site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   23789 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 17, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The idea that trump reimbursing his lawyer for paying stormy Daniels to sign an NDA constitutes a misreported campaign expense is, however, totally a novel legal theory.

No it's not. The John Edwards case ran on the exact same theory.

Notably, the Republican Party decided not to do this. Like, there weren’t competing slates of electors. Mike Pence had openly said he wouldn’t go along with that plan.

Parts of the party refused to go along with that plan, sure. And they mostly got purged for disloyalty to the guy who spearheaded it.

What are the new legal theories embraced by the 6-3 majority on scotus? Name them.

Off the top of my head, the Major Questions Doctrine is one obvious example of a new legal theory adopted by SCOTUS. It's also highly likely they will be soon adopting a new legal theory in the area of administrative law, abandoning the current Chevron Deference legal theory. Again, I have 0 problem with them doing that, sometimes existing precedent is plain wrong and generally speaking I think the current court has made pretty good rulings.

ABC:

Federal prosecutors accused Edwards of soliciting nearly $1 million from wealthy donors to hide his affair with videographer Rielle Hunter -- and that he was the father of their baby -- to prevent damage to his reputation as a family man during the campaign.

Edwards' defense team argued the donations were personal gifts from friends, not campaign contributions, and were intended only to hide the affair from his cancer-stricken wife, not voters.

A North Carolina jury found Edwards not guilty of one count of receiving illegal campaign donations but deadlocked on five other charges, leading to a mistrial. The Justice Department ultimately dropped the charges.

Hm, but it didnt work to find Edward guilty.

Correct, the prosecution was unsuccessful. Edwards argued that the payoff was made to hide his affair from his wife and not to influence the election, and presumably at least some of the jury thought that was plausible.

But recognise that this is a case of Edwards successfully convincing (some members of) the jury that the legal theory did not apply to him. it's still a case where the same legal theory was prosecuted in the past.

Not only didn’t it work but the DOJ and FEC saw it as a resounding defeat. They viewed the matter as settled.

The idea that trump reimbursing his lawyer for paying stormy Daniels to sign an NDA constitutes a misreported campaign expense is, however, totally a novel legal theory.

No it's not. The John Edwards case ran on the exact same theory.

I bolded the operative part that is completely different. Edwards did not pay for the expense out of his own pocket. Which is why when you later say:

Edwards' mistress was paid off in the same way that Daniels was paid off - Edwards got someone else to give her money.

...you're completely, 180 degrees, backwards. Edwards used somebody else's money. Trump used Trump's money, via an intermediary.

That's a factual difference, but it doesn't change the legal theory. Both cases hung on the idea that paying off the woman you cheated with is a campaign expenditure. If you concede that point, then the question of whether you get someone else to do it and then pay them back, or get someone else to give you money to do it, or get someone else to do it while the money never passes through your hands at all, is all pretty immaterial. All of those actions violate campaign finance law in some way, if and only if the payoff counts as a campaign expenditure.

This is just so wrong.

  1. You are using as precedent a case that is seen as a disaster for the government as precedent. It is precedent; just not the way you think it is (ie it turned the FEC and DOJ off of the theory you espouse).

  2. There is a big fucking difference between a presidential candidate funding his own campaign and a third party. The former has zero limits; the latter does. The latter could be criminal if it goes past the limit.

  3. If it were a campaign contribution, then the only thing Trump would’ve needed to do is report something in 2017. The prosecution’s theory is somehow the 2017 reporting stole the 2016 election. Time travel folks!

To point 2, that is correct. However, Trump did not pay off Daniels himself. Cohen did. The fact that he later reimbursed Cohen does not change the fact that Cohen made the payment on behalf of Trump, and that making a payment on behalf of a candidate is counted as a contribution to the candidate. There's no time travel involved, Cohen committed the initial crime during the election campaign. Trump later committed further crimes trying to hide the fact that he was paying back Cohen for committing that crime.

It's true that if Trump paid Daniels himself with no intermediary and reported the payoff as a campaign expense, there would have been no violation of campaign finance law.

if Trump paid Daniels himself with no intermediary

Could he have used a credit card?

