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Breaking: Bragg Indicts Trump (Update: Trump Responds)
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted President Trump late Thursday. This is the first time any president has been charged in a criminal matter.
During Bragg’s campaign, he promised to indict Trump, a fact that many legal experts believe could harm any chance of conviction. Though the specifics remain under seal, the indictment follows an investigation centering on a $130,000 payment made by Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 and served time for charges related to campaign finance violations and tax fraud. He claimed that Trump directed him to make the payment and that Trump reimbursed him in monthly installments that included a bonus.
The grand jury in the case was not scheduled to reconvene until late April. Bragg still had the power to call for a vote on the indictment even though they were not in session.
Bragg’s obvious political agenda isn’t the only fact hampering a conviction.
The charge likely focuses on falsifying business records, which is a misdemeanor. Even if Bragg is able to shift that up to a felony, New York’s statute of limitations for most felonies is five years, making this case two years too late.
Update (6:27 p.m. ET): Trump just issued a statement.
To which I have a suggestion for what Paul Ryan can do with a 10 foot piece of rusty rebar.
Those things are what the culture has evolved to. In theory then you should be hating your country as well as your government. The cultural rot of society has seeped into the government, not the other way around. Anyway my original criticism was referring to you insinuating the CIA started the Ukraine war.
What Republicans fell for that? The NeverTrumpers amounted to a handful. Most Republicans, elected or otherwise, supported Trump.
My original comment was “Many Prim and Proper Republicans fell for the narrative”. I didn’t say “Most Republicans” or even “Most Prim and Proper Republicans”. I think we’re quibbling over details, so let me try to be more specific. There were a number of GOP pundits who effectively abandoned core principals when Trump became the nominee. Many elected officials also became Trump’s sworn enemy. I’m talking about the Liz Cheney’s, Mitt Romney’s, and the political actors that fund and support them and others like them. I don’t have an exhaustive list of names, if that is what you’re asking for.
The list is not that long. Most were behind Trump once he got elected.
Yet it’s winning. Has been for decades.
Vote it into law?
I suspect most GOP running to office will be arrested for crimes. Can’t see it happening to Democrats much unless they are attacking their own.
I don’t think the facts bear that out. If a majority of the GOP power brokers were behind Trump when he was elected, we would have seen the major items of his agenda passed into law. We held majorities in the House and Senate. There was no excuse for the limping gait adopted by the GOP while they finally had a chance to repair the damage inflicted by Obama. I keep repeating this but, it was Budget, Budget, Budget and Repeal, Repeal, Repeal from our party, until they had ability to do something. The list may not be long, but when you have senators outright opposing the head of their party on major policy issues, it doesn’t have to be. All you need is that stubborn one vote to kill an agenda.
And bring an indictment against any future candidate or president who sends money around for favors, sexual or otherwise.
DOJ better start staffing up.
That guy needs a serious beating, topped off with a stuffing of all his chest candy into his jowly piehole.
In other words, they fought him all the way to the election, then when he won, they were all onboard, suddenly a day later.
With friends like that, etc. That’s not support. That’s leeching.
I don’t believe the ol’ Breitbart quote about politics being downstream from culture. Not when a single political party — one that is evil to the core — controls all the vectors of influence in this country. Government has created and enabled cultural rot, not the other way around.
I think we need to open up the files on the standing Congressional slush fund for paying off these kinds of accusations. They keep it hidden by exempting themselves from FOIA, but now that each of those payments is a criminal campaign finance violation, that exemption doesn’t cut it.
Plus, the Senate GOP’ers slow walking many of Trump’s nominees for appointments in the executive branch, which was on McConnell (separate from McC’s good work generally on judges).
Not this DOJ.
This DOJ is evil to the core.
Who Trump? As far as I know, he won one election.
Actually we saw quite a bit of his agenda voted in when he had a majority in both houses. So give me this l0ng list. I won’t believe it until I see it.
No they didn’t fight him all the way to the election. Once he won the nomination, he had most on board. He won the election and there was no third party. Even during the impeachments a handful voted to impeach.
OK, but I do. The citizens vote the government in.
That happens in every election on both sides. From what I remember Trump had a record number of judges confirmed in his four years, including three SCOTUS.
No, the rot.
Oh. Rightly so.
I think we’re arguing past each other. My original comment was:
We’re essentially debating the specifics of what “Many” constitutes which doesn’t negate the fundamental point I was making that there was an influential wing of the party that rejected Trump and actively tried to hinder his Administration. I didn’t think the point was controversial enough to require me to delve through legislative history and itemize everything. I did point out some of the important agenda items that the GOP have been promising since the failed Romney/Ryan ticket which were never delivered to his desk, but this was tangential to my original comment. In my view, it is inexcusable that Trump did not have a Bill repealing the ACA on Day 1.
The Republicans who had been campaigning on that repeal should have had one already to go on Day 1. What was their excuse?
Precisely. The same could be said for those campaigning on the Balanced Budget and Border Security. Their hatred for Trump partially stems from his killing their Golden Goose, as these were issues to be campaigned on but never solved. When he called their bluff, they threw down a pair of two’s.
Not to mention the ones like Ryan, who would run for cover every time the leftist press announced another ‘bombshell’, during the primary, campaign and after Trump was elected.
Orange Man Bad.
My point is the overwhelming majority of Republicans, in government and out, supported Trump. Every president gets some resistance from his own party. There was no extraordinary resistance from his own party. Making Trump out to be a martyr from his own party is a false narrative.