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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29159 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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Trump indicted with 4 counts over 2020 election

The indictment alleges that shortly after election day, Trump "pursued unlawful means" to subvert the election results.

The first conspiracy charge was handed down due to Trump's alleged use of "dishonesty, fraud, and deceit" to defraud the US.

The second was because of Trump's alleged attempts to "corruptly obstruct" the 6 January congressional proceeding of peaceful transfer of power to President Biden.

The third stems from allegations that Trump conspired against American's right to vote and to have their vote counted.

The other charge - obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding - involves Trump's alleged attempts to obstruct the certification of 2020 electoral results.

Please don't drop bare links as a top level post. If you have something to say about a news story then say that in the top comment. If not, then leave the news story alone and give someone else the chance to post an interesting top level comment on the story.

This is your first offense, so just a warning for now.

Meta suggestion: there should be room for this.

The reason why the community jettisoned the BLR was because it was too easy to have drive-by link dropping to dunk on the outgroup. Not having a BLR paired with a requirement to have a substantial top-level post effectively stopped this problem. However, there is some news that is so blatantly and obviously going to be the topic of water cooler talk, if only people could find where the water cooler is. It's the topic on the front of every news outlet, absolutely core ground to anything considered the culture war, at the highest levels of American government, which is the most powerful and influential institution on earth. It is going to be a topic here one way or another. Posts like this are just putting the water cooler out.

I think there is asymptotic precedent for this. Consider the limit of stories that were the story in the past. Elections. Riots. Those various things. Rather than declare that no one can say anything around the water cooler until one person has a lengthy, unique, insightful essay, this place will, in fact, just put a water cooler out in the form of a megathread. When the mods post a megathread, they're not generally pairing it with an interesting top-level comment - they're putting out the water cooler for the conversation that is going to happen.

There is a spectrum between "lazy drive-by dunks on the outgroup from obscure blog", "obvious water cooler topics that are on the front of every newspaper", and "obvious water cooler topics that are on the front of every newspaper and which would otherwise overwhelm the thread." I contend that megathreads are only used for the latter category, but their secondary function is extremely useful for the middle category, too.

Given the premise that it's just putting out the water cooler, I would actually prefer that the top-level comment be a short, completely neutral description of the major news item, like this comment. If we wait for an in-depth comment, then the entire following thread will be colored by the perspective of the OP. You'd need an additional top-level comment to start any offshoot perspectives on the main topic, which fractures the discussion, possibly having other topics sandwiched in between the top-level threads. This way, you can have multiple second-level comments that have more effort, but also allow for conversations with different focuses.

One concern is that loosening this rule opens up a "race to post". I don't see that that's much of a problem, practically. But even so, maybe we could have an in-between mod action that isn't quite opening a megathread, but is opening a "mini-megathread" on topics that are of this sort.

I really liked the old bare link repository. I like a newsfeed made by the sorts of people who post around here.

I get that it is inherently low effort and an obvious attractor to culture warriors. But it had clear value.

We have done topic specific posts on a case by case basis. They aren't needed too often.

And there are a few reasons why we have the rule. Much of it is related to people abusing bare link posting to wage culture war. Some of it is "race to post" problems. Otherwise it's to prevent the flooding of the culture war thread with single topics. If the requirement is to post a long thing about the topic then it is going to slow down the rate of new topics.

I'm in agreement. This specific news event justifies a bare link post.

If only Jack Smith had been around in 1876, that son-of-a-bitch Hayes wouldn't have been able to scheme his way into office.

Really though, I have trouble viewing the charging document as anything other than a catastrophic indictment on the credibility of the American electoral system. It's one thing to have conducted the election with all of the "fortification" done and thinly justified by the circulation of Covid, it's quite another to say that a participant organizing legal resistance to such is guilty of criminal conspiracy. This is probably going to be the greatest example of the two movies on one screen exercise that I'll ever see, as my opponents will read it as a narrowly averted, bona fide coup attempt, while I see almost exactly the converse.

If you can develop your point, I'd appreciate it, because on its own "Trump indicted" isn't strange or startling; they've been yelling about this for years, of course I'm not surprised they've done it.

Do you think it's good? Do you think it's bad? Are you interested in the legal grounds? What?

This is just more fuel for the fire of the ultimate Trump-related blackpill:

Even if he gets back into power, he’s going to spend 4 years on an unhinged (and likely fruitless) quest to pursue those he believes wronged him personally (both over his last administration and since) and this revenge mission will 100% take priority over any actual conservative policy.

Sure, but appointing Ken Paxton as his attorney general(like a 98% chance if trump gets re-elected) gets a lot of conservative policy done on its own.

Paxton, if appointed as AG by Trump, will end up in a bitter personal feud with Trump within two years.

There's nothing wrong with Trump's previous appointments. The issue is the man himself.

Granted that trump is a bad boss, he now hires on the basis of sychophantic personal loyalty, which might put an incompetent in but pretty much guarantees some conservative policy gets enacted. Ken Paxton and Kari Lake and Amanda Chase may be unhinged, but they and their replacements if they get into a spat with the boss will be the most right wing cabinet in recent memory. Plus they’re hacks that have none of the ‘integrity’ that often led first term trump appointments into conflicts with him.

This touches on why I'd rather not vote for Trump, but will if it comes down to it. I don't know why anyone expects Trump to put together a more competent staff than the first time (where his people seemed notoriously ineffective and disloyal). That's not to mention the backstabbing and constant undermining from his own party leadership.

From a culture war POV, I would gleefully root for someone punishing DNC bad actors and the embedded bureaucracy, but I don't see anything that makes me think Trump would be capable of doing so. That said, if Trump were to win, it would at the very least signal something to my outgroup, and short of an actual decisive victory, that may have to suffice.

It's interesting to me that DeSantis (my preference) pitched himself as a competent and respectable Trump-like figure, and yet that hasn't won him much ground so far. I would think that would unify right wing voters, but apparently not.

It’s actually possible to make some pretty good guesses as to who trump appoints in a second term, and most of these people will deeply prioritize conservative policies.

It's interesting to me that DeSantis (my preference) pitched himself as a competent and respectable Trump-like figure, and yet that hasn't won him much ground so far. I would think that would unify right wing voters, but apparently not.

One of the main issues with Desantis is that he's been completely unwilling to give the pitch you just gave, i.e. that Trump has flaws which Desantis could presumably be better at. For whatever reason, Desantis has been utterly unwilling to criticize Trump in basically any aspect, creating the bizarre scenario where he's running against Trump in the primary but refuses to tell us why.

For whatever reason, Desantis has been utterly unwilling to criticize Trump

Well, he has definitely avoided total war with Trump, but he has criticized Trump on several issues including abortion, covid policy, his handling of the capitol riots, and (obliquely) attacking him as not critical enough on gender issues. So I'm not disagreeing with you on principal, merely on the degree.

I suppose that could be part of the problem though. They seem to be avoiding directly attacking Trump, presumably to avoid alienating MAGA folk, but that in itself doesn't signal to those people that you are any better than Trump on the issues they care about. Sort of a reverse version of the "extreme in the primary, moderate in the general" formula aspirant presidents stick with. This is looking like a good example of why that formula is so prevalent.

They seem to be avoiding directly attacking Trump, presumably to avoid alienating MAGA folk

Why not? Worked in 2016!

At this point, I just think they're cowards who don't want to risk becoming Liz Cheney and no longer being welcome in the party if & when they lose.

It's because the people that hate Trump seem to like Desantis. So Desantis feels like the George W. Bush/Mitt Romney/Dick Cheney's Daughter party.

That's part of what I find perplexing about it. If the neocon/establishment part of the party had been paying attention to DeSantis since he won his governorship, I do not think they would be so quick to back him. I think "anyone but Trump" has clouded their judgment, and perhaps you're right that being endorsed by that part of the party is clouding the judgement of the "anyone but neocons"/populist part of the party.

The people who hate Trump don’t like DeSantis, they’ve gone all-out against him over his policies in Florida, for example. What does occasionally happen is that New York Times columnists write trolling pieces in which they argue that red state yokels are such rubes that they vote for a grifter over a more sincere believer and more competent politician (they are correct), but the fact that conservatives actually take the bait here is embarrassing. Nothing would please the average NYT columnist more than a second Trump presidency - their readership would go up and nothing they’re worried about conservatives doing would actually happen.

The Democratic establishment’s record against Trump presidencies is 1-0, 100% victory rate. Nothing suggests a second Trump presidency would be any different. DeSantis at least presents a possibility of victory, having implemented actual conservative policies in a purple, demographically diverse state.

