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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.
It literally is. That was the point I was responding to. If you find that point uninteresting, no worries, but then we've not got anything to talk about.
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