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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26683 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025

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If they tried getting him on real estate corruption, then they'd have to prosecute everyone in New York from the mayor's office on down. Yes, it's sleazy, but c'mon: you've been telling us for years that he's sleazy and corrupt.

The Letitia James effort rebounded on her (if the bank involved didn't prosecute, how bad a crime was it really?) and it's amusing that she got dinged for fibbing on a mortgage application after making such hay out of Trump doing likewise. But again, everyone expects that doing business in New York involves a lot of, um, differently ethical practices.

As to Mar-a-Lago and the golf courses, those are probably okay from a legal standpoint (that's not to say there isn't or wasn't any corruption involved, but the golf courses do seem to be straightforward 'buy 'em and develop 'em' deals). As to failed projects like the Atlantic City casino, yeah possibly dodgy there, but again - par for the course for such deals. It seems to have been involved in a lot of financial troubles, but if it was possible to get him on such properties, that would have happened already from disgruntled creditors.

Yes, it's sleazy, but c'mon: you've been telling us for years that he's sleazy and corrupt.

This is almost more important than everything else - Trump being sleazy and corrupt is already priced into him as a candidate. If you provide more examples of it, the base is going to say “so what?” - they already know all this.

It's like the 34 FELONIES!!! thing: oh, you're telling me he was convicted of 34 different crimes? yeah, that's bad. Wait, it wasn't 34 different crimes, it was 34 technicalities of the same case? about paying hush money to a porn star?

I don't think Trump should be committing adultery, and I don't think he should be messing up what was campaign funds from what was private money, and I don't think he should be paying hush money at all. But the best sense I could make out of it was that the prosecution was because he didn't pay her out of campaign funds, but some more convoluted way? So I'm still not entirely sure what I am supposed to be shocked about.

They're telling me for years he's a big awful terrible, evil rapist, now the bad thing is "he paid a hooker to keep her mouth shut"? That's rather a step down in gravity of offence from "and he raped this woman! and this woman! and that woman over there!"

If they tried getting him on real estate corruption, then they'd have to prosecute everyone in New York from the mayor's office on down.

Why? Whats forcing them to be fair about this?

They can't be forced to be fair, but it's the same problems that I think Mamdani is going to run into with his campaigns of reform; yeah, very nice, guys, but that's not how we do things here. Inertia, layers of bureaucracy, people protecting their own little fiefdoms, nobody wanting to get off the gravy train of bribes and backhanders, and about seventeen firms of sharks dressed as lawyers just hoping for a nice, drawn-out, billable hours in the hundreds if not thousands, lawsuit to drag through the courts for years.

Corruption is hard to measure, says this post, but here's a ranking of cases taken:

Still, federal criminal prosecutions for corruption, in which U.S. attorneys apply the same sets of laws across jurisdictions, do give us a general picture of corruption across cities. Since 1978, with the passage of the Ethics in Government Act, the Department of Justice has made data on corruption convictions available through its Public Integrity Section’s Annual Reports. Analyzing total convictions in federal districts from 1976 to 2021, New York’s Southern District — which covers Manhattan — is ranked the third most corrupt federal judicial area in the United States, only surpassed by Los Angeles and Chicago. However, if New York’s Eastern District — which includes Brooklyn — is included, New York City has far more corruption convictions with 2,285, compared to Los Angeles’ 1,625, and Chicago’s 1,824.

...For New Yorkers, the problem may be particularly problematic because the one branch of government that is known for being the most labyrinthine is its court system. Legal scholar Evelyn Malavé has referred to New York’s judicial system as a “courteaucracy” for its confusing rules, backroom appointments and lack of transparency. This may lead at least some corrupt officials to expect that, as long as they are sufficiently connected, they can avoid accountability.

His corruption was probably entangled with democratic machine power networks, so to go after him you would need to at least go after the local democrats he bribed.

Yes, this would run off of some democrat he bribed. I think thats an advantage: it means they can just entice one such guy to come clean, instead of having to really investigate. I think there likely are cases that implicate only one official, maybe one who wants to retire anyway, and then you just need to make him a good enough offer to flip. Including extensive immunity so nothing more in that vicinity will need to be investigated.

cc /u/HereAndGone2 sure, this is not the way things are done normally, but you only need one.

And, to the point- Democrats really need local machines to win elections. Call it fraud, call it 'turn out the vote', doesn't really matter- democrats simply will not win competitive elections if the (often corrupt)local machines don't feel like it, and making them feel threatened is bad for that effort.

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