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So, my debut post. I've been lurking here for some time and I have decided to experiment with some public posting.
The culture war issue on my mind is the federal prosecution of NY State AG Letitia James. A summary, from my perspective:
She more or less campaigned for office with "Get Trump!" as one of her campaign promises.
Upon taking office, she and her team went through some of Trump's deals for the purpose of looking for grounds to pursue a claim against him.
She and her team discovered that in one of his real estate deals, he had supplied arguably exaggerated figures for property he had used as collateral for a loan.
The State of New York sued Trump in the general trial court making use of a consumer fraud statute which, until then, had been mainly used against businesses that take advantage of individual consumers (i.e. not deals between sophisticated businesses). This consumer fraud statute did not require proof of damages, which was helpful to the AG's efforts since Trump and his organization had paid the loan back in full and with interest.
The trial court awarded a judgment against Trump for hundreds of millions of dollars, a judgment which was later reversed on appeal.
This lawsuit had been one of numerous other "Get Trump!" legal activities, civil and criminal, in multiple jurisdictions.
After Trump was re-elected, a Trump loyalist with access to federal home loan files went through Letitia James' files and discovered arguable fraudulent statements in her mortgage applications for certain properties. Letitia James was referred for possible prosecution and ultimately indicted for bank fraud.
Normally in situations like this, the mortgage applicant is not prosecuted. Rather, they are required to pay the higher interest rates which would would have been required had the application been completed accurately.
Personally, my reaction to this series of events is one of satisfaction. I was outraged by the lawfare campaign against Trump and it seemed to me that AG James activities were an abuse of her office. The prosecution of James strikes me as a reasonable tit-for-tat, necessary to deter the Blue Tribe from future abuses. The most charitable interpretation I can think of with respect to these lawsuits is that they are a form of "Nazi punching," i.e. the idea that if you are dealing with genocidal psychopaths, it's reasonable to oppose them By Any Means Necessary. But of course, as others have pointed out here, when you combine (1) it's okay to punch Nazis; and (2) my out-group are, generally speaking, led by Nazis, the net result falls somewhere between "counterproductive" and "civil war."
What's also interesting to me is that for the most part, the media coverage has downplayed points 1-6 from above even to the extent of completely ignoring them in certain cases, giving the impression that Trump is just gratuitously using the justice system to target his political enemies. (Yes, this is the "boo outgroup" part of my post.)
So this brings me to my main question: What will happen next? Given that the Blue Tribe members (apparently) feel that they are the victims of a vicious unprovoked lawfare attack, will they decide to retaliate at the next opportunity? Are we about to enter an era where every outgoing president preemptively pardons himself and all of his associates; conservative businessmen with political aspirations avoid contact with New York and California; and liberal businessmen similarly avoid Florida and Texas? Probably this is an exaggeration, but I would guess that the Blue Tribe is thirsty for revenge and I could easily see this lawfare business escalating.
A secondary question: Perhaps, much like the mainstream media, I am omitting important context from my summary. Are there additional facts I should consider which would (or should) change the way I see this lawfare business? In one article I read (I think it was the New York Times) the point was made that the fraud alleged against Trump was much bigger than that alleged against Letitia James. But to me, this does not seem like an important distinction because the key similarity is that in both cases, it seems that the authorities chose a target for political reasons and then went looking for arguable wrongdoing by that person. (As opposed to starting with the wrongdoing and then looking to see who was responsible.)
With regards to your secondary question. The Democrats don't percieve their lawfare as unprovoked, at least not the rank-and-file and the voters. I remember during Trump's first term, there was a very strong sense in their mind that Trump is a criminal, that he was "getting away" with crime. First, he's wealthy; wealthy people are by default sinful, everyone knows that you can't get rich without stepping on poor people, probably with crime, and can only really get absolution by supporting Democrat pet causes. Apart from that, Trump was extra criminal, probably this was because they hadn't had to deal with a really adversarial presidency in a while, but from hearing Democrats talk it felt like them losing was somehow against the rules. That senate refused to go along with the impeachments really cemented that he was getting away with crime. And Jan 6 made them lose their mind in that regard; there must be some crime in there, look what they did! So even if they lacked anything specific to point at, going on fishing expeditions was justified in their mind.
