspicions that partisan politics played a role in the aggressive pursuit of Edwards by federal prosecutors in North Carolina.

...

That unit came under protracted public criticism in recent years over what the Justice Department found was prosecutorial misconduct in the pursuit of then-Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on charges he filed false ethics reports by omitting the value of gifts and renovations to his home.

...

As a result of failures in the Stevens case, which was brought during the Bush administration, Holder changed much of the Public Integrity Section’s leadership and ordered new training for prosecutors across the department in their responsibilities. Two prosecutors were also ordered briefly suspended after an internal probe.

...

Jurors also got an up-close look at the prosecution’s star witness, Andrew Young, the aide who falsely claimed paternity of Edwards’s and Hunter’s child. Records showed Young diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars from Edwards donors to pay for his own expenses and a pricey new home he was building in North Carolina.

...

The Justice Department said in 2009 that it would pursue criminal campaign finance cases only where there was “no doubt” that the FEC agreed the “underlying conduct” was illegal. No such finding appears to have ever been made in Edwards’s case, and at least one current commissioner said publicly that he doubted Edwards’s alleged actions were illegal.

...

U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles excluded most evidence about the FEC’s views of Edwards’s case. However, jurors did hear the Edwards campaign’s compliance officer testify that she saw no requirement to report the payments related to his mistress and never heard from the FEC that they needed to be reported. The jury also heard a former FEC chairman say he’d never heard any discussion of whether payments to or for a mistress could be considered donations.

And this insane "history rhymes" banger:

Another problem that may have tripped up prosecutors: proving that Edwards knew his alleged actions were illegal, something the government must show to get a conviction in a campaign finance case.

It disproves your claim that the case would not have been brought except against Trump, which is the claim I was contesting.

No. The Edwards case became infamous meaning it would not again be brought because it was an embarrassment.

So the accusation is that bringing this case violated some unwritten norm that was supposedly established in 2012?

Has anyone ever actually been protected by that supposed norm?

While it does disprove that claim in the isolated sense of "no other politician" .... it does so with a case that probably should not have been brought against Edwards and that he beat.

You're correct in a very specific way, but zooming out ... you're correct for reasons that circularly point back to my assertion.

I'm not trying to "win" this argument at this point. I'm trying to highlight that shitty politically motivated trials ... have always been shitty politically motivated trials.

That sounds like a just-so story brought by someone who is sad that their felon got convicted.

  • -10

Stop posting low effort comments like this. I'm actually happy to see someone defending the verdict and pushing back on what's clearly a dominant opinion here (this is completely orthogonal to what I personally think of the verdict) and it's unfortunate that the only pushback is coming from someone whose responses can mostly be summarized as "Neener neener."

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