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You think the Dems will go that far versus just being an election stunt? Regardless of whether he was guilty or not it looks like a huge issue for Democracy if they put him in jail before the election.
I still work on a model that they want bad press. Winning an election thru the criminal justice system seems wrong and a threat to half the country trusting the system. I’m not sure we can come back from that which makes me think the power brokers would back off from going quite that far.
After the election there’s no reason to prosecute Trump.
If he is truly guilty (and obviously that is a big if) then not jailing him is also a huge issue for democracy. It will unambiguously show that the powerful do not have to follow the same rules as everyone else, that ex-Presidents are not held to the same standards as the common man. Which has probably always been true, but that is one reason politicians often step down at the whiff of scandal. So the curtain is not entirely pulled back.
Of course they aren't, this is priced in, it's standard wisdom. We try not to prosecute the previous president so as not to become a banana republic.
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Well legal or illegal is really just breaking the rules of the current ruling class. Elections decide who is the current ruling class. Elections get to decide who wields power.
From that perspective I do think elections are > some court case. If he wins tbe election he literally because innocent because he’s now the one who decides if something is legal or illegal. That’s Democracy.
That might be kind of how democracy works in practice, but its not how the illusion of democracy is said to work so it gains support from the people.
No-one is above the law is the myth here.And its an important one for stabilities sake.
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That is very much not democracy as envisioned in the constitution of the United States of America. There is a separation of powers and being elected president doesn't make you emperor. The legislature and courts determine the law. Power is deliberately separated and modeled after the Roman Republic, not the Empire.
Well lawfare exist, and with enough prosecutorial power you can find some regulation that’s broken to throw a guy in jail especially anyone whose had to make a lot of decisions. So in practice it just becomes an ability to put political opponents in jail.
Obama had Rezko. Clinton had perjury. Hillary had document management issues. Biden well has his whole crime family. Bush probably broke some war crimes if I look into it. They could all be imprisoned with control of the justice system.
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Lol, no he doesn't. The legislature decides if something is illegal or illegal.
With limits. They cannot criminalize valid exercises of executive or judicial powers.
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Prosecutorial discretion don't real?
Prosecutorial discretion doesn't make crime legal.
Would you have been the ninth vote in US v. Texas to affirm that proposition, had you magically been in Scalia's vacant seat at the time? Because best as I can tell, the judgment below to the contrary was affirmed.
I really get the sense that you have an amazing blind spot for how powerful selective prosecution can be. The Legislature can write a law, but if the Executive simply doesn't enforce it, is it really illegal? Conversely, given Legislatures that write many vague laws, when the Executive decides to selectively enforce extremely vague wording, possibly taken out of context of the broader scheme in order to get at one particular action/defendant, possibly in a way that could not have been anticipated by the Legislature which passed said law, to what extent can it be said that the Legislature actually made it illegal?
It's certainly true that the American executive is granted a lot of latitude by the American legislature. It doesn't have to be this way of course - Congress could pass laws like Germany's requiring prosecution where sufficient proof exists to gain a conviction. But that isn't likely to happen soon.
More importantly though, control of prosecution powers is temporary and divided. If Trump succeeds in becoming President again, he can get the DoJ off his back... but in four years he's out again and someone else controls the federal prosecution power. Meanwhile the DoJ only enforces federal law, and most crimes are state crimes. President Trump might be able to shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any voters, but he would still be convicted of murder under New York law. So no, winning an election does not mean he gets to decide what is and is not legal.
I don't think they could. Likely would require a Constitutional amendment, given the currently dominant legal theory about the "Executive power" clause of the Constitution.
I think you are far too focused on Trump. The question is not whether Trump gets to decide what is and is not legal. The question is whether the Legislature really, actually, completely controls the matter. If anything, your point that the reality is decided by temporary/divided powers within the Executive actually supports the point that, in many more cases than is ideal (though probably a small fraction of overall cases), it is actually the Executive which decides what is illegal, not the Legislature.
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Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Who do you think is going to be the decision maker who stops this ball rolling? Do you think Jack Smith is going to suddenly drop the charges? Do you think Tanya Chutkin is going to just dismiss the case out of hand? And if so on what legal basis? Do you think the DC-based jury, pulling from a jurisdiction that voted 92-5 against Trump, is going to give Trump a pass after all the Jan 6 trials got convictions?
None of that is happening. The best case scenario for Trump is he somehow gets one diehard MAGA person on the panel to hang the jury.
"Are we really going to do this?" is a serious decision. But you don't make that decision when the trial is already underway, you make it before you bring charges. In large part that's what the Jan 6 Committee was about - not so much convincing the public that Trump was a crook, but pressuring the DoJ to pull the trigger on prosecuting him and putting him in prison.
All the choices have been made. We're now just watching them play out. It's not a stunt, they are coming to bury him.
Who would stop them? Biden/Blinken/top members of the Democrats. Tell them to pause or shut things down.
Why?
The system would be ungovernable if Trump is in jail and we have him as the GOP candidate. If he loses say with 48% of the vote then GOP has cause to break the entire system. The entire system works because of voluntary compliance. If you end that then nothing works and prosecuting Trump gives you justification. Secession becomes quite justifiable if they remove half the countries ability to participate in Democracy. It would be 1860 again. Would be equally as bad if Trump wins from prison (highly likely). Or you could see Desantis refuse extradition which he would be justified in doing.
I’d think the adults in the room like Blinken get this. And it’s a stunt. Because the alternative can’t happen.
Where do you put the odds on it happening without their say so?
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Lol, Biden is not going to save Trump. You're delusional.
That seems very Danerys Targaryen of wanting to rule over the ashes. It’s not saving “Trump” it’s maintaining some part of America and Democracy.
You don’t think jailing a likely Presidential winner during an election is a constitutional crisis and an attempt to disenfranchise a significant part of the electorate?
Not to channel the Nybbler, but they will jail Trump because they believe they can easily crush any scattered dissent and win. And they may very well be right.
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I am extremely confident Biden will not see it that way.
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