Which is crazy. Some people on the right dislike Trump personally; they may largely agree on policy. So a guy like DeSantis of course would be appealing to them.

The Mitt Romneys don’t really like DeSantis but he has been unfairly tarred with that association.

This is okay with me. A motivated fight against the deep state, even if it’s fruitless, is what I want. Trump had some plan late in his presidency to reclassify thousands if not tens of thousands of government employees to contractors so that they could be more easily separated. If this is the only thing he accomplishes the whole thing will be worth it. Fighting traditional conservative battles is not going to change the direction of this country.

I'm not an American, but it sounds good to me. I doubt anyone will actually deliver any meaningful policy change that contradicts the establishment, the only thing left to do is to keep throwing wrenches, and to accelerate the contradictions.

The issue with this is the GOP is succeeding at wiping out institutional DEI. The Supreme Court ruling has made a difference. Desantis has done a lot on that front.

Trumps best ability though is to expose their contradictions. I just feel the right has some policy moment and a guy whose good at doing policy.

Personally I think trump winning is the worst scenario for attacking D&I policies. With Trump as a target these groups will be united and will only get stronger. Even Biden winning would be better.

While I generally agree with you about Trump being elected allows DEI groups to unite and point to him as evidence of their correctness, one thing to consider is the difference in SCOTUS makeup (and other judiciary appointments) Trump (or another Republican president) versus Biden (or another Democratic president) would institute. The only reason affirmative action is dead is because of Trump getting three nominees in SCOTUS, which is likely one of the few things which can really attack DEI policies.

Great point, I wasn’t considering judge appointments in my response.

The people who “directly wronged” him are only a handful of people within the progressive establishment, though. He can’t root-and-branch purge, he’s going to spend all his time going after a few big names who he personally hates, leaving the rest of the federal government untouched.

Trump’s personal belief system is all about loyalty to the Don, he doesn’t have a structural or systemic view of politics. It doesn’t actually matter whether one prosecutor is slightly more zealously against him than another, but he wants to get the guy insulting him on TV.

Yeah, I know. Like I said, I have no illusions about anyone being able to make any significant changes. A personal vendetta against a handful of people sounds perfectly fine to me.

Is this really worth paying attention to any more than the last 17 times Trump was supposedly nailed for some criminal activity, and half the country said "got'im!" The last time was just like 2 months ago, and I haven't heard anything about it since then! This is so exhausting. I'll pay attention to this and study up on it once it actually seems different than any previous instance of him being brought under charges.

The prior charges were politically motivated, but these charges are an attempt to openly criminalize dissent itself and hence an existential threat to our democracy.

an existential threat to our democracy

I agree that these are trumped up charges, but this phrase ^ is now a license to check out from any conversation. I'd avoid using it.

I agree, but also notice that this is a hell of a trick that's been pulled! The phrase now reads as something from the MuellerSheWrote Twitter account rather than a sincere expression of concern about the degradation of systems. I mentally replace "our democracy" with "our bureaucracy" when I see it, because it frequently seems to be an expression of concern that someone in the administrative state might lose power. Half a decade of insisting that things like wanting people to show up to polls to vote is a "threat to Our Democracy" makes the phrase seem pretty useless.

I'm okay with any politician being thrown in jail for a decade for merely doing what Trump did on his call with Raffensperger.

As I’ve said before, I’m not disagreeing with you but we have to remember that parliamentary immunity, even from serious crimes, doesn’t break democracy and that setting a precedent that you can just arrest your main general election opponent is not a good idea:

I think I in general agree, but it seems quite likely to me that Gore in 2000 uttered words that were, at least, quite similar. Hypothetically, "Please friendly county leadership recount only the jurisdictions most friendly to me to make sure you didn't miss any votes" sounds enough like "find me some votes" that it's at least concerning. And SCOTUS found in that instance that different recount standards by county violated the Equal Protection Clause -- I'm not sure I agree with all the details of the ruling, but that one sounds quite reasonable to me generally -- so you could even claim anti-constitutionality there.

More charitably, Gore at least did a better job acting as if his actions were above board, and the lack of clear precedent against such partial recounts at least provides a veneer of falling within the Overton window. On the other hand, were the fact patterns reversed, I think the left would be shouting from the rooftops about inaccessible ballots and inconsistent chad divination being tantamount to literacy tests.

Which was what exactly? Precisely what did Trump do that was wrong? He said something to the effect of “I think XYZ proves there was fraud of at least ABC. I ‘lost’ by ABC less Y. So you don’t even need to believe all XYZ”

Now maybe you think Trump’s XYZ is nonsense. But the call itself in context was not criminal. This is much like “fine people on both sides.” What gets focused obfuscates the meaning.

The contention is that he knew he lost, and despite that he did all of the above. I don't personally know whether that's true, but the prosecutor thinks he can prove it.

No, the prosecutor knows that it doesn't matter if he can prove it, because the process is the punishment, the judge is an Obama appointee, and the jury will be pulled from DC.

and the jury will be pulled from DC.

It would at least be legally interesting to compel federal jury selection to better match the national populace than DC specifically. In theory there may be precedent suggesting this, but I can't see it being used seriously in a case like this.

Nor am I really sure what I'd want it to look like: fly in randomly-selected jurors from across the country? Select a local federal court for proceedings by valid dice roll? Honestly most cases probably don't really merit it, but it seems a reasonable precaution for highly politicized cases.

There's an old sci-fi story (Asimov maybe) that I can't seem to find which involves the hunt for the most normal citizen of the country, who will then have his brain scanned by an AI, which will then compute the outcome of the election with 100% accuracy.

My ideal world would involve a jury selected similarly. We simply hunt down the most grill-pilled Iowan, the most relaxed Floridian, and so on, and form the jury from that pool.

When the PODUS, or any higher ranking politician, calls someone to tell them "The ballots are corrupt and that's illegal... Its more illegal for you than it is for them. You know what they did and you're not reporting it, and that is a criminal offense. You can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you... And you're letting it happen. I'm notifying you that you are letting it happen. And all I want to do is find X votes" just put them in jail.

What you just quoted strengthens Trump's case. He believed the election was stolen, sincerely, and worked to prevent it from being stolen. What part of that is criminal?

If Trump believed everything he said on that call then he’s legitimately retarded. At one point he says he probably won Georgia by half a million votes. There were less than 5 million votes total. This wasn’t in the fog of war right after the election. The call happened on January 2nd. He was just making shit up.

When the POTUS asks someone to overturn election results immediately after falsely notifying them that they are committing a serious crime if they don't, just chuck them in a jail cell for a decade to teach them about reckless disregard for the truth, and intimidating election officials.

"overturn election results"

This is the assuming-the-sale that papers over the whole conflict. Trump wasn't trying to "overturn" some sort of divinely-inspired value-neutral "results" that can't be questioned. The whole point is he believed those "results" weren't legitimate at all!

More comments

The last time was just like 2 months ago, and I haven't heard anything about it since then!

That's the one you should pay the most attention to IMO. It seems clearly the strongest case and most likely to secure a conviction.

Court cases do typically take more than 2 months to resolve.

This one is, IMO, a bigger deal due to the implication, but I agree that the documents case is the one that seems like he's probably actually guilty.

I said the same thing above. This case is bullshit (effectively criminalizing political and legal dissent) but the document one seems like a pretty solid case of obstruction.

Yeah, while I don't personally care that much about the very serious DOCUMENTS and generally think the classification system is a joke, reading through that indictment just had me repeatedly thinking, "Dude, why don't you just not do shit this insanely pointless and antagonistic?". I genuinely think the election indictment is purely political and strikes a targeted blow at political opposition, but it's pretty hard to argue that the documents case isn't an absolutely ridiculous self-own.

Why not?

Trump is perhaps the most hated man in America. He spent four years operating at the pinnacle of global power, an environment strewn with what are purported to be impartial legal tripwires placed to hinder abuses of power. He's incompetent and sloppy, arrogant, astonishingly vain, and defined by his contempt for anything that blocks his personal ambitions.

The people now indicting him achieved office through a population dozens of millions strong that uniformly believes that he's Satan incarnate, a criminal, a dangerous megalomaniac, a giant retarded toddler armed with a machine gun. They believe that his election was manifest evidence that our political system is deeply, perhaps irreparably broken. They see his Presidency as a disaster that needs to be cleaned up and then prevented from ever recurring. And again, he spent four years being, at the absolute best, sloppy and incompetent in an environment that purportedly is supposed to demand precision on pain of serious legal consequences.

