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I'm pretty sure the point of this prosecution is to put Trump in prison.
That would indeed hamper Trump's efforts to campaign, but I honestly think they would prefer it if he was ostensibly free yet unable to actually talk or campaign. I think putting him in prison and actually sending him to gaol would be too big of a boost to his campaign - a lot of swing voters find things like putting the opposition candidate in prison for spurious process crimes while ignoring serious corruption and malfeasance committed by your son to be somewhat offputting.
It's really weird to me how many people (including Trump himself) can apparently only see these cases through the lens of their political implications.
The plan isn't to smear or discredit Trump and therefore make him unpopular. It's to lock him up for the rest of his life.
Why should the political implications not predominate in the mind of anyone but Trump himself?
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He’s never getting locked up for the rest of his life. The state cases he can avoid by staying in a red state, and the federal cases he will - at worst - be pardoned by the next GOP president.
Trump's 77; life expectancy for 77-year-olds in the US is 9.3 years. "The rest of his life" is not likely to be that long.
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I don't think that works.
At least since 1987, interstate extradition is not optional, and governors must cooperate with an extradition request so long as the paperwork is correct. And even were a red state governor willing to flip the bird to SCOTUS (or order his entire executive branch to pretend they can't find him under a lamppost), and willing to get jailed for contempt themselves when they receive an order from a court, the federal government has a pretty big branch capable of serving arrests and then finding out whether the arrests were 'right' or not later.
((I'm... also skeptical that a Republican President other than Trump pardons Trump.))
A red state will keep him and have him guarded by the state guard or state cops, and the US Marshalls aren’t going to start a civil war. That in turn will lead to a further standoff and years of legal issues.
Trivially, you need state guard or state cops willing to deal with Trump in person, and Trump not doing something stupid, and nothing Weird happening with the Secret Service.
More seriously, that's the sort of behavior that gets federal jurisdiction in the courts and a very quick contempt of court orders for the gov in question. If the US Marshalls don't want to do it, the courts have fun tools that don't involve them. (Fines per day?)
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Are those not the same things? If Trump was some other dude most of these charges would never be filed. Atleast half the charges are novel legal theories. The only case that doesn’t seem to be a novel legal theory would be the documents at Mar-a-Lago.
I agree with you the goal is to lock him up for the rest of his life because then he can never run for POTUS again.
It's pretty novel too -- previous presidents have all had large collections of classified materials that they were allowed to go through (in their own good time!) prior to submitting to the archives. I think most previous presidents retained their clearance and were allowed access to current classified materials, actually?
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Why not? Unlike Debbs, Trump might actually pull it off, which would be a lot more damaging to the regime then giving him a second term.
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In this case, the political implications really do override, because it's a federal proceeding and therefore if he wins the election from jail he just pardons himself to get out.
I still think the funnier outcome is SCOTUS tells him he can't pardon himself and he has to rule from jail or give even more weirdly convoluted orders to the feds to get out.
Better would just put him in solitary and refuse to administer the oath of office, then per Article II he can't exercise any presidential powers.
Are you serious?
Remember that he won an election in this case given that we're talking about pardons. "Hey I know you won the election, but the losing side decided to put your president under arrest so you actually lose the election anyway." is not a message that would go over well with the general populace.
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That's true of the federal cases, but he can't pull that trick with the Georgia RICO case.
Hence FirmWeird's "this prosecution" and my "this case".
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See, the problem is that doing this will actually make Trump's cause stronger, and while they would like it if he was locked up for the rest of his life... that's not something they're going to be able to do before the election without severe and serious consequences. I agree that they aren't doing this to discredit him and make him unpopular, but I never actually made that claim. The claim that I made was that the goal is to hamper his ability to campaign - and that's actually a very reasonable assumption, especially when you know the broader history of the efforts from within the government to defeat him.
The documents case and the Georgia case will take longer because they're more complex, but it seems pretty clear the federal Jan 6 trial will happen in March. It'll take a while, and sentencing will take a while after that, but he's most likely going to be in prison during the conventions. Consequences be damned.
Perhaps he could use the time to write another memoir, this time about his political struggles rather than his business career.
The Art of the Steal, perhaps?
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I must say that's pretty funny.
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That would be extremely good for Trump's chances at re-election, but I don't actually hope for this outcome because I think the destruction of norms governing the prosecution of opposition candidates is far worse.
Not necessarily. It would be extremely good for Trump's popular support, but a conviction here would be used to buttress the efforts to take him off the ballot under Amendment XIV. Doesn't matter how many people support him if he can't be voted for.
Of course, that doesn't make it a good idea; the real result of taking Trump-as-Republican-nominee off the ballot isn't "Democrats win by default", but rather "civil war".
Honestly, I only see three ways out of this without Boogaloo: the Democrats can realise this is literal suicide and relent, the Republicans can nominate someone not Donald Trump Sr., or Trump is not able to run for reasons other than "banned" (e.g. being dead).
No, the Republicans will cave except a few hotheads, who will be shot to the approval of those who caved.
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I don't understand why the "boogaloo" option is being seen as suicide for Democrats. Rebellions frequently end extremely badly for the rebels.
Actual civil war in America would be suicide for the Democrats and Republicans both. The winners of Civil War 2 would be China and Russia, with Hamas getting a consolation prize as the flow of US aid to Israel gets turned off. The losers would be everyone who has to live in the country, as every pre-existing division in society gets thrown into stark relief by the breakdown of the infrastructure which supplies power, internet communication, water, oil and food. There's no real way to defend those in the US in the context of a civil war, and the nature of the conflict as rural food producing regions fighting against import-reliant cities portends an incredibly nasty fight for everyone involved.
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My guess is it would end extremely badly for everyone. The things that make me call it suicide for Dems in at least a substantial chunk of possible worlds are the potential for the armed forces and police to split, the food issue with the countryside being Republican, and the "PRC opportunistically invades Taiwan" issue which quite likely means nuclear exchange.
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'Winning' a rebellion can be as suicidal, especially for the leadership. In the last decade we've seen rando schizophrenics hit both sides of the aisle at the Congressional level and only by grace of God and emergency medicine did they fail to kill. Garland has a home address, and he's given tacit 'moral' sanction for protests of homes, and the only reason that's not a day-by-day thing is that the sort of Red Triber who recognize his name knows the rule doesn't generalize.
Like, that's supposed to be one of the motivations for the gag order here.
((In practice, I think this is insufficiently cynical; if you start getting non-LARP non-schizo people devoted to hating you with every fibre of their being, there's a lot worse options that just being dead yourself.))
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The assumption is that most of the army and the cops are red. I personally believe they'll still mostly be on the establishment's side. You don't become a soldier to be a rebel.
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The norms have already been broken. The best outcome for norms is for the prosecution to be successful but Trump to win in a landslide and be gracious in his victory. Presumably no one would try and pull this shit again after the electorate rejects it.
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