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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33485 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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There does not seem to be a provable bribery case to me, at least not one under US law. The US bribery statutes are construed quite narrowly, requiring prosecutors to prove a specific official act was undertaken in exchange for money.

Bribery is tough, yes, but the DOJ's newfangled love to criminalize FARA violations with regard to Trumpy people would make for a fairly easy Hunter case. The difference in the level of caring/pretending to care about technical violations of the law is pretty stark. Compared to the Flynn or Ted Stevens level of vigilance on silly charges.

FARA is an idiotic and shameful law, but if taken seriously, Biden has dozens of FARA violations with all the documentation and witnesses. But of course, everybody realizes FARA is nothing but a weapon to prosecute the opposition, nobody ever in the DOJ seriously treats it as a neutral law applicable to everybody equally.

The whistleblower alleged DOJ purposefully let the statutes run.

If true, it is pretty damning. The whistleblower seems to have receipts and was testifying under oath so these accusations must be taken seriously. The house does need to investigate further.

On the other hand, part of the reason the DOJ is so interested in criminalizing technical violations when trump does them is because trump tends to have terrible lawyers.

They wouldn't need have to have good lawyers if DOJ wasn't actively persecuting them. You can say that the innocent people that sit in jail are there because their lawyers weren't that good - and there's truth in it. But the main reason they are there is because somebody prosecuted an innocent person (often - knowingly and deliberately). It's not the lawyers' fault.

Also, given that working for anybody high-level deplorable leads to instant cancellation, you have to be really, really good lawyer for your career to survive this. And why exactly would you need this trouble, if you're a good lawyer anyway and have all the money you could spend?

Trump, Manafort, Flynn, Bannon,.... all have terrible lawyers?

Expanding the theory to think that all right of center populists can't get good representation makes it worse.

Expanding the theory to think that all right of center populists can't get good representation makes it worse.

There's a bit of a chilling effect when there are groups out there pushing to have Trump's lawyers "held responsible" (that is, punished) for representing him. Usually pushing novel legal theories isn't punishable, but for some weird reason, Trump's lawyers do get punished.

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