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I'm okay with any politician being thrown in jail for a decade for merely doing what Trump did on his call with Raffensperger.
As I’ve said before, I’m not disagreeing with you but we have to remember that parliamentary immunity, even from serious crimes, doesn’t break democracy and that setting a precedent that you can just arrest your main general election opponent is not a good idea:
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I think I in general agree, but it seems quite likely to me that Gore in 2000 uttered words that were, at least, quite similar. Hypothetically, "Please friendly county leadership recount only the jurisdictions most friendly to me to make sure you didn't miss any votes" sounds enough like "find me some votes" that it's at least concerning. And SCOTUS found in that instance that different recount standards by county violated the Equal Protection Clause -- I'm not sure I agree with all the details of the ruling, but that one sounds quite reasonable to me generally -- so you could even claim anti-constitutionality there.
More charitably, Gore at least did a better job acting as if his actions were above board, and the lack of clear precedent against such partial recounts at least provides a veneer of falling within the Overton window. On the other hand, were the fact patterns reversed, I think the left would be shouting from the rooftops about inaccessible ballots and inconsistent chad divination being tantamount to literacy tests.
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Which was what exactly? Precisely what did Trump do that was wrong? He said something to the effect of “I think XYZ proves there was fraud of at least ABC. I ‘lost’ by ABC less Y. So you don’t even need to believe all XYZ”
Now maybe you think Trump’s XYZ is nonsense. But the call itself in context was not criminal. This is much like “fine people on both sides.” What gets focused obfuscates the meaning.
The contention is that he knew he lost, and despite that he did all of the above. I don't personally know whether that's true, but the prosecutor thinks he can prove it.
No, the prosecutor knows that it doesn't matter if he can prove it, because the process is the punishment, the judge is an Obama appointee, and the jury will be pulled from DC.
It would at least be legally interesting to compel federal jury selection to better match the national populace than DC specifically. In theory there may be precedent suggesting this, but I can't see it being used seriously in a case like this.
Nor am I really sure what I'd want it to look like: fly in randomly-selected jurors from across the country? Select a local federal court for proceedings by valid dice roll? Honestly most cases probably don't really merit it, but it seems a reasonable precaution for highly politicized cases.
There's an old sci-fi story (Asimov maybe) that I can't seem to find which involves the hunt for the most normal citizen of the country, who will then have his brain scanned by an AI, which will then compute the outcome of the election with 100% accuracy.
My ideal world would involve a jury selected similarly. We simply hunt down the most grill-pilled Iowan, the most relaxed Floridian, and so on, and form the jury from that pool.
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When the PODUS, or any higher ranking politician, calls someone to tell them "The ballots are corrupt and that's illegal... Its more illegal for you than it is for them. You know what they did and you're not reporting it, and that is a criminal offense. You can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you... And you're letting it happen. I'm notifying you that you are letting it happen. And all I want to do is find X votes" just put them in jail.
What you just quoted strengthens Trump's case. He believed the election was stolen, sincerely, and worked to prevent it from being stolen. What part of that is criminal?
If Trump believed everything he said on that call then he’s legitimately retarded. At one point he says he probably won Georgia by half a million votes. There were less than 5 million votes total. This wasn’t in the fog of war right after the election. The call happened on January 2nd. He was just making shit up.
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When the POTUS asks someone to overturn election results immediately after falsely notifying them that they are committing a serious crime if they don't, just chuck them in a jail cell for a decade to teach them about reckless disregard for the truth, and intimidating election officials.
"overturn election results"
This is the assuming-the-sale that papers over the whole conflict. Trump wasn't trying to "overturn" some sort of divinely-inspired value-neutral "results" that can't be questioned. The whole point is he believed those "results" weren't legitimate at all!
Article II Section 1 Clause 2 of the Constitution gives states the power to determine how to select electors. Amendment 12 says that all of the certified ballots are to be counted and the winner is the next President of the United States. It doesn’t matter whether Trump “thinks” the results are illegitimate. He has no jurisdiction here. The electoral college had already voted when the call happened. It was over.
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And that illustrates why the legal standard of "reckless disregard for the truth" exists. Such concepts put limiting principles on credulity. Without such limiting principles a future president could claim they believe they are legally Emperor for life, while amassing functionaries to carry out that goal. If if such an attempt were to fail, they could hide behind "well my lawyers were saying it was true, and I sincerely believed them, so I declared martial law." Elites have enough power, and I'm fine holding all rulers to something like a "reckless disregard for the truth" standard. At a minimum, they should end up in court.
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