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I respect @The_Nybbler 's stance because it's consistent and stated with clarity. I don't want to obfuscate your point here and so it makes sense to distinguish between pressuring the witness to tell the truth, versus to lie, versus not testifying at all. In terms of my own position, pressuring witnesses to tell the truth should always be fair game for everyone (I might endorse exceptions but none come to mind), and pressuring them to lie/withhold should always be punished or discouraged. In the scenario where only one side is "allowed" to do the latter, then ideally we make them stop doing it, but if that's not possible then I would echo Nybbler's call for equivalence as second best (not ideal given the potential for spiraling out).
So I don't know what you mean exactly when you say "pressure". Trump's interest appears to be having witnesses not testifying, and that's bad.
FYI when I said that Trump's attacks are "irrelevant and pointless" I was referring to this attacks on the judge's clerk and the families of prosecutors. None of them are witnesses, and I don't see what goal he's achieving besides a blanket reprisal campaign.
I think the difficulty starts right about here. We have no external reference by which to distinguish between these two options. Which leads to the difficulty with:
If we cannot externally distinguish between the first category and one of the two options in the latter category, we're in trouble. If one party believes that the other is pressuring a witness to lie, then they may reasonably hope to simply cause them to not testify. Since we cannot tell whether the supposition in the last sentence is true, we're in a bit of a pickle.
Setting that aside for now, do you have any objections to the standard I outlined, at least in principle? You're free to then argue that "Every media outlet; every power broker; every cop with a badge or prosecutor" is pressuring witnesses to either lie or withhold testimony.
As a first principle, sure. But we have another first principle (we have no external reference by which to distinguish between two options) as well. Together, I suppose they make a second principle, which sort of obviates the first principle.
It would be like saying that we could agree to the principle that it would be nice for everyone to get exactly the things they earn/deserve/whatever. Sure, but literally two seconds later, we scrap the entire project due to equally strong first principles cutting against any chance of achieving such a thing.
Well you already stated a claim, and it would be helpful to specify what you exactly meant subjectively when you said "everyone is pressuring witnesses". Do you mean that the witnesses are being pressured to lie or withhold their testimony? Or maybe they're being pressured to tell the truth, but maybe that's bad? Avoiding specificity about what you exactly mean by "pressuring" makes it likely that your point would be obfuscated through vagueness.
I think I was pretty clear in saying that we have no external reference by which to distinguish between pressuring them to lie or tell the truth.
Surely, you understand this possibility in the abstract. Consider a run-of-the-mill police interrogation, trying to garner a confession (either to one's own culpability or as a witness to someone else's). I'm confident that you are completely aware of the bog standard concern that this behavior could be interpreted both as pressure to tell the truth and to lie.
Consider Michael Cohen's plea agreement on a campaign finance charge that called Trump a co-conspirator. One could easily believe that it was a totally bullshit charge that is simply not sustainable under Supreme Court precedent if it were vigorously contested. Others could disagree, perhaps even thinking that this sort of vigorous application of campaign finance laws are necessary for our democracy. Such folks would then disagree on whether pressuring him to plead in that way was for the purpose of being a totally bullshit way to try to get headlines about Trump being a co-conspirator without having to actually make those claims fly in a court of law when contested... or simply pressuring him to plead to his obvious criminal conduct with the biggest criminal in the world.
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