That points me to Jonathan Turley's tweets, which I'm reading here:
I felt that the Mar-a-Lago indictment was strong. This is the inverse. This is closer to the case against former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell where Smith was overturned by an unanimous Supreme Court...
The press conference held by Smith only deepened the unease for some of us. Smith railed against the January 6th riot and made it sound like he was indicting Trump on incitement. He didn't. The disconnect was glaring and concerning.
ADDED: Paragraph 3 of the indictment concedes what had to be conceded and, really, concedes everything:
And that should have ended this woeful enterprise. This is a debate that should have taken place entirely in the political arena, and indeed, Trump's opponents have tried very hard to win this political debate. They achieved only mixed results, and instead of accepting the political outcome — and ironically they are criminalizing Trump's failure to accept a political outcome — they have chosen to fight this political battle in the courts.
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The elections are designed to be unauditable, which means that you can’t prove, or even be confident, who won and who lost. That ought to end the whole trial.
It’s a convention that if you win without instantly provable fraud, you won, because finality is more important that accuracy. But that’s not what they’re assuming in what is charged.
It’s unauditable not only from sloppy chain of custody all over, but because computers are used to count, and those in principle can’t be audited. Details are a little technical but not complicated, for which see Ken Thompson’s Turing lecture “On Trusting Trust.”
Every computer falls to sufficiently motivated bad guys, which motivation elections provide.
Yet others are here to cheer, to egg on the complete destruction of due process and the the first amendment. That’s sad. Thought crimes and speech crimes are not the American tradition. I enjoy political debate but those who are celebrating this indictment for what Trump was thinking are inviting fascism to replace the rule of law. I recall the predictions in 2016 that Trump would do this to Hillary. He did not of course. He has more respect for America and the Law than the current administration. Y’all have become the monster you claimed to fear.
The process is the punishment and is meant to keep Trump in lawyer's offices and not on the campaign trail.
It's a criminal conspiracy by the Department of Justice and the Biden Campaign to fix the 2024 election.
Dems will steal the next election, pack SCOTUS, put Trump on bread and water in solitary confinement (to protect democracy) until he commits suicide by hanging himself with a bedsheet while the cameras are off, which having will leave a scar that looks a lot like strangulation with a power cord, but it won't be, it will be a suicide. Bill Barr will says so.
"If that man gets re-elected, we will all hang from nooses" - Hillary Clinton. (OK, I added the "re-" to the quote.)
I haven't read the indictment but I did watch MSNBC this morning and none of their many so-called experts convinced me that any conviction will be upheld on appeal. Unlike the document case where the facts are clear that Trump willfully withheld the documents, even after they were subpoenaed. and did try to obstruct the investigation.
The experts all read from the indictment that this person and that person and this other person told Trump that he lost, and therefore apparently the jury should conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump thought he lost. But Trump never excepts defeat - his mind simply is incapable of going there. The prosecution can put forward a dozen witnesses who will say they told Trump he lost. And the defense can put forth two dozens of witnesses, including a law professor (Eastman), a former Assistant AG (Clark) and a former USA (Giuliani) who will testify that they told Trump that he won (whether they believed it themselves isn't very relevant). And of course there are the 50,000,000 of his supporters who are certain the election was stolen.
Add to that the fact that Garland waited 22 months before appointing Jack Smith - the trial should have been in 2022 - which makes it look much more political and indicates that DOJ wasn't crazy about the merits of the case from the beginning. And then there is the Congressional investigation which I'm certain will significantly increase the difficulty of a conviction since there will be inconsistent statements, etc. And the committee delayed providing transcripts to DOJ after the request, further suggesting a political motive.
DOJ should have been satisfied with the Florida case. If they wanted to charge Trump with January 6 they should have done it long ago. That ship has sailed in my opinion.
Turley nails it.
Hack Smith cannot prove that Trump knew and believed that the election was NOT stolen. If he told Meadows that, it would be hearsay.
Smith is relying on the fact that a DC jury will convict regardless of the facts and law.
What if legal theories have a disparate impact on Republicans? Oh, that's right, Republicans are not a "protected group," it's more like the difference between a game animal, which must be hunted strictly by the rules, and coyotes, which can be shot on site.
I asked Chat about how a defendant proves selective enforcement:
The person was singled out for enforcement (i.e., others similarly situated were not prosecuted or were not prosecuted to the same degree).
The selection for enforcement was based on an arbitrary or unjustifiable standard, such as race, religion, or the desire to prevent the exercise of constitutional rights.
If these two elements are proven, a court may find that the law has been applied in a discriminatory manner, which could potentially invalidate a criminal charge or other legal action.
Before Biden was elected, he said that prosecuting political opponents was a bad road to go down, but I guess that was when he thought it was possible that the prosecutee would be him.
Joe Biden loves raw political power, raw military power, the trouble is, he is too stupid to use them effectively, it turns out to be like giving a two year old whatever he wants.
