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The Stinky Fog of Political Weaponization of the Law
We don’t actually know anything. Yet coverage is constant. This period is the real sweet spot of the smear. Speculation unchecked by comparisons to reality. Indictment. Thirty-four counts. The stinky fog sticks to everything, and anything it adheres to will never be truly clean again.
I understand the spectacle, but it’s shameful. Why isn’t the only story, at this stage, the outrageousness of this indictment being sealed yet widely publicized? Why isn’t the question why anyone would turn themselves in not knowing the actual charges?
Published in General
Remind me of the status of the investigation into the laptop of Hunter Biden?
The FBI needs to watch the crack and trafficking whores video 4 trillion times on a loop to determine if they can in fact see a crime.
The answer is that the left the Democrats and all people who vote for or voted for Democrats do not care about fairness in the law. They only care about destroying those who oppose them.
First thing I thought of.
@edg and @bobthompson Would you both elaborate? As a not lawyer, I don’t know how there can be a sealed indictment if arraignment is public?
IANAL. My assumption is that the law requires the indictment be public before an arraignment can take place.
Bwhahaha
Are sealed indictments used for blackmail?
How does the public even know there is an indictment without the indictment having been made public?
I don’t know how all this indictment-arraignment scenario works but we have not seen any charges yet and based on what was done in the Jan6 case I would think Trump should stay away from New York until he knows what the charges are in any real indictment. That just might require an extradition request so that all details can be reviewed.
I can’t elaborate. I don’t know how or why the indictment could be sealed either. Doesn’t make sense to me. Is it normal? I don’t know.
I think there were all kinds of unconstitutional actions by DC and federal authorities in the Jan6 case and not much at all in terms of push back to resolve and no charges brought in response to criminal acts by authorities. We don’t know what these Manhattan authorities are up to. New York and California have already demonstrated that they don’t like people to leave and they act as if their state authority goes with people who leave. What kooks?
I like this article explaining why we are getting weaponization of the law and disinformation as policy and truth as disinformation:
A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.
A couple of decades ago, a local friend of mine was accused of sexual harassment, and immediately after the plaintiff’s lawyers filed the suit, the lawyers went to the press to describe the suit and get it into the newspapers. My friend was a relatively well known person in the area. A mutual friend who was a local attorney explained to a small group of us, people who were concerned for our friend’s well-being and that of his family, that the plaintiff’s lawyer was deploying a legal strategy that is very common. It is designed to call forward others to the plaintiff’s side. In other words, the purpose was to identify others “wronged” by our friend. These people have various roles in the case being made against the defendant, some direct and some indirect. It’s a tactic used if the initial case is dubious for some reason.
I am sure that is what is happening now. This guy who swore to get Trump by any means necessary is trying to build a case that will reach far beyond the courthouse. His objective is not justice for some victim somewhere. It is designed to flesh out a weak case against Trump and ultimately to ruin him with gossip, innuendo, and technicalities. The lawyer is trying to create a mob whose size alone will affect the outcome of the case, even if every single one of those accusations is untrue.
I have seen the determination of obsessed people many times. People should read about the case of Father Gordon MacRae for a really good example of mob injustice. I see so much of that in the Never Trump movement.
And how convenient is it that the J6 protestors continue to be persecuted and prosecuted? Who is financially strong enough to stand up for Trump? Very few people.
Our Constitution and Bill of Rights seem very weak to me today.
This works best where there’s a lot of power and the numbers are big. So DC, New York, California.
And we (or most of us) who were raised to respect the law just mill around; not quite knowing what to do.
And, the Left is depending on this to continue…
This individual explains the game plan that the Left uses to both recruit people into their club, and to get them to take actions that they otherwise would not:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641094105378832386
So what is the solution to this problem of local DA’s charging national politicians to make a name for themselves? This isn’t the first time this has happened, only that the national politician was a former president.
