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The fact you'd say this is a pretty emblematic of how crazy the US (and this site) have become. This might seem like a hot take, but people generally don't want their leaders to be convicted felons.
Well, maybe that would have held more true back before trust in institutions collapsed. Those 22-34% are the last vestiges of that era. The thought is that anyone can lob an accusation, but a conviction carries more weight. Yes, most people understand that prosecutors would generally only bring cases that have a good chance of winning, but they can still fudge around the edges.
Nowadays, Trump could probably murder someone on live TV and a majority of the Republican voters would say he didn't do it. That's basically what the election loss denialism came down to. Why let evidence get in the way of vibes and dunking on the outgroup!
Better than felons who are unconvicted because a corrupt system protects them.
There are problems in the enforcement of justice, but it's not nearly as bad as you're making it out to be. I presume you're referring to the Hunter Biden stuff? Well, that's largely symmetrical to Trump's Russia investigation: Lots of smoke, not much actual fire (at least by the president himself), yet partisans whip themselves into a frenzy over the issue since they're getting a maximally damning picture due to their filtered media consumption. Biden could very well face a frivolous impeachment trial like Trump did as well.
This is extremely wrong and a sign that you haven't done the required research to talk authoritatively about this topic. There's absolutely no symmetry to the Carter Page warrant, Crossfire Hurricane, Mueller panel etc, and vice versa with the Hunter Art shows or Laptop photos.
I've done quite a bit of research of both. Not as much as many extreme partisans who keep track of daily updates, but more than enough to get a good picture. I stand by what I said: if you want to find bias or wrongdoing then it exists in both investigations. If you want to find crimes by people merely involved in the scandal that aren't the president, you can do it. If you want to actually get to wrongdoing by the president himself, that's a lot harder. There's morally grey stuff, but not much that's technically illegal.
Are you sure? The things I listed there specifically in my post are what I feel distinguish the two cases. There's absolutely no equivalence to Crossfire Hurricane or the Carter Page FISA warrant in the Biden cases, and I feel it is dishonest to even imply it. There's a huge world of difference there and collapsing the distinction makes your thinking lazier and less clear.
The Carter Page stuff was bad, but ultimately more as a factor against the FBI than to the broader investigation as a whole. Carter Page was not indicted, nor did he feature particularly prominently in the final report compared to people like Papadopoulos or Manafort. Then there's the issue of whether that stuff meant the investigation was started from partisan motives, but similar accusations have been levelled in the reverse direction for Hunter. It's also pretty easy to point to Giuliani, who was one of the leading proponents of the Hunter stuff since it's inception, as Giuliani isn't exactly the cleanest guy himself. Or heck, even the recent deposition stuff, where House Republicans initially said they'd accept any type of deposition with Hunter, before reneging and saying they'd only accept a closed deposition, something Hunter specifically wanted to avoid due to the likelihood of the Republicans selectively leaking testimony to present a skewed picture.
Of course he wasn't indicted! That's the entire point I was bringing up - the Carter Page warrant was transparently a figleaf designed to let the intelligence agencies surveil Trump and his entire campaign while delivering intelligence reports based on that surveillance to his political opposition. Again, I struggle to believe that you've got a real understanding of the situation if you think the problem with the Carter Page warrant was that he wasn't actually indicted. The problem was that the Trump campaign and early days of his presidency were under hostile surveillance by the intelligence agencies, and the fruits of that surveillance were given to his political opposition... and all of it was based on a document that everyone involved knew was fraudulent.
No, this isn't an issue at all. The investigation was started from partisan motives, and if you're familiar with the documents in question and the outcome of the Durham investigation, there's not really any debate to be had on this subject.
In order for this equivocation to be valid, the republicans would have had to have manufactured Hunter's laptop and all the evidence on it, selectively leaked portions of it to the media, used it to get a FISA court warrant to surveil Biden's whitehouse, then given regular copies of the intelligence summaries based on the information they gained to the Trump campaign. Hunter Biden's laptop became an issue because he took a lot of photos of himself committing crimes, along with a bunch of records of him selling influence and access to his father, then got super blitzed and forgot about dropping his laptop off to be repaired, then ignored the repeated messages saying "please come pick up your laptop or it becomes our property".
The problem with this line of thinking is that Carter Page certainly wasn't the only reason the investigation started, as Papadopoulos was also an early target and would eventually be convicted. After it started, it was clear there actually was quite a bit of wrongdoing by Trump's campaign, including even the chair of the campaign, Manafort. Not sure what "fruits of surveillance given to his political opposition" is specifically referring to here, so I'll let you clarify before I address it.
The Durham Report (which itself was created/elevated at the behest of Trump to discredit what he saw as the "Russia hoax") didn't even explicitly accuse the FBI of bias, since that's a fairly difficult bar to reach. The final report actually discusses more about confirmation bias than on political bias. It's personally pretty clear to me that political bias was probably a factor, but again it's hard to prove definitively.
If you zoom in too closely then obviously there are object-level differences between the two "scandals", but I never said they were identical. Giuliani's involvement still allows Democrats to point to the blatantly (biased) political nature of how the investigation started, from a man who is verging on lunacy, who claimed the election was stolen by the heckin Commies, and who likely committed crimes himself for which he is now being charged. The laptop stuff has long been his personal project, and the fishing expedition ultimately failed to prove anything related to the president himself. You'll obviously say that's a ridiculous interpretation, but plenty of leftists use something along those lines to dismiss the Hunter story, while seeing the Russia stuff as far more damaging. Again, there's clear symmetry there.
Also, while I'm enjoying the more substantive parts of this discussion, I'd urge you to drop the high and mighty attitude you've been displaying so far. I've discussed this topic with several other people on the Pro Trump side, and each one comes at it from a different angle which makes it difficult to have a single uniform rebuttal. Saying things like "I struggle to believe that you've got a real understanding of the situation" or "you haven't done the required research" or "dishonest to even imply it" or "lazy thinking" or any of that obnoxious crap is not helpful and makes me not want to engage with you. Again, I have done quite a bit of research on this, maybe not as much as you, but enough to know a fair deal. Keeping that in mind would be helpful so that you might ask for clarification if you've misunderstood the argument I was making, instead of leaping to ad hominems that I'm some foolish idiot who "hasn't done the research".
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