Why not indict him, and jail him too while they're at it? How could doing so possibly be a bad idea? We're a nation of laws, right? He at least plausibly broke them, right? This is what the system does, these are the rules we all agreed to, what possible room could there be for complaint? And sure, there are some people, maybe even a lot of people who are too mind-killed to accept reality, and they're going to complain anyway. But what are they going to do about it?

Nothing, right?

The people doing this have the all the cards. They won the election, the bureaucracy is on-side, half the nation's voters have been screaming for this for four years. This is what power is for, to get good things done even when they're hard, even when bad people stand in the way! How could they not do exactly this, exactly now? If the bad people can't get it through their heads that they've fucking lost, then it becomes necessary to hammer the point, repeatedly and with vigor, until it finally sinks in. If they aren't getting it, then that means you aren't hammering hard enough. At some point in the escalation curve, they'll have to cave, won't they? That's how it works, isn't it? What possible reason could be imagined for doing anything else?

And if such a reason can't be imagined, why would you expect anything other than exactly this?

Doesn't this just establish how Chaotic Evil the US is as a political entity?

George W. Bush (the hanging chad to Trump's virgin 'unlawful means') invaded Iraq with a lie, recklessly oversaw a pointless, insane war in Afghanistan. He has rivers of blood on his hands, a good chunk of it American. How many US soldiers have killed themselves from their pointless service in his pointless, retarded wars? But this is all Presidential and Acceptable so he gets off scot-free. The most anyone thinks of it is when he makes a Freudian slip in the standard anti-Putin diatribe and suffers a little embarrassment:

Instead, while criticising Russia’s political system, he said: “The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.

“I mean, of Ukraine,” he said quickly.

He then said “Iraq too” to laughter from the crowd.

Is it a mask-off moment? Is there even a mask?

Trump... moved some documents about that he shouldn't have? Had his supporters come into the Capitol where they were shot at and then left peacefully once they turned on the announcement system telling them to leave? And this is the most awful and terrible thing to ever happen to US democracy? This is the man who needs to go to prison, out of all living US presidents?

What kind of insane world is this? Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize before he even did anything, back in 2009 'for fostering nuclear non-proliferation and reaching out to the Muslim World'. He then preceded to wreck Libya. He should've been getting Nobel Prizes for War or Destruction of Functioning Countries.

This reminds me of Nixon too. Nixon could bomb Laos into oblivion without any approval for war and that was totally fine, apparently. It happened before and after Nixon too, it's basically standard practice. Yet Nixon authorizes somebody to break into a journalist's apartment and that's just beyond the pale? It's a parody of justice, anarcho-tyranny on a grotesque scale.

It's not even Chaotic Evil where one is unabashed and upfront about doing whatever one pleases. It's Chaotic Evil dressed up as Lawful Good, how the US is some noble Paladin defending the Rules-Based International Order (though just what those Rules are is never made clear, for obvious reasons). 'Wink wink, nudge, nudge, the International Criminal Court is based in one of our vassal states and if that's not enough, we'll invade the Hague the moment a US service member is brought there.'

This reminds me of Nixon too. Nixon could bomb Laos into oblivion without any approval for war and that was totally fine, apparently. It happened before and after Nixon too, it's basically standard practice. Yet Nixon authorizes somebody to break into a journalist's apartment and that's just beyond the pale? It's a parody of justice, anarcho-tyranny on a grotesque scale.

Reminder: Nixon didn't authorize the Watergate break-in, was not even aware that it was going to happen, and was only ever implicated in trying to get the FBI to drop the investigation. He also destroyed a few minutes of tape recordings that, until Congress had asked for them, had been his private property.

Counterreminder: Nixon knew what Liddy and Hunt were after they botched the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. He had ample room and opportunity to fire them, and chose not to - presumably because he wanted them to do something similar to Watergate. The fact that he didn't know about that particular burglary in advance is good mafia opsec, but it doesn't affect his culpability.

I think as a practical point, the "system" almost never punishes highups for "high crimes and misdemeanors" where the primary victim is foreign (or Black or Indian pre-civil rights era, which basically counted as foreign), but often does so when the scandal is purely domestic. For example, nobody ever suggested punishing Nixon for Laos etc. but was taken out over Watergate. During the Reagan administration, only one person was jailed for their role in Iran-Contra (and that was for tax evasion), but a double-figure number of people were jailed for their roles in relatively trivial contract-rigging scandals. And Clinton was impeached for lying to cover up his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, not for bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum to distract media attention from it.

I don't know why you are conflating "doing bad things" with "doing illegal things." They are not the same thing, not in the US or anywhere else. Maybe they should be the same, but they aren't. Were Trump being charged with conducting bad policy, that would be one thing. But he isn't, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to complain that "This is the man who needs to go to prison, out of all living US presidents?" Either he committed a crime, or he didn't. Whether some other President did something morally worse or not is irrelevant.

BTW, as for Bush, if we are counting lives lost and lost saved, he is probably on the positive side of the ledger.

'Wink wink, nudge, nudge, the International Criminal Court is based in one of our vassal states and if that's not enough, we'll invade the Hague the moment a US service member is brought there.'

? The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court, so this is a very odd example of the US pretending to be defending the rules-based international order.

I don't know why you are conflating "doing bad things" with "doing illegal things." They are not the same thing, not in the US or anywhere else. Maybe they should be the same, but they aren't.

In this case, one of the illegal things is "Whoever corruptly (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so." Another is conspiring with others to do that. And "official proceeding" includes, in part, literally any "a proceeding before the Congress" or "a proceeding before a Federal Government agency which is authorized by law".

There have, to be very blunt, been a lot of intentional lies and concealed records from Congress, done knowingly and in many cases for personal political gain. There are ways to cordon of this particular matter as the only time that the statute need be used this way, and huadpe has tried to do so (and I'm sure if pressed enough on the gaps, will eventually come up with a fine enough reference class). But there's little if any reason for anyone to think these chalk lines matter, compared to the text.

What does that have to do with what OP said about wars waged by Bush, etc?

I don't agree with the position, but there were quite a lot of claims that Bush et all pushed and continued the Iraq War through false information provided to Congress, as well as concealed information (both on request, and from general scrutiny) in ways that violate other (if poorly enforced) laws, or by selectively (sometimes unlawfully) leaking information.

Not every alleged lie or concealed matter in question was before Congress in a way subject to 18 USC 1001, or otherwise obviously unlawful or wrong enough to trigger the 'corruptly' prong; not every claim was presented to "obstruct, influence, or impede' an official proceeding. But many people claimed that there were enough, especially by the standards presented in this indictment.

I understand how some might make that argument, but I understood OP's argument to be very different.

Yes, I'd expect @RandomRanger's argument is more "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?", where the decision to have laws one direction and not the other is an explicit choice, and one that undermines the legitimacy of the law.

There's even a hybrid steelman that points out that even where the actual text of a rule is broken by those favored, or where the disfavored are technically within operating within text of the law, or where a 'law' wasn't actually passed in accordance with the rules, new interpretations and concepts and exceptions and excuses precipitate out of thin air or it turns out that no one can ever have standing.

But if your position is that Trump's prosecution should be deliminated solely on the matter that "Either he committed a crime, or he didn't", it's relevant whether other people at similar levels of power committed a crime, or didn't.

BTW, as for Bush, if we are counting lives lost and lost saved, he is probably on the positive side of the ledger.

American troops die for Israel alone in the desert, thousands of miles from their families, but hey Bush saved some Africans from AIDs so it all balances out.

Well they banned you for a bit so I suppose I won't get an answer right away, but if you're game, I'd dearly like to hear an actual rigorous definition of exactly which wars America has fought in the last few decades were "for Israel" and why. Near as I can tell, none of them were suggested or approved by the Israeli state, and none were particularly beneficial to it.

I think I could make a better argument that the US in it's war-making has been rather hostile to Israel. Israel was not permitted to join in on Operation Desert Storm. Saddam launched some SCUDs at them anyways in hopes of provoking a direct response. The US forbade Israel from responding directly and attempted to stop Saddam themselves.

Well, the article says 25 million. If so, it does indeed balance out. Especially since I would bet that some of those dead troops were Jewish, while none of those Africans were. By the only metric you seem to care about, Bush should be your favorite person!

  • -10

By the only metric you seem to care about

In context this appears to be, at best, an incredibly hostile non sequitur. Too antagonistic, don't do this please.

In broader context, at least what I saw from that person until I blocked them, it appears to be on the mark. If not to a particular comment, then definitely to the particular personality.

I apologize, but to be clear it was a reference to dude's constant postings about "the Jooz." Edit: And, his reference to "dying for Isreal." So not much of a non sequitur.

I apologize, but to be clear it was a reference to dude's constant postings about "the Jooz." Edit: And, his reference to "dying for Isreal." So not much of a non sequitur.

Oh, your meaning was clear. But I can't ban a user for single-issue posting if everyone else keeps trotting out that user's hobby-horse for them. Israel is a foreign power. Treating it as a synonym for "Judaism" is something its advocates and critics do interchangeably, depending on the point they want to make. That kind of disclarity is objectionable, here, but so is making uncharitable assumptions about which meaning is intended.

The user to whom you were responding is not the most artful user we have, in terms of disingenuously cloaking objectionable insinuations in plausibly neutral language. But that does not excuse uncharitable jabs from other, similarly artful posters.

We want, in short, for people to have room to change their minds, however minutely. Comments like yours discourage that.

It balances out if you are mentally deranged- maybe you would be happy to trade your child or friend or neighbor being killed for no good reason, so long as a random African is saved from AIDs, then you can consider "the ledger balanced". That's due to a derangement in your value system and not mine.

That's due to a derangement in your value system

You are free to explore value disagreement, but dropping to accusations of derangement is too much heat. I might let it slide if it were some passionate rhetoric in the midst of an effort post, but this comment seems to just be pure heat. Three day ban.

Be that as it may, OP was clearly complaining not just about the loss of American lives but rather the loss of the lives of non-Americans. Hence his reference to Nixon bombing Laos, Obama wrecking Libya, and the "rivers of blood' on Bush's hands, only some of it American. Hence, my reference to foreign lives saved.

That's due to a derangement in your value system and not mine.

This seems to imply that it ethically "deranged" for a US President to endanger the life of a even a single serviceman in order to save the life of non-American civilian children. So, it is unethical to stop a genocide, if it puts American servicemen at risk. It was unethical to evacuate Vietnamese from Saigon. Heck, I guess Hugh Thomson was unethical as well; look at the American lives he endangered.

Did he commit a crime isn’t convincing. He probably did but that doesn’t escape a lawfare question. Are the laws being applied equally or do they only apply to Trump?

If I get called to Trump jury I’ve already decided on jury nullification. And I’ve never voted for him. A nation of laws must have some concept of laws apply to all in the same way.

Are the laws being applied equally or do they only apply to Trump?

Yes, that is precisely my point. The issue is not whether former presidents did bad things, as OP seems to think. It is, as you say, whether they violated a criminal statute.

Every government official for decades has violated criminal statutes. The Logan Act is constantly violated but only applied to Flynn. Biden and Pence both had confidential documents. violating criminal statutes isn’t enough.

Merely having confidential documents is not enough to violate the law. The law requires knowing and intentional retention.

? The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court, so this is a very odd example of the US pretending to be defending the rules-based international order.

? Not being a member of an international organization, gives anyone the right to invade a sovereign country, if a your citizen is being held their for a trial?

Since I said nothing of the sort, the answer is obviously "no,"

Then it was a very odd objection to the point he was making.

If you think that, then you have misapprehended the particular point I was responding to, which was specifically about the ICC being part of the rules based international order.

Or you have misapprehended his point to begin with.

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Do you think W personally doubted there were WMDs in Iraq? It’s an interesting question.

I sometimes wonder if Saddam Hussein was aware there were no WMDs in Iraq - up to the point where resolution 1441 passes the UNSC, he acts like a man who has WMDs and expects to lose power if he gives them up.

I also think that W would have received a sufficient amount of stovepiped intelligence to convince anyone who doesn't start out with the prior that the entire US national security elite are lying liars that there were WMDs in Iraq. Apart from the fact that the national security establishment are lying liars who knew what the White House wanted to hear and were happy to provide it, Cheyney and Rumsfeld were exceptionally able DC power players, partially controlled the flow of intelligence to the Oval Office, and wanted the war even more than Bush.

The theory I heard is that Hussein was trying to pretend he had WMDs in order to intimidate potential rivals in the region like Iran, and accidentally did too good of a job.

The theory I heard is that the neocons in the Whitehouse wanted to find any kind of plausible reason to sell an invasion of Iraq to the American people, and just lied and lied and lied until they got it. I think there's more justification for this theory than the one you heard, however.

"There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me."

I don’t think W’s personal motivations for the Iraq War had anything to do with WMDs, and so said intelligence was likely superfluous, his reasons were primarily that he wanted to avenge his father and secondarily that as a born-again Evangelical he had some weird eschatological views about war in the Middle East in general.

I agree that it’s unclear that Saddam knew he didn’t have WMDs until quite late, and given the extreme levels of grift in the Baathist party and Iraqi military pre-invasion it’s entirely believable that his own officials had repeatedly lied to him and claimed they did (I don’t know if there’s ironclad proof of this). Obviously he strongly encouraged the perception that he did until late 2002 as you say.

his reasons were primarily that he wanted to avenge his father and secondarily that as a born-again Evangelical he had some weird eschatological views about war in the Middle East in general.

This is such a self-serving narrative, the blueprint for regime change in Iraq was written down by Zionists embedded in the American government for years before Bush II's invasion of Iraq, with the fabricated intelligence on WMDs likewise coming from Zionists in key positions in the highest places in American government. The last ingredient was 9/11, which created the American public demand for reprisal against the Arab world.

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (commonly known as the "Clean Break" report) is a policy document that was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Prime Minister of Israel.[1] The report explained a new approach to solving Israel's security problems in the Middle East with an emphasis on "Western values." It has since been criticized for advocating an aggressive new policy including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting its possession of "weapons of mass destruction".

I remember reading the "Bush invaded Iraq as revenge for his father" in high school, and looking back it is astonishing those textbooks do not mention Zionists influence as playing any role whatsoever in the war, and likewise the Wikipedia article on PNAC makes not a single mention of Zionism or Israel. How long can that charade last, and can you ignore the elephant in the room?

We’ve had this discussion before, but in any case I wasn’t saying that Bush’s personal motives were the reason that the Iraq War happened, simply that they had very little to do with WMDs (or neoconservatism, for that matter). And yes, the presence among Bush’s advisers and in his cabinet of his father’s men - many of whom saw not deposing Saddam in the Gulf War as one of HW’s biggest mistakes - obviously affected the decision to invade. HW was almost assassinated by Iraq in 1993, so W’s personal motivation was even more salient. There are few things many a powerful man would not do in vengeance for the man who tried to kill his father and who his own father blamed in part for his electoral humiliation, and for unfinished business that said father considered one of his biggest mistakes.

Dismissing the personal motivations of countless senior Bush I and II officials regarding the outcome of the Gulf War, and the dynastic relationship of the president personally, is what is ahistorical.

"Personal motives" include "being pressured by your own cabinet and Media apparatus", of which there is monumental evidence, whereas you just mentioned the "daddy revenge" theory which has no historical evidence. Indeed, the decision to invade Iraq and depose Saddam was not based on WMDs, it was predetermined by the written agenda of Zionists deeply embedded in the American foreign policy apparatus and the WMDs just became the last part of the narrative to tie a bow on the casus belli. Of course that same policy apparatus insisted that failing to institute regime change in Iraq in the Gulf War was HW's biggest mistake.

I sometimes wonder if Saddam Hussein was aware there were no WMDs in Iraq

I think the most believable retrospective history includes the idea that Saddam knew that there were no longer WMDs in Iraq, but he went to great lengths to obscure this fact, to the point that a significant portion of the chain of command of the Iraqi military absolutely believed that they did have them, planned their defenses around the expectation that they would have them, and had to scramble to replan after being blindsided by the fact that they weren't about to show up in the next month's logistics delivery.

Seems to me Saddam was trying to posture to prevent attack — if he admitted no WMD his regime was vulnerable. At the same time, he had to try to walk a tight rope to prevent a second Iraq war.

Seems to me Saddam was trying to posture to prevent attack

I don't think this was the case. I believe it was North Korea style posturing, where it was all tied up in his ego of what he wanted to be able to do even if he was unable to.

It's only puzzling because you want to believe the US is a constitutional republic still so you don't understand when it acts like what it actually is.

How can they be so harsh to Trump when dubya has done far worse? It's very simple. Dubya is an agent of the ruling class and Trump is not. There's nothing else to it.

If DC likes you you can rob and kill as many people as you want and they'll sing your praises, until they don't like you anymore and you get blown up or shanked. That's Khadafi's story in a nutshell.

I tire of repeating the same old schtick but it only gets more true and self evident every day. The US constitution is just a an old piece of paper. And the idea that you rule your country thought the magic of representation is delusion.

There's a ruling class which you're not part of, and they posses the power to make the exception.

And no this doesn't make the US uniquely evil. Every country works like this. I can't even begin to fathom a counter example.

If anything what you should really complain about is not that the people in charge make exceptions, since that's the inevitable nature of things, but rather that they don't seem to be very good at running the show anymore.

There will always be a mask, but it's currently a very shitty one and that's not good because that's when people with better masks usually come along.

Also: What, should the entire apparatus of the civil state stand there, limp dick in hand, watching norm after law after precedent get dynamited?

The apparatus demands lubrication, and the only substance at hand is blood. It is good and necessary that blood should flow to feed the state. That is what the state is, that is what the state is for. The state is the threat of violence perpetrated against all by consent of all for the benefit of all.

There has been a defector; why should the government even exist if it can't punish one idiot failson of a fallen business empire?

Well, given that almost every rule in question has long since been broken by the ruling class, my question is why is this guy so bad? Hillary had an entire private unsecured email server outside the government firewall. We didn’t care about norms then. If you want corruption, how is it that a person can go directly from public office to a very lucrative job lobbying for industries that they sought to (not really) regulate months earlier? Or how they always manage to sell their stocks just before us plebs get bad economic news? Hunter Biden had been peddling influence in Russia for decades. We didn’t care about any of those things until Trump did them.

And there’s the ball game — this decidedly is not about laws, norms, or precedents. It’s about making an example of a man who violated the hidden social contract of having good decorum and toeing the social norms an$ keeping quiet about the grift. It’s completely about who he is and what he represents— he’s an outsider, and worse one that won’t play along. He was about the common man.

And to be honest here, I think he’s probably the only politician in memory that could have actually gotten a mob to do anything. Rubin or Cruz or Pence might draw a crowd, but not one willing to fight for their cause. I live in a red state, and I talk to MAGAs. I have never seen a group so enthusiastic about a political leader. For them, this is the first time in memory that a political figure has actually been on their side. The first time in memory that they feel listened to. They don’t trust other people as they’ve been stung too many times by promises that the government “would be there for them”.

I think he’s wrong on policy, but I will point out that the entire thing is absolutely about destroying him and him personally. Others have quietly done what he did.

Cruz could get a crowd to fight for his cause. He happens to be smart enough not to do what Trump did, but if he asked for supporters to riot he would have supporters rioting.

One of the issues is no one knows who runs the regime. I’m reminded of Obama saying something akin to he thought when he was POTUS it would all be magic and pixy dusts and the good Potus would fix everything.

Yet there appears to be a regime since a lot of unelected people keep making similar decisions. Who at the fbi gave the order to declare Hunters laptop misinformation. Who told Kristen Anderson to get rid of the lab leak (he wasn’t even tenured then). It feels as though a puppet master exists but I’ve yet to be able to identify who that is. In California I could point to an interconnected ruling clan but for the US I don’t have the slightest idea who or what that is. Even though it seems they are moving as if directed by one.

You can win elections but the regime remains pulling the strings.

In California I could point to an interconnected ruling clan

I made an account just to ask about this. Would you mind explaining a bit? Or at least point me some direction, I'm super curious.

First google search.

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/01/gavin-newsoms-keeping-it-all-in-the-family/

Getty-Newsome-Pelosi all have family ties known each other multiple generations.

What I don’t understand is why. Maga correctly hated the lockdowns. Yet they now support Trump over DeSantis? The latter was there for them in a real way; the former couldn’t even fire Fauci.

Once upon a time it was probably because Trump promised to do things for them (bring back factories, build the wall). Now they're behind him because he's under attack (for, they reckon, daring to stand up for them).

Funny thing is DeSantis is also under attack (albeit not legal attack though Gavin has floated the idea).

The indictments completely killed any momentum Desantis had to build a policy versus showman debate in the primary.

This caused a rally to Trump movement like any movement needs to do when under attack. Like any army you can’t allow your lines to be broken then it’s chaos getting picked off one by one. And the GOP defending themselves against lawfare is a big deal. Maybe Desantis somehow wins but without a United front he would just fall to the next wave of lawfare.

Plus starting to buy that a lot of people like the entertainment and the policy and donor class of the GOP backing Desantis can’t win that.

This caused a rally to Trump movement like any movement needs to do when under attack.

Exactly. The 'vote for DeSantis not Trump' urgings from outside really were intended to split the vote, because I don't think many of the people saying Republican voters should do that want DeSantis as a strong candidate likely to win the primary and maybe even the election. What they want is the hardline vote split, some weaksauce compromise candidate selected that nobody particularly likes or wants, and then the Democrat nominee to cruise home in the final election.

So if they had been content to quash their impulses to try and punish Trump, they might have got their way. But between the True Believers who have been screaming themselves hoarse for four years about COUP! TREASON! DEMOCRACY!!!! and the urge to punish the impudence of the guy who beat It's Her Turn, they couldn't help themselves. Now they've rallied people behind Trump who may not like or want the guy, but like or want even less vindictive lawfare to be established as a precedent.

What they want is the hardline vote split, some weaksauce compromise candidate selected that nobody particularly likes or wants, and then the Democrat nominee to cruise home in the final election.

That, they won't get. It's going to be Trump or De Santis; there isn't a third candidate in a position to take advantage of a split. If one arises (very unlikely) they will have to be a strong candidate, not a weak one. So what the DNC is trying for is to get Trump as the primary candidate, and then beat him (by hook or by crook, mostly the latter) in the general.

But you also want Patton; not general Burnside. DeSantis is practically the only Republican candidate capable of actually fighting back as opposed to merely crying about it.

One thing they shouldn't do is start throwing more dynamite in the flaming pile.

If you want to preserve institutions, constant escalation is not the way to do it. And that of course goes for both sides.

Not that any of this could have been avoided of course. Power can't abide competition so Trump has to be benign or be destroyed. And he wasn't benign.

One thing they shouldn't do is start throwing more dynamite in the flaming pile.

If you want to preserve institutions, constant escalation is not the way to do it. And that of course goes for both sides.

On the contrary, that is exactly what they should do. Doubly so considering the top-down nature of the affair. The imperative is to send a message that you can play the game or you can sit out, but you cannot try to flip the table. If you can call for an insurrection and then call a mulligan when it fails, there's no reason not to do so every time you lose.

If you can call for an insurrection and then call a mulligan when it fails, there's no reason not to do so every time you lose.

You are literally arguing for Pompey and Cicero's policy against Caesar.

If trying to contest election results inevitably gets repressed as such, there is no reason not to foment an actual insurrection if you think you might lose.

Trump was free to bring his objections in court (which he did, to universal failure) and his allies in Congress were free to raise objections (which they did, though their colleague found them unpersuasive). He was even free to hold a rally in which he whined about how he'd been cheated.

Any claim to merely "contesting" the election evaporated when he sent a mob to attack Congress. It would be irresponsible to let him go unpunished and irresponsible to let the threat of further treason from his followers be a deterrent.

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he sent a mob to attack Congress

Partisan/inflammatory without evidence. Arguably consensus-building, too. Don't post like this.

Any claim to merely "contesting" the election evaporated when he sent a mob to attack Congress.

Woah, when did this happen? I've been a keen observer of politics and kept up to date on the Trump presidency for a long while, but I somehow completely missed the point where he sent a mob to attack Congress. In fact if I look back over the records I can't find any instance where Trump asked people to break in and physically attack Congress - can you please be a bit more specific?

When leftists come into a Congress to protest (happened many times), it's the celebration of democracy. When leftists set cities on fire and destroy property, because they didn't like election results - it's regrettable, but understandable expression of understandable frustration about the democracy being subverted by fascists. When deplorables come into a Congress to protest (happened only once, as I remember?) - it's a fascist treasonous coup, which requires the harshest suppression measures to send them a message. When deplorables set cities on fire and destroy property, because they didn't like election results - well, I don't know, that never actually happened. There never was and never will be any equal treatment in these matters.

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Right, so you're free to protest but only in ways that are ineffective, and if you start doing anything similar to what we do we'll treat it like you're assassinating politicians.

So why exactly should Trumpists not start assassinating politicians given the incentives you're giving them?

You're not answering that question at all and just restating your conviction that self righteous partisanship is sound policy and not the boneheaded foolishness history show it to be at every turn.

I'm sure am glad you weren't in charge of nuclear policy during the cold war.

Right, so you're free to protest but only in ways that are ineffective

They were only ineffective because the claim was not meritorious.

if you start doing anything similar to what we do we'll treat it like you're assassinating politicians.

One of the Trumpists' most consistent mistakes is that they believe their actions are symmetrical to their rivals.

So why exactly should Trumpists not start assassinating politicians given the incentives you're giving them?

Because their belief that they are being unfairly punished is mistaken. Doing normal democratic politics has a higher payoff than trying to flip the table when they lose. It's clearly not that they can't win elections, considering they just did.

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There has been a defector; why should the government even exist if it can't punish one idiot failson of a fallen business empire?

Could you please speak more clearly? This reads like you're talking about Hunter rather than Donald.

I'm talking about Trump, although what I said could apply to either really, and speaking clearly takes all the fun out of it!

Not enough effort--for which you have been warned and banned before. Seven days off this time.

Not really, the Trump failson would be Don Jr or Eric. There are all sorts of negative things you can say about Trump, but failson isn't really an accurate insult.

I suppose Trump was long considered a failson by Trump Sr, although it’s hard to say any father would be disappointed in a son who ultimately became president.

If "was elected to the highest office of the most powerful nation in the world" isn't enough to stop someone from being a failson the insult is meaningless and applies to all living men.

I suppose Trump was long considered a failson by Trump Sr, although it’s hard to say any father would be disappointed in a son who ultimately became president.

Trump had four careers: as a GC in his father's real estate empire (where his success was recognised by Trump Sr who gave him early access to his inheritance), as a real estate developer in his own right (where he was a failure, but made money anyway due to the big run-up in NYC property prices), as a reality TV star, and as a politician. He was brilliantly successful in three of them, but I can see why his father might care most about the one he failed in.

Question for the lawyers here - what's the test for "corruptly" obstructing an official proceeding, as opposed to non-corruptly doing so?

One of the previous J6-related trials used these pretrial statements, which defined the matter as :

To act “corruptly,” the defendant must use independently unlawful means or act with an unlawful purpose, or both. The defendant must also act with “consciousness of wrongdoing.” “Consciousness of wrongdoing” means with an understanding or awareness that what the person is doing is wrong or unlawful.

Not all attempts to obstruct or impede an official proceeding involve acting corruptly. For example, a witness in a court proceeding may refuse to testify by invoking his or her constitutional privilege against self-incrimination, thereby obstructing or impeding the proceeding, but that person does not act corruptly. In addition, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution affords people the right to speak, assemble, and petition the Government for grievances. Accordingly, an individual who does no more than lawfully exercise those rights does not act corruptly. In contrast, an individual who obstructs or impedes a court proceeding by bribing a witness to refuse to testify in that proceeding, or by engaging in other independently unlawful conduct, does act corruptly. Often, acting corruptly involves acting with the intent to secure an unlawful advantage or benefit either for oneself or for another person.

There's a fun philosophical question about how much Trump can be said to "know" anything, but the indictment's got a lot of people telling Trump he lost and didn't have a legal way to stay in office; it's at least enough to go to a jury on this specific question.

This just boils down to he-said-he-said.

Yes, many criminal cases do. Courts are allowed to conclude that someone lied.

Reminder on January 4th Pence gave this statement:

https://nitter.privacydev.net/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1686540469076152320#m

This is a weak argument if you can't defend the original point, and instead have to emphasize the glib line "Courts can conclude someone lied".

It isn't a glib line. It is a description of what juries do every day: Resolve he-said-she-said controversies. Hence, arguing "This just boils down to he-said-he-said" is meaningless.

I'm not sure what you think that statement proves.

Okay, Pence said he had concerns about the validity of the election. Cool. But that in no way implies that he had the unilateral authority to reject the validity of state electors.

Pence says he told Trump he did not have the power. Trump said Pence did have the power. Pence acted in accordance with both his public statements about his own authority and his claimed private statements to Trump about his own authority. So if Trump is telling the truth, then Pence really committed to the bit, voluntarily and unnecessarily removing himself from office. And as you point out, he would have done so in the context of an election whose results he publicly questioned.

He-said-he-said: Trump must be lying, because Pence's testimony suggests he was. Meanwhile, two days before, Pence was publicly aligning himself with Trump's position.

It's untenable to suppose that Trump "knew" he was lying when he consistently genuinely believed in public and private. But it doesn't matter, because you know and I know and we all know that a DC Jury under an Obama judge doesn't care and won't grant a fair trial.

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They are indeed, and then can assign criminal or civil penalties on that basis. It's a truly excellent system, very orderly.

The system isnt failing the people, the people are failing the system.

How so? Looks to me like Trump is going to jail, and that should solve the problem.

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Problem is I think Trump lying was justified. Joe was supposedly behind the Logan Act attacks on General Flynn. HRC et all created RussiaGate. Even if Trump 100% believe he lost the vote the GOP had plenty of Casus Belli to discredit the Biden regime by any means possible and treat them how he was treated.

This is Trump we're talking about. He's the only person in the universe who even has the slightest doubt that he constantly makes shit up.

Chapelle coined it right. He's an honest liar.

I expect his poll numbers to rise because of this development.

So basically, if Trump knew he had lost the election, then he would know that obstructing the certification was wrong, and therefore he would have acted with an unlawful purpose? Something like that?

I think courts have held that either knowing what they were doing is wrong or that it is unlawful are sufficient, and the final charges will probably hammer each option separately. But yeah.

This is patently absurd. We shouldn’t be searching and contorting rules to criminalize political questions. It isn’t something that is down the fairway (eg tax fraud, bribery).

By the way, the obstruction charge related to the documents is a legit charge.

It’s fucking bullshit. No one was defrauded. No one was deceived. This slate was claiming there was election fraud and therefore they were the true electors; not that the state actually authorized them.

It was a shitty legal theory acting out a political claim; that isn’t illegal and trying to shoehorn this into fraud or disruption of an official event is disgusting.

This slate was claiming there was election fraud and therefore they were the true electors; not that the state actually authorized them.

No, take Michigan for example. The Board of State Canvassers certified the 16 electoral votes for Biden on November 23. Per the Michigan Constitution, "the certification of any election results by the board of state canvassers shall be final subject only to (a) a post-certification recount of the votes cast in that election supervised by the board of state canvassers under procedures prescribed by law; or (b) a post-certification court order."

Despite this, on December 14, sixteen people got together in the Michigan capitol building, signed a document (alleged to have been provided by the Trump administration) stating that they were the "duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Michigan". and that the state had 16 votes for Trump. They then mailed this document to the United States "per 3 U.S.C. § 11" in an envelope labeled "Electoral Votes of the State of Michigan for President and Vice President of The United States".

I guess that's totally fine though because they forgot to attach the certificate of ascertainment of appointment of electors. It's not like anyone in Washington was looking for an excuse to ignore the legitimately certified votes and replace them with a sham or anything.

Despite the fact that we said we won, you said we didn't win. That's fraud!

Your definitions have made a certain kind of political dissent a priori criminal. But our rights don't descend from the Constitution, they descent from nature, and it cannot be a crime to contest the political process.

It's just not fine to swear to it in a legal proceeding.

Isn't the whole point of the argument that they were not official electors because they didn't participate in a legal proceeding? That they had to mail their ballots in? I think you're just making up whatever rationalization makes the charging document make sense.

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It is a crime to sign someone else's name on the dotted line though.

This slate was claiming there was election fraud and therefore they were the true electors; not that the state actually authorized them.

"We being the duly elected and qualified electors" is language that could reasonably be construed otherwise.

Goddamn, they really mailed fake elector certificates to the Vice President.

Googling this right now. They all have the same format. This is obviously a coordinated conspiracy.

Trump is toast. He should be on his knees begging DeSantis for a pardon in exchange for his endorsement right now. He will be in jail on election day.

They all have the same format. This is obviously a coordinated conspiracy.

If that is what makes a coordinated conspiracy, then so is every petition drive to "write to your congressperson about this issue!" where they say "the best way to get attention and make sure your letter doesn't end up in the bin is to write it like this" and "if everyone repeats the same points, the politicians will know what we want done", and then they provide a form letter template to fill in your own name and send off.

You’re not American, so you may not realize what a big deal the elector certificates are. These are the official electoral college votes which are opened by the Vice President and counted in the presence of congress to determine the next president of the United States per the 12th amendment.

The only problem is that they were fake. The federal government received two sets of electoral certificates from these states, a real set, and a fake set. The fact that all of the fake sets have the same formatting is a big deal because it implies there was a coordinated plan to send fake votes to congress.

I mean... "The formatting is the same" does indeed imply a coordinated plan, but we don't need to grasp at such straws given that the indictment includes quotes from emails and text messages of the people doing the coordinating.

I wouldn't put it past a prosecutor to misrepresent an email conversation. The fact that there is outside corroborating evidence seems quite relevant at this stage of the game.

I desperately want to see him run, win, and run the country from jail, so this is a positive development.

Now all we need is a banger campaign and some justices to convince themselves that he can't pardon himself. It's all coming together.

I can certainly imagine him campaigning as a fugitive from justice, and daring the Feds to come arrest him at his Red-State rallies.

It could be brutally effective and/or kick of Civil War II -- so, Jocko_Good.jpg I guess?

I desperately want to see him run, win, and run the country from jail, so this is a positive development.

It worked in Irish elections! Put him in to get him out was the slogan coined for the 1917 election campaign of Joseph McGuinness:

While in prison, McGuinness was selected against his will as Sinn Féin candidate for the Longford South by-election in May 1917. The prisoners in Lewes were opposed to standing a candidate when the Irish Parliamentary Party looked likely to win, so McGuinness declined to stand. However, Collins had him nominated anyway, and McGuinness went on to win by 37 votes after a recount. His election slogan was "Put him in to get him out!"

It was adapted for other candidates as well, with variants on it such as A Felon Of Our Land.

I think "A Felon Of Our Land" would be a great slogan for a Trump Prison Campaign, plus we'd get to see all the people agitating for felons to have the vote suddenly back-pedalling on why that is now a terrible idea and why people who break the law are dangers to society 😁

This is obviously a coordinated conspiracy.

What do you think politics is?

Part of the process of negotiating resource allocation via negotiation within a framework of laws, traditions, and norms.

Why, what do you think it is?

The eternal struggle of organized groups to wrest power from each other. Of course.

You're confusing political formula and politics. The lie people tell others about why they should hold power for the rules of power itself.

There is no such thing as laws norms and traditions except as game theoretic objects that are shattered as soon as convenient through exception.

Rule of law is fiction, you live in an oligarchy. And you always will.

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Who do you intend to vote for in the primary?

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I just think he was a whiny loser and I would a support an impreachment resolution that said, "Resolved, Donald J. Trump is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, Article 1: Trump is a whiny loser."

That being said, if being a whiny loser merits impeachment, there's a lot of politicians from dog catcher upwards who would be impeached... hang on, I'm starting to like this idea!

Would your position change if he was still pending trial, or was out on an appeal bond following a conviction in this case?

I don't know what people would do if he's still out of jail (which I agree is the most likely thing) but I'm fairly sure that if he is in jail, a lot of people will go "Oh fuck no" and protest vote for him along the lines of OP - they don't like him but they also don't like abuse of the legal system for petty revenge and disposing of your political foes.

It's not actually a crime to send letters to Congress. Nor is it fraud to sign a piece of paper saying you believe.

Nor is it fraud to sign a piece of paper saying you believe.

It literally is fraud to do that though, is the thing. That's what fraud is.

But they did these in their own name. They did arrive at congress and congress was confused they might be the real electors and were then entered as real electors.

The fact they signed their real names would seem to be evidence they were not fraud. When they were counting votes no one was confused about whether Michigan was Biden or Trump votes

This has never been charged before.

I mean, not specifically.

But signing your name to something you know isn't true or tricking some else into similar is the dictionary definition of fraud.

You know for a moment I was under the impression that lying wasn't a crime. You're telling me all these years we could have arrested all politicians that say things they know to be not true to each other and everyone?

It's not a crime to falsely claim "I work for the Red Cross".

It's a crime to falsely claim "I work for the Red Cross and we're collecting donations, how much would you like to give?"

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It's not actually a crime to send letters to Congress.

It can be. Depends what's in those letters.

Full indictment here

My completely amateur and unqualified opinion after reading the indictment - I dunno. It's not a nothingburger, but it feels way less solid than the documents charges. It's not exactly clear which actions are supposed to constitute which elements of which offense. Like, I feel like you could probably go through and make some argument that this conversation counts as conspiracy and that action counts as obstruction and whatever, but it's kind of been left as an exercise for the reader.

Count two probably gets there. It seems clear that Trump was actively involved in discussing and planning efforts to obstruct the certification of the election. Probably it turns on whether or not the DoJ can prove that he did so "corruptly", whatever that means in this context, but they probably can. I'm less confident of the other charges.

Probably it turns on whether or not the DoJ can prove that he did so "corruptly", whatever that means in this context

What about if Trump genuinely, actually believed the election had been rigged, the results were fraudulent, and that he was still in situ as president until a proper election could be run again? Would that be "corruptly" or not?

From @gattsuru's post, I think the answer is that if he truly honestly believed he was acting lawfully... he would still have been acting unlawfully but he wouldn't be guilty of a crime? I am not at all confident in that assessment though.

It is funny. Trump claimed he has been elected to the office of president in 2016 and 2020. So isn’t he breaking the 22nd amendment by running if he truly believed he was elected in 2020?

Now of course he would say elected means by the electoral college (and he is probably right). But just a funny aside.

There's something so weird about this to me.

Trump was actively involved in discussing and planning efforts to obstruct the certification of the election.

Sure in the most absolutely tortured meaning of the word "obstruct". His claim was that the election as being presented was invalid, and he was trying to use the court/legislative system to elucidate the correct/legal outcome.

This would be like if I got a traffic ticket, showed up in court and argued that the ticket was given in error, failed, and was then charged with "obstruction" for challenging the state.

If every challenge to an election is henceforward seen as "obstruction" then where the hell does that leave us? It seems to make elections a sortof winner takes all battle where the winners take office, and the losers end up in jail.

You're forgetting the requirement that the defendant must corruptly obstruct the proceeding.

Note: I am not opining on Trump's guilt or innocence. I am merely stating that the particular fear you set forth is misplaced.

And who determines if you riot corruptly or uncorruptly?

Were the BLM riots over the 2020 summer corrupt or uncorrupt?

And who determines if you riot corruptly or uncorruptly?

The jury does, based on jury instructions, which are based on the law re what "corruptly" means. Simply challenging a traffic ticket doesn't count.

Were the BLM riots over the 2020 summer corrupt or uncorrupt?

Whataboutism is tedious even when it makes sense. This is even worse; acting corruptly is not an element of riot, or arson, or assault, or any other offense that the BLM offenders might have committed. So, your question makes no sense.

I am very comfortable with it being limited to the cases where the challenge to the election involved violence.

Okay, so what about the Oakland Riots? All the people on social media having meltdowns? All the declarations of "not my president" and the antifa/black bloc rioting and property destruction and so forth? Should Hillary be hauled up and held responsible for those? There were very fraught people online calling for mass insurrection and violence in order to prevent the triumph of the jackbooted mobs who, emboldened by the result, would be pouring into the streets to attack and assault minorities and LGBT? There was at least one lady on SSC (as was) who was firmly convinced, and couldn't be shifted on this, that the election had been stolen by Russia hacking into the voting machines and changing votes to be for Trump. Thus it was illegitimate and a stolen election and he wasn't the real president.

There were a lot of protests before and after, some of which turned violent:

June 19 – During a rally in Las Vegas, Michael Sandford, a 20-year-old British national, was arrested for assault and held in the county jail until he was arraigned in federal court and charged with "an act of violence on restricted grounds". He was accused of attempting to seize a police officer's firearm and later claiming he intended to kill Trump. A British citizen, he was in the U.S. illegally and is being held without bond. He has since then pleaded guilty to federal charges of being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and disrupting an official function.

More anti-Trump demonstrations were planned for the weekend, including in New York and Los Angeles. A group calling itself “#NotMyPresident” has scheduled an anti-Trump rally for Washington on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, when the New York real-estate developer formally succeeds President Barack Obama.

As a realpolitik thing, the prosecution here doesn't happen without the Jan 6 riots.

The prosecution here absolutely happens without the Jan 6 riots - nothing about those riots happening or not changes the fact that Trump is an outsider to a system which absolutely loathes him and does not believe that him or his base deserve any say in the system that governs them, and is willing to trample over the laws and mores to get him (see Crossfire Hurricane).

Though that said, in the hypothetical world where the Jan 6 riots don't take place, I'd imagine that the FBI informants in the crowd would simply organise another incident to take its place.

I am very comfortable with it being limited to the cases where the challenge to the election involved violence. I don't think a strict ban on that leads anywhere problematic.

Where this leads is that opposing parties will enact violence on "behalf" of their opponents, thereby nullifying any ability to make election challenges.

Why that, and not "my violence is speech, your speech is violence" shenanigans?

I was disagreeing, but could understand where you were coming from until "pretty quickly". Do you think Epstein was caught pretty quickly?

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As a realpolitik thing, the prosecution here doesn't happen without the Jan 6 riots.

It was valid to protest the election and certification.

Nothing Trump said incited violence, and his literal words send the protesters home.

The actual riots were incited by Federal provocateurs, it being well-established now that many of the people who entered the Capitol were literal agents for the FBI.

Even the NYT published this very washed-over account about FBI informants among the rioters:

https://archive.is/5J0Db

(The same news organizations will then call it a "conspiracy theory" to suggest that there were FBI informants at the Capitol. Not to mention the Ray Epps affair: https://twitter.com/DarrenJBeattie/status/1547396003690577921 )

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There's in important distinction to be made between spooks and snitches.

"Someone in the crowd was giving information to the FBI" is very different to "FBI agents instigated the riot".

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The actual riots were incited by Federal provocateurs, it being well-established now that many of the people who entered the Capitol were literal agents for the FBI.

Where is this well-established? A cursory Google search only returned that the FBI revoked the security clearance of one agent who joined the mob.

I think actions like the fake elector scheme are pivotal for the argument to work. If all Trump had done was shout that the election was rigged and filed a few failed lawsuits, I don't think there would be a case.

Being involved in a scheme to have people falsely claim to be the duly chosen electors is a different kettle of fish.

The problem with the fake electors as a charge is Hawaii, which at least complicates the mens rea side of things.

These guys also seem problematic -- several of them broke state law in casting their vote, which covers off "corrupt", and they had a literal conspiracy-central website, so I presume charges are forthcoming?

Agreed. On my read of the actual indictment, there are multiple purposes, and the crosstalk between them is what causes confusion of your type concerning what parts are supposed to support what charges. One purpose is to just yell "Trump falsely claimed" over and over again to provide negative affect and rally the troops. Another purpose is to actually present a cogent case, possibly one that could convince folks who are skeptical of the variety of different indictments as being thinly-veiled lawfare against a major political competitor.

Disclaimer: I'm a perennial skeptic on most of the various charges to date; I vastly prefer that we lived in a world where most of the facts presented in this indictment never happened; they are truly moving democracy in the wrong direction; nevertheless, I think it's important to be clearheaded about what is alleged, whether it's actually criminal, and why.

So the first thing I think the skeptic does is to ignore basically all the fluff about the former purpose. If you just read pretty much all the "Defendant falsely claimed" statements as "Defendant believed" (though perhaps was just wrong on the facts, once they all come to light), then nearly 90% of this indictment simply disappears. It's certainly not a crime to just be wrong on the facts or to have a situation where some people are saying one thing and others are saying another result in you believing the wrong thing, even if your belief is heavily influenced by personal political motivations (i.e., you really want to believe that there was something nefarious).

Then, I think what is nearly the only sentence in the indictment that might matter is "66. On the same day, at the direction of the Defendant and Co-Conspirator 1, fraudulent electors convened sham proceedings..." This is what needs to be fleshed out to convince the skeptic. AFAICT, nearly every other sentence about the fake elector scheme is pointing only to "co-conspirators". They quote conversations between other folks, but what did Trump actually do here, and what was his level of knowledge (required for the charge)? If they had quotes, one would imagine they would be dropped here alongside the others. 63 is trying to build the case for knowledge of Co-Conspirators 1/6. "...it's a crazy play so I don't know who wants to put their name on it." "Certifying illegal votes." '...none of them could "stand by it".' These are things straight out of a Matt Levine article that you don't want to have in your indictment, but usually when Levine is pointing them out, it's because it is a quote directly from the defendant or a quote of something said directly to the defendant ("Can you believe we're getting away with this crime?" sort of thing.) But even here, probably the best smoking gun they could muster for the knowledge requirement (otherwise they would have included better), it's still two layers away from Trump (co-conspirators 1/6 aren't even alleged to be part of this conversation, so at best, this is really "other people disagreed in their private conversations, elsewhere"). In a non-politicized trial of just a regular defendant, they would absolutely need to build a better record than this at trial to secure a conviction. Perhaps that could be done at trial, but at least as far as the document we have goes, it's still significantly lacking.

EDIT: I didn't want to actually dig up a real example from a real Matt Levine article when I wrote this, but I'm reading today's column, and it has a perfect example that has come up before:

“We are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro,” Binance’s chief compliance officer told another Binance executive back in 2018

Now that's how you drop a quote in an indictment to show that a particular individual has real knowledge that he's part of a conspiracy to commit illegal acts!

So the first thing I think the skeptic does is to ignore basically all the fluff about the former purpose. If you just read pretty much all the "Defendant falsely claimed" statements as "Defendant believed" (though perhaps was just wrong on the facts, once they all come to light), then nearly 90% of this indictment simply disappears. It's certainly not a crime to just be wrong on the facts or to have a situation where some people are saying one thing and others are saying another result in you believing the wrong thing, even if your belief is heavily influenced by personal political motivations (i.e., you really want to believe that there was something nefarious).

This is the rub for me, on almost all of this. If the people involved actually believed the election was stolen nothing outside of the Jan 6 event is criminal. If you believe that your state committed vote fraud, then you certainly would send a protest slate of electors, especially if the only avenue remaining is that the electors are disputed. If you believed that the election had been stolen from you, you absolutely would seek redress in the courts. You absolutely would be screaming from the housetops. And if you believed that the government was stealing the presidency from your tribe, you’d absolutely go to the Capitol to protest.

To me, the mob doesn’t matter much, because getting a mob of angry people to do something stupid is easy. Maybe a cop shoves a protester, maybe someone simply suggested the riots, maybe somebody threw a rock. But if you have a crowd of angry people that feel that their country has stolen political power from them, especially in the numbers present, a riot of some sort was going to happen. People riot after winning the cup in major sporting events. It takes nothing more than high emotions and some precipitating event.

I think the best way to tease this apart is to ask the counter factual of if the election had been stolen and people knew it, how would their behavior be any different than what we actually saw. And I just don’t see anything where I can put my fingers down and say “if they thought the election was stolen, why did they do this”. Everything seems pretty consistent with the idea that Trump and his inner circle absolutely believed in the stolen election. Being mistaken isn’t a crime.

Being mistaken isn’t a crime.

Depends on the crime. Some laws operate on strict liability - I drove through a red light honestly believing that it was green, but I still broke the law by doing so. And yes, this does mean that you can commit crimes entirely by accident.

Some laws operate on a "reckless disregard for the truth" standard. That is, you have some responsibility to ensure that the beliefs you are acting on are in fact true. So if you are mistaken, that can be a crime if it the truth of the situation was knowable to you and you chose not to look. This typically applies in defamation law - you can't just say any crazy lie and say "but your honour I really believed he was a pedo" and get away with it.

Being mistaken often is not a crime. But it's not true as a blanket statement.

Same notion then basically all riots are violent political coups. All the blm riots etc. They all obstructed government operations. Interfered with law enforcement from doing their job. In a broader sense people voted for a higher level of police force and thru rioting they tried to decrease the police force (and were largely successful). And blm riots were largely based on false stats.

I think it’s easy to define crime like (x) person shot (y) person and he died.

Especially since there is clearly no direct connection in this case between riots and anything Trump did. He never said go riot. So I have a little trouble seeing your point that riots mean other things become illegal.

And broadly just for culture war I feel like each said keeps fighting and there’s been so much bad blood on both sides and no one is completely innocent from doing wrong. I think the right would always use RussiaGate as the original sin.

Not many of the Jan 6 rioters had any goals of making Trump POTUS. Proud Boys goals were new and fair elections without mail in voting. Trump never once told anyone to violently takeover the U.S. which is categorically different than calls made by people associated with the current White House around the summer riots.

The problem is Trump didn’t lead a coup he led a protest which isn’t illegal.

Like when BLM…attacked the White House?

As others have pointed out, the "fake electors" (alternate electors) were part of the mechanism by which they were trying to use the courts/legislature to get the correct/legal outcome of the election.

Right... but that effort included fraudulent representations. It's akin to getting some random to walk onto the Senate floor, declare himself a Senator, and cast the deciding vote. It's not a thing you're allowed to do.

It's only considered fraudulent after the fact, when it's failed. How can they have known themselves to be fraudulent when it had never been tried before, and, in fact, was supported by many as a legitimate alternative?

Article II: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors"

How exactly did these people end up considering themselves electors?

How can they have known themselves to be fraudulent

Because there is a prescribed process for selecting the electors of each state and that process did not select them, it selected other people.

The fact that a fraudulent process successfully fooled some people does not make it not fraudulent.

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Most people don’t think of fraud as something done pretty much in the open and on a political claim.

Fraud is akin to telling someone you have a technology that can test blood but don’t have it. That’s not what really happened here.

Hooooooo boy.

It took way longer than it should have to answer the question: “by whom?”

This is federal, and not another New York charge.

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