Even if he were to write a cheque I suppose his bank is technically the one disbursing the funds -- so the only way to legally do it would be Trump hand-delivering a briefcase full of cash himself. Interesting theory!

Let me actually respond in a second post. For there to be a FECA criminal violation there has to be a willful violation.

So your theory of the case is that Trump knew he could do it entirely legally by paying Daniel’s directly, but by using an agent he would violate the law. He then enacted this crazy scheme in order to violate the law. Does that make any sense whatsoever?

Yep. He enacted the crazy scheme with the intention to conceal the fact that he had paid her off.

First, if hush monies are required to be reported, no one makes them. This gives a good reason to think “maybe it isn’t illegal” especially when the legality is heavily disputed.

Second you have the time travel issue since any reporting would’ve been after the election. So again it is hard to see how this impacted the 2016 election.

Third, how would Trump paying it directly conceal it less compared to Cohen? Since your argument is that Trump paying it directly reduces his liability you need to have a very good reason to argue why he did it indirectly since again willfulness is an element of the crime.

Yes but then you simply get back to “the report would have to be made in 2017l so still have time travel.

pretty immaterial

Negative. Your confusion comes from your explicit refusal to engage with the history of campaign finance laws, and the court cases that shape it. Most obvious in this setting is Citizens United, which narrowed the scope of the reasons which can ground regulation of these types of expenditures, to the extent that they can be considered expenditures (leaving aside this question for the moment and whether the FEC's current interpretation of the statute was actually informed by the failure to secure a conviction of Edwards), to only quid pro quo situations. Given this precedent, it is absolutely material whether there is a quid pro quo situation, and thus, a huge material difference between a candidate using his own money versus a candidate using someone else's money. It does not make sense to say that Donald Trump was entering in a quid pro quo relationship with Donald Trump by using his own money, whereas it is entirely plausible that the Edwards situation could be argued to constitute a quid pro quo.

We can reserve the question of whether it could count as a campaign expenditure in various hypos, as we discussed elsewhere. Suffice to say, the FEC of today disagrees with you, perhaps as I mentioned, in response to the Edwards debacle. The FEC might have agreed with you in the past, back then, but lots of developments have happened in the law since then, and at this point, they disagree with you.

Regardless of whether the legal theory is correct, the fact that it has previously been prosecuted demonstrates that it is not novel.

trump reimbursing his lawyer

I bolded it and everything. That part is absolutely novel. Prosecution for using your own money to pay for this sort of thing is absolutely novel. In fact, can you find an example of criminal culpability for any politician using his own money to pay for any sort of thing (not restricted to the case of hush money) that is in the broad class of "very questionable concerning whether it could be considered a campaign expense"?

As it so happens, such a case exists! Lisa Wilson-Foley hired John Rowland as a campaign advisor in her congressional race, but because she wanted to hide the fact she had done so (due to Rowland's own scandals) she disguised it by having him be employed by her husband's business. So the couple paid him with their own money, but because they tried to disguise it as not being a campaign expenditure, they broke the law.

Now, I grant that hiring a political advisor is a much more central example of a campaign expense than paying for a NDA. But the Lisa-Foley case demonstrates that it is not unprecedented to charge a politician for spending their own money on their own election, and the Edwards case demonstrates that it is not unprecedented to prosecute a NDA payment as a campaign expense. So neither aspect constitutes a novel legal theory.

in the broad class of "very questionable concerning whether it could be considered a campaign expense"

Nevermind that she used her husband's business, not her own, either. This case really doesn't hit the mark.

The John Edwards case ran on the exact same theory.

Edwards was prosecuted for using campaign funds. Trump was prosecuted for not using campaign funds, on the theory that paying Stormy Daniels was really a campaign contribution!

I don't believe this is correct. The donors supplying the hush money in the Edwards case gave the money for the specific purpose of paying off his mistress. The money only counts as campaign funds if you embrace the legal theory used in the Trump case - that paying for an NDA to shut up the woman you cheated on your wife with is an election expense.

Edwards literally solicited donors to help pay his expenses. That's at least a theory of using campaign monies (monies he campaigned to get) for private ends. Trump used his own money!

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats