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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   39204 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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In more good news for Donald Trump (besides NOT being killed by that bullet), the classified documents case has been dismissed based on an Appointments Clause violation -- basically, the argument (also made by Clarence Thomas in Trump v. US) accepted by the court is that there is no statute authorizing the appointment of a Special Prosecutor (with the powers exercised by Jack Smith) by the Attorney General, and therefore Smith cannot lawfully prosecute Trump (or anyone else). In other words "Mr. Smith, you don't even work here."

No doubt this will be appealed, but the chance of any significant action before the election is nil.

(sorry for the repost, I belatedly realized I was still on last week's thread).

I presume Trump will move to have the other Federal case dismissed on the same grounds, so if that one wasn't stalled already by immunity claims, it would be stalled now. The Georgia case isn't affected but is stalled based on corruption claims agains the prosecutor. That leaves Trump 3-1 at the moment, and I would say the sentencing in the New York conviction (currently set for September) is likely to get delayed until after the election (when, let's face it, it ain't going to matter)

Not a lawyer but one thing I don’t understand is why NYC doesn’t just sentence him to jail. I already think they abused a lot of power. What’s doing another abuse of power and giving him 5 years.

I don’t even know how that would work. Would Trump just never leave Florida?

The short answer is that it would be almost immediately overturned on emergency appeal. What is more likely is that they sentence him to prison but delay the sentence pending appeal, preventing an emergency appeal and ensuring that he is a “convicted felon” through the election.

I didn't think they would be stupid enough to try and make him an obviously innocent "convicted felon", yet here we are. The black vote is going to explode with the court shenanigans and the shooting.

Why do you say he’s “obviously innocent” when the jury unanimously found him guilty after being explained all the evidence? It sounds like you think “they” can simply control what the jury believes.

  • -10

  1. The jury pool hates Trump.

  2. No they didn’t get to hear “all the evidence.” The judge made many poor rulings allowing things in that should not have been permitted and prohibiting evidence that should’ve been allowed.

  3. The judge’s instructions were faulty as a matter of law. That is, he gave the wrong law to the jury. Even a truly impartial jury (of which this was not) would probably convict based upon the faulty leading jury instructions.

  4. The law Trump allegedly broke was impermissibly brought by the DA (ie even if all of the elements were proven NY under its own constitution and under federal preemption could not bring the case).

Huh, is there somewhere I could read about 2 - 4 explained in greater detail? I’m afraid I’m not well versed in legal proceedings.

I believe the former federal elections commissioner wanted to testify saying it was not a crime. I don’t know rules of evidence that well but that sounds like a guy very qualified to explain the evidence.

The relevant rule of evidence here is that the judge is responsible for determining what the law is and instructing the jury accordingly. The parties can bring witnesses to testify about the facts of the case but they can't bring witnesses to make arguments to the jury about what the law is.

If the judge gets the law wrong, that's an appealable error.

The prosecution actually asserted it was a fact that there was a campaign finance violation. In addition, the judge permitted Michael fucking Cohen to testify about his understanding of FECA. So yes you are correct abstractly but wrong as it was applied in this case.

Once the judge allowed Cohen to say what he said the only effective curative would’ve been to allow Smith to testify or declare a mistrial.

The parties can bring witnesses to testify about the facts of the case but they can't bring witnesses to make arguments to the jury about what the law is.

This is a distinction without a difference when the facts of the case hinge on what the law is in actual application, which thus shapes the facts of what intent should be on the part of the accused, which the witness forbidden to testify was the best able to speak to.

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