Maybe something is turning within the public's psychology. Maybe the phoniness of this whole Jan. 6 Pelosi Production has turned enough people's stomachs. That would work more than were it solely in their minds. Because, speaking of the VIX, a measure of financial complacency -- the VIX broke out bigly in overnight trading as US stocks were getting sold in foreign capitals. It is currently "testing" that breakout as the indexes have partly rebounded.
Maybe a change is finally coming. A VIX breakout with follow-through would be quite a symptom of a change. Reaction on this blog was unrelenting. Wouldn't it be nice?
Trump indictments are the new linguini.
---Smith is relying on the fact that a DC jury will convict regardless of the facts and law.
The very point that somebody named DeSantis hammered on in his pledge last night to replace the FBI director and send trials back to home jurisdictions because of the abuse by juries from "the swamp."
Saw several headlines with that name in them, in fact.
The Judge assigned worked for the same law firm as Hunter Biden. It's the "Just Us" system.
https://twitter.com/MonicaCrowley/status/1686718764627152896
"I haven't read the indictment but I did watch MSNBC..."
Lol. You have been fraternizing too much with the enemy here at Althouse, and now you are beginning to have doubts! Shame! Shun him!
To keep a pure mind, you must never allow your thoughts to be contaminated by disapproved ideas outside of regime controlled media like NPR, the WaPo, New York Times, MSNBC, CNN; outlets guaranteed to keep regime interests foremost in the minds of their consumers. A happy citizen keeps a mind untainted by doubt in the regime's propaganda machine.
My tag for these Althouse posts is "Out, out damned spot."
Many lefty brains broke with Trump's 2016 election and the failed "first female President" dream. The left started to reveal its mental illness with its assassination theme: (1) an orange man being killed in a Shakespearian play in NYC, (2) an unfunny wannabe comedian showing a fake Trump bloody head, and (3) an over-the-hill pop singer advocating burning down the White House. These indictments reflect more of the same. Ho hum.
Many on the left are mentally broken, mentally ill, and will seemingly never recover.
Humpty dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty dumpty had a great fall
All the kings horses and all the kings men
Couldn't put failed lefty dreams together again
Where's the compassionate lefty intervention for these poor souls?
Merrick Garland can only meekly mumble when asked about it.
Our entire DoJ is so corrupt, so leaking with bullshit from all levels that there is currently no trust at all, no confidence in this as our purveyor of justice and law in this country. It will take a giant bulldozer to clean it out and restore any integrity. This...this latest attack on 'bad thought or comment' is not helping.
It's been a very bad few years for DoJ and hence, for America.
This is all disgustingly political. Lawfare vis the criminal justice system. Who knows where this is going?
Well--we have been here before. Take a look at FDR's pursuit of former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon via the IRS back in the 1930s. It was pure politics. Even the otherwise estimable (later Justice) Robert Jackson was all-in on that one. Take a look at the way JFK/LBJ used the power of the Justice Department to bring opponents to heel--there is a reason JFK appointed his callow, vengeful brother RFK to be Attorney General of the United States. And Richard Nixon discovered that the mandarins of the CIA and the FBI had their own agendas. Deep Throat? That guy was mad because Nixon passed him over for FBI director.
These buggers are going to get Trump re-elected through their overreach.
It certainly seems like the Tree of Liberty is looking for a refreshing
Merrick Garland is a thug.
Jack Smith should be indicted.
Why was Hunter Allowed to fly with Joe on Air Force II while Joe was VP - head of Biden Grift international operations division?
The real indictment should be for Joe Biden.
That Trump never went after Hillary, and let Hillary's Private Server for Clinton CASH slide - was Trump's biggest mistake. (I said so at the time, too) Such a GOP move on his part. If you do not kill the snakes, the snakes kill you.
Let’s keep in mind that Jack Smith was the prosecutor who, back in 2014, indicted and convicted popular Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (Republican, of course) on bribery charges, only to have the US Supreme Court unanimously overturn the conviction on the grounds that what Smith called “bribery” was ordinary politics.
Quack attorney Begley apparently never heard of the admission by party-opponent exception to the hearsay rule. That's what happens when you go to a low tier law school.
A DC jury could convict him of being the Long Island serial killer.
The question remains
How does prison time for Trump
Pay for Bidens crimes?
It's telling that all of the (unindicted?) co-conspirators in this thing were lawyers doing lawyer things, filing papers and such. No break-ins or arming insurgents.
"This is a debate that should have taken place entirely in the political arena"
As your other post indicates, the courts are just another political arena for progs. In that arena, they don't have to "debate." They just have to find judges and juries to do their dirty work. Plenty of those in DC, NYC, and Atlanta.
Progs don't do "debate." They fight to win. What nice moderates think about what "should" happen is entirely irrelevant, until all those nice, reasonable people vote consistently against prog depredations. They won't, so the prog MO works perfectly well.
It would be fun, but difficult, to imagine the most likely prosecutions of every former president. To be fair, based on laws of the time, enforced or not.
So, given that four of the (so far unindicted) co-conspirators are Trump's lawyers engaged to challenge the 2020 election results, can we expect Jack Smith to indict Trump's defense lawyers in the current criminal case, as a continuation of the same anti-democratic conspiracy?
Teigen vs. Wisconsin election commission is just one of several examples which prove Trump was right. As the chief law enforcement officer by constitutional requirement, the President has a duty to see that all laws are faithfully executed. If he believes this is not happening, he has a duty to say so.
"never heard of the admission by party-opponent exception"
So which is he, the stand up guy who refused to go along, or a co-conspirator, it's so hard to keep up.
The Right to Lie has always had its limits, and we’ll see how far the Conservative Supreme Court is willing to shrink those limits to shield Donald Trump from accountability.
What Left Bank means is that the SCOTUS had better gut the First Amendment, or there will be hell to pay.
We don't even know he was lying, in fact we can't know it. It seems to me like all he has to present is enough evidence to show that he could plausibly have believed it, which there is in abundance.
"Your right to free speech ends when it comes into the conflict with the corrupt interests of the Bidens," is how I see it playing out.
Why is Joe Biden's career so important that it's worth gutting the Constitution to protect him? Why not simply nominate somebody else? The laptop was was known well before the primaries. Maybe we could have avoided the Ukraine war. Oh, wait, the Ukraine War is the reason that we needed Joe Biden elected. Without him, it might not have happened, and that would have been a tragedy for America.
Levene, J., joining in the opinion of Althouse, J.
“Hack Smith cannot prove that Trump knew and believed that the election was NOT stolen. If he told Meadows that, it would be hearsay.”
I do agree with David’s detractors - what Trump said to Meadows, and Meadows repeats, under oath, at trial, is not hearsay. It’s a admission against interest by a party opponent. But what Meadows says to anyone else, besides the jury is. Smith can’t say “But Meadows told me…”. Etc. Because that is hearsay. Or rather Smith can say that in pleadings, in public statements, to his wife, etc, but not on the record in court. If properly objected to, statements of what Meadows said about what Trump said are inadmissible hearsay. So, you have to parse this carefully.
This indictment reads more like a spouse's side of events in a divorce proceeding.
I'm sure Jack had to hold himself back from using terms like "mean-spirited".
Blogger Buckwheathikes said...
The process is the punishment and is meant to keep Trump in lawyer's offices and not on the campaign trail.
It's a criminal conspiracy by the Department of Justice and the Biden Campaign to fix the 2024 election.
--
Clearly. And it's a continued signal to chill folks out of working with/for Trump.
"Jack Smith acknowledges in the indictment that Mr Trump, like any American, had a right to challenge the results of the election, and even to falsely claim that he only lost because of supposed voter fraud."
Aha! That's how they can prosecute Trump!
It says he's allowed to falsely claim he lost because of voter fraud. It does not say he's allowed to correctly claim he lost from voter fraud.
Trump could have been speaking in any context, such as “Yeah, Joe Biden really did have the largest voter fraud organization ever assembled, like he claimed,” without believing that he had been beaten in an honest election. Have you ever changed your mind about something, BTW? None of this is proof of his state of mind, especially not about his state of mind at other times. He’s not a fictional character, or a liberal, who never entertains doubts.
"Why is Joe Biden's career so important that it's worth gutting the Constitution to protect him? "
Follow the money...
So I guess Trump is guilty of conspiracy to commit free speech.
It says he's allowed to falsely claim he lost because of voter fraud. It does not say he's allowed to correctly claim he lost from voter fraud.
That's what struck me- how do they KNOW it wasn't voter fraud. We have at least two half-assed investigations in two different states, both of which found voter irregularities of sufficient number to overturn the results in those states.
Without an audit we will never know...never, haha...
"Paragraph 3 of the indictment concedes what had to be conceded and, really, concedes everything"
Yet paragraph 3 is not why Trump was indicted and is only part of what he said and did to try to overturn the election. This is fact and tiresome to have to say. Whether the rest of what he said that doesn't fall within that paragraph was illegal is what the legal process will resolve. Except for those who dismiss partisan investigations like the Jan 6 hearing and now also dismiss the legal process. What's left? If your response is the 2024 election, I'm sure you will also explain how Trump winning or losing has any relevance for accountability for alleged crimes.
"And that should have ended this woeful enterprise."
But it wasn't the end of it and you know it. Keep reading. Right after he says that, Smith details the conspiracies that Trump engaged in that DID violate the law.
The Right to Lie has always had its limits, and we’ll see how far the Conservative Supreme Court is willing to shrink those limits to shield Donald Trump from accountability.
Spoken like a true fascist (communist - same thing) whose "people will determine what is truth.
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