Letitia James went after more than just Trump in a not-impartial manner, though. Her treatment of the NRA also raised lots of red flags, even if the dems find it hard to feel sorry for the victims.
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Letitia James actually is the one example where you can actually get prominent Democrats to admit that it may have been a bit much. I think because of the business element (not every Democrat is some rich-hating socialist, many actually have skin in the game) and the fact no one wants this to be the precedent set (that and going around talking about "getting" Trump)
I think this is partly hindsight. Anything from NY either didn't harm Trump or actively backfired and they can always tell themselves that the other cases were just, just slow or badly handled.
Fani Willis is corrupt and incompetent in comparison, but I don't think most of the base thinks that Trump is innocent of trying to influence the election.
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Yes. And if they're justified in their minds, won't stop for anything less than being stopped, and see retaliation as just a reason to escalate further, the answer is as FCFromSSC often notes: war to the knife, until one side is totally defeated. Probably (contra FC) the right, which has already lost totally in several states and while it technically holds the elected branches of the Federal government, holds nothing else.
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Yes, now that you have reminded me, I would tend to agree with this. I remember hearing the phrase "our democracy" a lot. The idea was that the Blue Tribe was supposed to be running things; that they had a kind of Mandate of Heaven; and Trump was an usurper of the rightful order.
But any way you slice it, I don't dispute that the Blue Tribe perceived their lawfare attacks against Trump as totally legitimate and justified. I'm not sure if "unprovoked" is quite the right word, since (as far as I know) Trump et al had not engaged in that sort of lawfare previously. So you could say that they saw it as a legitimate and creative way to fight back, sort of like the tax evasion charges against Al Capone.
IIRC, there were two main points of contention.
First was the allegation that Trump was working with Russia, if not formally then in a "friendly nod" sort of way. There was the whole "Russia, if you're listening" comments which he claims was a joke but the left did not take as a joke.
Second was that Trump tried to have Hillary prosecuted but gave up after a drawn-out fight with Sessions that ended in his termination. Source 1. Source 2 (pdf page 319, page 107 of the report).
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From the anti-Trump perspective, the attempts to prosecute Trump were provoked by his committing crimes - they were not intended to be a tit-for-tat lawfare campaign. Letitia James' decision to prioritise bringing that particular civil fraud suit was motivated by animus, but the type of fraud Trump was charged with was something he was in fact guilty of (Trump's successful appeal was about the size of the fine, not guilt), and which you or I would be prosecuted for in the unlikely event that we (a) did it and (b) got caught. The federal and Georgia election-related cases and the documents case were prosecutions for egregious wrongdoing of which Trump was unquestionably guilty - any functioning justice system would have prosecuted in the absence of a clearly established immunity bar. I'm happy to admit that the Stormy Daniels false accounting case was basically pure lawfare - I think Trump was technically guilty, but it wouldn't have been prosecuted against someone who wasn't a political opponent.
I would have to disagree with that one based on my experience. Is anyone able to provide 2 or 3 precedents for similar legal proceedings against ordinary citizens from the last 20 or 30 years?
Of these cases, which would you say was the most egregious case with the most unquestionable guilt? I am asking because I would like to look at it more carefully.
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To be charitable to their position, they percieved Trump as breaking all sorts of norms. Mostly to do with decorum, as he offends what their aesthetic preference for what a president should be like, and they didn't feel like they would be to blame for breaking another norm in retaliation (the one against engaging in lawfare against the outgoing administration, which Trump upheld in his first term despite rhetoric to the contrary during the campaign).
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