I’m reminded of Tom DeLay, who at the time was Republican House Majority Leader when he was charged by a Texas grand jury of money laundering related to campaign finance (sound familiar?). The DA/politician overseeing that grand jury was Ronnie Earle, a Democrat who was known as hostile to Republicans. Since his geographic jurisdiction included the state capital he had a lot of leeway in indicting people statewide. DeLay, once he was charged, followed House Republican caucus rules at the time by vacating his position.
He was convicted of the charges probably by a tainted jury pool (Austin is pretty liberal) and on appeal his conviction was overturned due to lack of evidence. Again, sound familiar? Is Trump going to get a fair jury in New York City?
So what is the solution to this problem? I’m not sure this applies to DeLay’s case, but in the case of Alvin Bragg, he ran for election on prosecuting Trump as a campaign promise. I think that a state or federal judge could declare Bragg and anyone working for him to have a conflict of interest, and that his whole office is therefore recused.
But isn’t it time that prosecutors be held more accountable for their actions? So Bragg gets Trump charged on the flimsiest of pretexts. How about investigating Bragg on the same flimsy basis? And if a Republican is elected in 2024 and takes control of the federal Justice Department, I’m sure they could find a federal law he’s violated, especially a New York politician.
Even if it takes until 2029, and in Bragg’s case some statute of limitations have passed, go after other DA’s who abuse their office. There’s bound to be others that will follow Bragg’s example.
Start frog marching prosecutors to jail who get too political for their office.
DeSantis says he won’t extradite Trump from Florida.
Would’nt a better Trump strategy would be to stay in Florida and let the Fed’s try to extradite him and essentially expose the case in the extradition hearing?
if I were Trump I would be concerned I would be offed in Jail. Nothing is too low for a Democrat.
I have never practiced criminal law, but I do have a nodding acquaintance with some of the processes.
An indictment must be made public at an arraignment. I don’t think it is particularly unusual for an indictment to be kept secret from the public until the arraignment.
The defendant is expected to enter a plea at the arraignment. As a practical matter, that would require the defendant and the defendant’s lawyer to know before the arraignment what the charges are. Therefore, I assume Mr. Trump and his lawyers already know the contents of the indictment. Particularly if he’s going to travel into the state specifically to answer the charges. Neither Mr. Trump nor his lawyer is likely to agree to walk into a court proceeding without knowing what the proceeding is about.
Although we don’t know the exact content of the indictment, lots of legal beagles have pieced together from the witnesses that have been seen going into and out of the courthouse, and what the witnesses who are willing to talk publicly have said about what they were asked about, that the gist of the charges probably revolve around a state misdemeanor accounting charge bootstrapped into a state felony accounting charge based on an allegation that a federal election law was violated.
Law professor John Yoo went off on a rather lengthy rant on the podcast recorded on Friday about the dangers of a local prosecutor using an allegation of a violation of federal law to elevate a state misdemeanor into a state felony because if the local prosecutor is abusing the federal law, the rest of the country has no way to hold that local prosecutor accountable. Prof. Yoo had a lot to say on Friday’s flagship podcast about the indictment of Mr. Trump.
At least one witness called before the New York grand jury has said that from the questions he was asked, it was clear to him that a considerable amount of exculpatory evidence (evidence that might suggest a crime had not been committed) had been withheld from the grand jury, so that the grand jury was operating on a very partial view of the available information. I believe the standards by which a prosecutor is permitted to mislead a grand jury by omission vary by state. Here in Texas I understand at least one district attorney so blatantly misled the grand jury that the district attorney had his law license revoked.
Gov. Desantis earlier said he did not think he had the authority to refuse an extradition request from New York as long as the extradition request met very minimal procedural standards. Later I understand Gov. Desantis did say he would not comply with an extradition request. I don’t know what changed the governor’s mind.
If the charges are secret then the fact of indictment should remain secret too. Otyerwise we get the wild speculation and fact free impressions we see now. That isn’t due process.
On Ron DeSantis’s latest pronouncement on Trump’s possible extradition from Florida, he said he wouldn’t “assist” in it. That’s actually a lot different than blocking extradition. He knew his limitations as governor when it came to extradition to another state, and he was careful in his phrasing. He made it sound more obstructive than he was actually saying.