site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28837 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

10
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Breaking news. It looks like the jury convicted Donald Trump in the "hush money" case.

This verdict will likely galvanize voters come November – leading to record turnout among Republicans. I might even vote for the old rascal myself as I view this lawfare as both morally wrong and deeply destabilizing.

To make a prediction closer to home, we're now certain to cross 1000 posts on the weekly thread.

I guess I don't really understand. This seems to me like one of the more straightforward cases against Trump, right up there with the classified documents.

1. In 2016 Michael Cohen committed several crimes to which he later pleaded guilty, including making an unlawful corporate contribution to the Trump campaign by paying Stormy Daniels.

2. Trump reimbursed Cohen for that payment to Stormy Daniels (in furtherance of Cohen's crime) from one of his businesses.

3. The payments to Cohen claimed to be pursuant to a retainer agreement that did not exist and pursuant to legal work that never occurred.

4. The reason for the description of the payments was to conceal Cohen's crime. Trump could hardly put "Reimbursement for unlawful campaign contribution" on the checks!

So we have (1) business records that were (2) falsified for the purpose of (3) concealing another crime. The theory of the case seems pretty straightforward? According to the evidence some of the checks were signed by Trump himself. Seems hard to argue he didn't know it was happening or approve of it.

What strikes me in all this is how this all could have been avoided if Trump were less of a cheapskate. According to Cohen's testimony Trump kept trying to put off paying Daniels until after the election (presumably to stiff her) and she kept threatening to call off the agreement and go public. Eventually Trump tells Cohen and Weisselberg to figure it out. Weisselberg claims not to have the money so Cohen goes and gets a HELOC (lying to his bank in the process) to pay Daniels (the unlawful campaign contribution). I'm pretty sure if Trump had just cut Daniels a check everything would have been fine. Candidates are allowed to spend as much money as they want on their own campaigns. Instead Cohen commits several crimes to pay Daniels and then Trump commits several crimes to reimburse Cohen. There was a less criminal way to do this!

The big issues:

  • Cohen campaign finance violations were part of a plea bargain about some much more serious charges; on top of the normal limitations of using a plea bargain (or the National Inquirer non-prosecution agreement) as evidence, there's a unusually steep chance that Cohen plead to it whether or not it was a crime he actually committed rather than face much more serious charges and as part of his pivot to go after Trump. ((This is a pretty common issue in more normal criminal law, where prosecutors will hammer on whoever they think has the least spine to get a plea that implicates the people they're really after, whether or not any of them were breaking the law.))

  • The scientier requirements would normally require not just that Trump did something that concealed a crime, but that Trump be aware that he was concealing a crime; this is one of the few places in criminal law where ignorance of the law could well be a defense.

  • And it requires that Trump intend his false statements conceal that crime; if Trump believed no one was going to look at the records and care, than it couldn't be fraud.

  • There's also some messiness in that Cohen plead to a federal campaign finance charge. It's not clear that's what the jury (or part of the jury) considered the underlying crime, but if they did, this raises serious questions about whether a state can bootstrap a misdemeanor into a felony by relevance of a federal law. It's... not clear that's how that works.

  • There's a variety of other process issues, from whether judge's family's financial interests would justify a recusal (contrast), or whether Cohen's plea and testimony should have gotten more serious disclaimers given everything going on with them, to some goofiness about Wiesselberg being required to testify or plea the fifth.

((It's also very unclear Trump cutting Daniels a check would have avoided legal scrutiny, here; there are also federal laws against using campaign funds for personal expenses, and if Trump had written it down as a campaign expense, well, how do you know he was using his pot-of-money rather than the campaign-pot-of-money.))

Those are avenues for appeal, but they aren't all good avenues for appeal. Keep in mind that I haven't read a full trial transcript and my knowledge of the specific laws involved is limited to what I read in the news. To go one by one:

  • This isn't really an issue since Cohen testified. Even if an appellate court were to rule that the specific evidence of the plea bargain was inadmissible, the fact that Cohen outlined his actions in detail for the jury with the defense being given an opportunity to cross-examine likely puts this in the harmless error category. There is the fact that in New York they can't convict on accomplice testimony without corroboration, but the jury was properly instructed.
  • I'm not familiar with the specific scientier requirements in this case, but as long as the jury was properly instructed of them, an appellate court is loath to contradict their findings.
  • See above. It's another "the evidence wasn't sufficient to prove x" arguments that don't usually go anywhere. Again, I haven't read the full trial transcript, but as long as there was some reasonable basis for which the jury to reach their conclusion, an appellate court isn't going to set aside the verdict.
  • This goes back to the first point. Cohen plead guilty to a Federal charge. IIRC, there were state charges involved as well, and if his testimony implicated state law violations, the bootstrapping argument is moot.
  • The Appellate Division already ruled on the recusal issue, and I doubt the Court of Appeals will take up the issue. The Wiesselberg thing is moot because the defense didn't protect the record. If they had a problem with the prosecution relying on his statements without calling him they could have called him themselves. The fact that they didn't want him anywhere near that courtroom may be good trial strategy, but there are tradeoffs. I usually load up my witness lists with people I have absolutely no intention of actually calling for the simple reason that if things go sideways and the case goes to trial and some odd reason arises where I need to call them I don't want to get the "He wasn't on the list" argument from Plaintiff's counsel and deal with the subsequent malpractice suit.

For the interest of completeness, I have no idea whether Trump personally cutting a check would have avoided legal scrutiny, but the ambiguity doesn't really bother me, because I don't like the idea that someone trying to be President would blatantly hide information from voters. Hell, at least have the foresight to do it before you're actually running so there's no campaign money to speak of.

A few responses:

  1. The issue is the defense objected to allowing Cohen to even discuss his campaign violation plea. The prosecution wanted it in to impeach their own witness. Of course, the real reason was to imply “yes, there was a FECA crime” and that is surely super prejudicial despite the curing instructions. This is all the more galling when the court wouldn’t allow Trump to even offer up the evidence that the DOJ and FEC looked at this case and determined not to bring any civil or criminal charges. That would’ve truly cured the fake i peach meant but it would put a lie to the whole trial.

By the way, the whole thing was made worse by the prosecution stating in closing that it was a fact that Trump committed a campaign finance violation. You put all of that together and it sure looks like reversible error to me.

  1. Re scienter there is not a single piece of testimony that Trump even thought about FECA violations. There was testimony that he thought about the election and wanted the payment for the election (which the prosecution argued and the judge accepted—probably incorrectly—as a campaign finance violation) but literally zero that he wanted the books a certain way to cover up the campaign issue. That is fatal because the government has the burden and it proffered to my knowledge zero evidence.

  2. The bootstrapping point is not moot. The “unlawful means” appears to be a FECA violation IN THIS CASE. That means effectively Trump was convicted because NY law prohibits false bookkeeping if it was intended to cover up federal election law rules. That is…far from obvious.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats