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Cynical read is that Mr Garland is trying to distract the news cycle from talking about Hunter Biden or the FBI.
Alternatively, Garland really hates Trump, which I think is probably true and requires fewer moving parts.
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Is that cynical? Cynicism is not thinking your political opponents are corrupt and evil. Everyone thinks that. Cynicism is thinking your political allies are corrupt and evil.
What if it's politics itself that is corrupt and evil, and the whole notion of allies and opponents was a load of bullshit sold to you by your Marxist poli-sci teacher in high school. Is that cynicism or optimism? I could see arguments either way.
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As opposed to talking about fiscal policy and inflation? Border control? Federal regulation? Supreme Court rulings? Whatever gaffe the big man himself has dropped in the last week, month, or year?
Your theory proves too much. If Merrick Garland could just shit out indictments to control the media, I expect he'd have done it sooner. Maybe skipping the step of spending months dragging evidence in front of Congress.
Or, to put it another way: what would it take to change your mind? What possible evidence could you accept that the proceedings legitimately took this long? I'm not even asking you to accept the outlandish claim that the Justice Department might have an interest in enforcing laws. No, I want to know what would make you say "gosh, I guess this wasn't about the President's layabout son after all."
A: It not taking this long. B: something more than hearsay. or C: the FBI acting like insurrection and/or mishandling classified information were a serious offence when it wasn't the opposition candidate's ox who was getting gored.
As I was telling @AshLael the fundamental problem is that this is very clearly an issue of "rules for thee and not for me". If we are we going after Trump because he mishandled of classified material, why aren't Clinton and her staff being prosecuted? If we are we going after him for peddling influence/colluding with foreign interests, why isn't Biden? If we're going after him for inciting insurrection and subverting the electoral process why aren't Obama, Fienstien, Waters, and all the other DNC elected officials who provided aid and comfort to the CHAZ/CHOP and BLM riots getting put through the wringer?
The answer is simple, the FBI/DoJ is in the tank for the democratic party establishment and has been since the days of Hoover. You didn't think they named their headquarters building after a cross-dressing political hitman by accident did you?
I think there's an important distinction between "choosing who to prosecute because of political loyalties" and "choosing when to prosecute them in order to affect news cycles". There are examples of behaviour similar to the latter from the Blue Tribe (the coverup of Hunter Biden's laptop, and the postponement of the vaccine announcement until after the election), but "Hillary Clinton wasn't arrested" isn't especially pertinent here.
I don't see how anyone remotely intelligent could make this argument in good faith. It is not only "especially pertinent", it's the point.
You're not giving me a lot to go on, but at a wild guess I'm going to assume your unstated thought process is something along the lines of "both are malfeasance for political gain". If I've made a mistake here, please point to it.
My point is that these things don't necessarily feel identical to the person doing them. To someone sufficiently mindkilled, the "who to prosecute" bias doesn't feel like a bias; it feels like normal prosecutorial discretion where you go after the especially-bad people (but your sense of who's especially-bad is way off). On the other hand, the "when to prosecute" thing requires consciously paying attention to these kinds of Machiavellian factors.
Since the former can be done without the full mens rea required for the latter, it's not great evidence of the latter; there are people who will do the former but balk at doing the latter, because the former is much easier to justify to oneself. As I've said, though, there are examples of the latter actually happening, which would have supported your point better.
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Please keep your focus to the argument rather than its host's intelligence.
I felt like I was being pretty charitable, and abiding by the spirit of the sub's rules regarding charity, by adhering to Hanlon's Razor.
Would you have been less inclined to moderate me had I gone with the alternative?
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Because for various (good) reasons the legal system requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt to convict a person. Clinton is probably more corrupt than Trump IMO, but she's also less sloppy and is better at not leaving incontrovertible proof lying around.
Do we really want somebody who is corrupt, but good at covering up their corruption, in power, though? If we have to have a corrupt person, at least someone who is sloppy and will get caught might be a better choice.
I mean, I'd prefer someone who doesn't do corruption to either of them. Mike Pence seems like a decent choice in that regard.
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Clinton was far, far sloppier than Trump - but she was part of the elite and so her mistakes were simply covered up. Trump was substantially more careful than she was, it's just that she didn't actually need to be careful.
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Because she unilaterally had her lawyers destroy the evidence. Spoiling evidence is generally a problem for the person who spoiled the evidence.
Also, because the government gave free immunity to her underlings instead of trying to get them to turn (unlike they are doing with Trump).
Clinton didn’t mind her Ps and Qs; she got help from the purported other side.
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Cynical read is that you're always talking about Hunter Biden. Breitbart has written 134,000 articles mentioning Hunter Biden and pumps out like 5 or 6 a day. Fox News has written 260,000 articles about Hunter Biden between January 1st, 2020 and today. You'd be saying this if it had dropped last month, last week, or next year. When, exactly, should the indictment have been unsealed to satisfy you?
Ah, right. The answer is never, isn't it?
I think you're making a relevant point here.
The right is making a lot of hay out of Hunter for probably many reasons: he keeps providing ample evidence, picking on an obviously senile Joe seems like punching down, and Hunter's corruption is so obvious that it's a simple example of hypocrisy almost anyone can understand.
However, I find myself exhausted by Hunter's stories. The density is too high, and he pretty much continues to keep getting away with everything. There's also an element of nothingburgers too, I honestly don't care that he did a line or two at the white house.
From a steelman/opposition advice perspective, do you think the right should be:
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Those numbers are obviously wrong. At 100 articles per day it would take Fox 8ish years to write that many.
Google "hit" and "result" numbers are always highly exaggerated.
Fair enough, but the point still stands. They're putting out 3-10 per day on the dates I can check.
Do you know of a more accurate way to quantify?
Well the Brietbart page has 5 pages with 20 articles on each mentioning "Hunter Biden." 100 articles mentioning him sounds low to me but probably somewhere in the right ballpark. The best way I can think of to conduct this sort of comparison would be to compare that name to the search results of a list of unrelated things, like "russia", "healthcare", "election", and so on. Then you can kind of eyeball [articles which mention Hunter Biden] / [articles which mention unrelated things] and compare that to the results on a different platform.
It doesn't matter all that much though, your point is still valid. Though I think the current timing is undeniably a bit more convenient for Hunter than almost any other timing would be.
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My facts were wrong by an order of magnitude but I’m still right!
Thankfully, hlynka is routinely wrong by multiple orders of magnitude so I think I'm still safe.
Low effort, pure direct antagonism without even a pretense of substance? Three day ban.
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Really? Can you link an example?
That time he claimed Clinton engaged in election denialism as bad as Trump is infinite orders of magnitude wrong
Also, this other time he claimed Czech, or Slovak or Czechslovak (the details are lost to the sands of time and greedy reddit admins) hockey players are good
Oh, and he likes to argue that rural African hustlers are smarter than all us big brain types. Many, many orders of magnitude there
You've found a way to quantify this? Fascinating!
I don't have the first clue about hockey so maybe, though many orders of magnitude feels like a stretch.
Really? I don't think he's wrong on that one, and even if, it's definitely not orders of magnitude.
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Sure, and how many articles have CNN, MSNBC, Et Al written about Trump?
My take from the beginning has been that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I don't think you can reasonably claim that Trump acted inappropriately by "mishandling classified information" "being a party to foreign influence" or "inciting violence and questioning the legitimacy of US elections" without implicating Clinton and Biden in even more serious crimes.
The crux of the issue is that the DNC has explicitly rejected the principle of equality before the law in favor of "rules for thee and not for me" and I don't think they realize just how dangerous a game they are playing.
That might be relevant if I had been complaining about the latest Hunter Biden hearing being planned to distract from a damaging Trump story. Moreover, Trump was a sitting president while Hunter Biden is the son of one, so a better analogy would be Jared Kushner.
The crux of the issue is that Trump pushed the envelope on all of those issues farther than any of the examples you gave. Clinton conceded the election peacefully the morning after:
I'm still unaware of any concrete evidence that Joe pushed policy X or Y as a party to foreign influence either to enrich his family or otherwise. The closest I've seen has been pushing for the resignation of the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma, but a Republican-controlled senate investigation apparently turned up nothing years ago. While Hunter apparently illegally bought a gun, smoked a lot of crack, fucked a lot of hookers and enriched himself on his father's name it's still not clear to me how Biden harmed the interests of the United States to rake in the corruption money.
There's probably no point rehashing similar arguments from the other side; Jared Kushner receiving 2 billion from the Saudis after being staunchly pro-Saudi Arabia while directly serving in Trump's white house, Trump delaying hundreds of millions of aid to Ukraine while pressuring Zelenskyy to investigate the Biden's, so on and so forth.
I'm out of time, so you'll undoubtedly be devastated that we don't get to rehash the Clinton email saga again although I'll admit you're maybe closest to the mark here given that, if I remember correctly, she instructed her lawyer to destroy evidence.
You mean aside from the proverbial smoking gun and the blood all over his clothes.
There's no evidence that Joe ever used his position of influence to enrich his family so long as you ignore that time he flat out admitted to doing so, Sorry bub, but you and I know that if Trump or one of his Sons had uttered those exact same words you'd be all over it like white on rice rather than trying to explain it away as a nothing-burger, and that is exactly why your feigned outrage carries no water.
The dude is literally making the case that bribery isn’t that bad provided it doesn’t harm the US interest. I just don’t see that as an honest interlocutor.
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Devon Archer testified that Burisma wanted Hunter to take care of the prosecutor who was causing a problem. Joe Biden then took care of the prosecutor. Pretty closely tied.
If the argument is “well this didn’t really harm the US” maybe but maybe not. This is the corruption we know but there could be more and corruption is bad per se.
Again Trump was indicted for correctly sniffing out the corruption of the Biden’s and using government power to bring it to the forefront. How was what Trump did harmful to US policy? Is that really the only standard?
We are now stating “presidents or vice presidents can accept bribes as long as it doesn’t harm the US?”
I don’t believe you really believe that.
That's not what Trump was indicted for.
Then maybe if the idea that I'm making a pro-bribery argument beggars belief you should consider that your interpretation of what I'm saying was flawed.
Just now realized we were talking last each other. I was referring to the impeachment as the indictment (which is what an impeachment is — it is an indictment)
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Then why was the constant, repeated, over-and-over-again refrain that Trump's actions were "contrary to the interest of the United States"? This was incessant, and we have the tapes. Law professors spilt barrels of ink on the topics of possible mixed-motives, the proper method by which either the courts or an impeachment proceeding should determine "the interest of the United States", etc. This was perhaps the single dominant topic/question of the impeachment. They felt like they needed to show that his actions were contrary to the interests of the United States, and their method of doing so was to roll out bureaucrat after bureaucrat (who theoretically report to Trump) to say, "Well, actually, we decided what was in the interest of the United States, and what Trump did went against that."
Trump was indicted in New York for business record falsification, Florida for the documents case and DC/Georgia for election interference, denial, conspiracy, whatever. Replace those with whatever words you like so we don't have to haggle over how to describe those indictments.
Trump was impeached by the house, but not the senate, for the Ukraine dealings. Setting aside the absurd way zeke is describing those events (the burisma investigation was reportedly dormant at the time, there were compelling reasons to push for the ouster of the prosecutor completely unrelated to Burisma, everyone who testified to the senate claimed there was no connection between the Bidens nor was Joe influenced by his son's business interests - all this despite the best efforts of a Republican controlled investigation), do you agree that Trump was not indicted for those reasons?
Sorry, I was too hasty in my reading and mixed up indictment/impeachment, since we were talking about the other a couple comments away. I still maintain my description of the impeachment.
I think the NY indictment is for business records, but relies on a pretty sketchy reading of campaign finance laws. I think the FL indictment was for documents, but shows a bit more of the violent fight between Trump and the bureaucracy over who gets to decide. This one is, as you say, for election shenanigans (and my thoughts are posted elsewhere in this thread, mostly, "We'll see if they can substantiate anything direct implicating Trump this time." If they can, maybe there's some there there. If not, it may turn out that the best description is that they indicted Trump "to get Trump". They realized with the Cohen plea that it wasn't sufficient to just call him a 'co-conspirator' on an extremely sketchy campaign finance charge and not even try to bring anything to a court (NY is kinda trying to remedy that), so they've gotta actually take some direct shots.)
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Of course Trump was charged with using his office for illegitimate ends. The ends here was pressuring Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political opponent. It is now reasonably clear (and even back then there was a bunch of smoke) that Trump wanted actual corruption of his political opponent investigated. So what I said was correct.
Maybe you shouldn’t write things with the effect “show me how it harmed US policy” if you don’t want people to believe you think bribes aren’t a big deal provided it didn’t harm US policy
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When you scratch the surface of many of the different attempts at lawfare against Trump, they're often undergirded by a necessary axiom: "The deep state, bureaucracy, The Party, whatever you want to call it, decides what is in the interest of the United States. If you do things that are counter to that decision, then it is inherently illegitimate, could only be for some nefarious personal interest, and is almost certainly illegal. But if you do things that are aligned with that decision, then you're a pretty good guy who really shouldn't be put through all the stress of, like, investigations and stuff. You're one of us." This was probably most obviously on full display during the first Trump impeachment.
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They think it's perfectly safe. If they win, it's effectively illegal to challenge them and they get their permanent Democratic hegemony. If they don't win, they figure the Republicans will not retaliate in kind, or due to the deep state remaining in their hands will not be ABLE to retaliate in kind. And I cannot see the flaw in this reasoning.
...because in your heart of hearts you're one of them.
appeals to legality only work on people who see the legal system as legitimate.
By "effectively illegal to challenge them" I mean they can use the full force of the Federal government against challengers using the law as an excuse. Not that it is de jure illegal to challenge them, though a good number of conservatives tend to believe that too -- despite the system being obviously corrupt they accept its results as if it is not, and blame anyone on their own side who does not do so.
And?
are you really so afraid of being prosecuted or held at gunpoint?
I've been prosecuted. It was, shall we say, an unpleasant experience. And if it ends successfully for the prosecutors, the prosecuted person end up in jail and disgraced. Because despite your implication, the right DOES see the legal system as legitimate, far more than the left does. If Trump is convicted by a D.C. jury, the non-Trumpist right will see his conviction as legitimate because they still believe in the institutions.
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How long do you suppose an indictment like this takes to put together?
IANAL but my understanding of these sorts of legal processes is that they are much much too slow moving to be responsive to the vagaries of the news cycle.
6 - 12 hours.
INAL either but it seems to me that putting together the indictment is the easy part, it's all the discovery, motions, countermotions, and eventual trial that end up taking months or years. Garland doesn't need to convict to get a win here he just needs to give CNN, MSNBC, Et Al something to talk about.
Or no time at all depending on the circumstances. Much depends on how much faith you have in the FBI and Merrick Garland to act as honest brokers.
...are you suggesting that the various facts alleged in the indictment (e.g. on December 23rd co-conspirator 2 circulated a two page memorandum outlining a plan for Vice President Mike Pence to declare Donald Trump the certified winner of the election) are invented?
Do you trust the Biden administration not to invent such a thing? Or not to spin it a certain way by strategically omitting relevant context?
Yes. I would bet a large amount of money that the alleged memorandum existed and was circulated on December 23rd, based on this indictment.
I think it's crazy to think that high powered lawyers working for the Department of Justice would not make sure they got easily-tested facts right in the highest profile case of their careers.
Now answer my question.
My answer is that I do not share your faith. I fully expect lawyers to lie and/or omit critical context if it helps their case because that's what any lawyer worth hiring would do. I say this with a certain amount of affection, but I do genuinely believe that the most reliable way to predict a lawyer's behavior is to assume they are a shyster, every last one of them.
What's the old line? Trust but verify?
If these guys get caught lying what's the worst that happens to them? I would wager not a whole lot.
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Nobody is saying they started this process in response to the most recent news cycle.
It's been two and a half years, during which time the Hunter laptop and and associated corruption scandal has been growing. There's no reason they couldn't have had this ready in May or June but stalled for an opportune time.
Alas.
I guess if someone makes an extreme claim you don't need to address the moderate claim.
The extreme claim was made first and is what prompted the response. If @KMC wants to come in and advance a more moderate claim, he's welcome to do so, but that's not what anyone else is talking about.
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You may not be saying that. But it seems like @HlynkaCG is.
Unfortunate, that.
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