• @spongebue
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    21 day ago

    If there’s a problem being applied unequally, you don’t spread it. You fix the problem.

    He wasn’t convicted of rape. A jury found that, more likely than not, he sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll in her defamation lawsuit. The same jury found that, more likely than not, he did not rape her but the judge later clarified that those actions constituted rape. All of it was part of a civil lawsuit, where the standard is a preponderance of evidence (basically, that “more likely than not” phrase I used). Criminal trials are brought on differently and need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, which is a much more difficult burden.

    • @Blue_Morpho
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      21 day ago

      The standard has always been to arrest criminals. It’s never been a problem. Only Trump got a pass.

      The judge said rape. The issue wasn’t how hard it is to prosecute criminal vs civil. You started 2 separate arguments.

      One was he couldn’t be arrested because that’s not how it is done. That is false. Arresting first is the standard.

      The second was that how he was perceived would be a political problem. To which his rape and other fraud convictions are proof it didn’t matter to his followers. The standards to get a guilty verdict in civil cases aren’t relevant.

      https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140756394/former-president-donald-trumps-company-found-guilty-criminal-tax-fraud

      • @spongebue
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        21 day ago

        You don’t get guilty verdicts in civil cases, as you said. You don’t get convictions. Those are very specific things with very specific meanings, and they do not happen in the civil system

        • @Blue_Morpho
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          121 hours ago

          Which is why I linked to his 2022 criminal conviction.

          • @spongebue
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            120 hours ago

            You said

            The standards to get a guilty verdict in civil cases aren’t relevant.

            They’re not relevant because you don’t get “guilty” verdicts in civil cases. Nuances matter and you’ve been getting them all wrong

            • @Blue_Morpho
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              110 hours ago

              You really think Trump followers voted for Trump when he was found guilty of fraud only because it wasn’t a criminal case?

              Using your excuse, New York v. Trump should not have happened because there was a chance Trump would have been found innocent and that would have given the election to Trump.

              Really?

              • @spongebue
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                19 hours ago

                Different cases, different things to prove, different evidence available to prove it. New York v Trump had plenty of evidence, including a paper trail and tons of witnesses. It still took a ton of time to compile it together so that the case would actually end with the guilty verdict, but he WAS convicted of 34 felonies by the end of the process because the prosecution in that case felt they had enough to bring it to trial. Just like any other criminal case that gets prosecuted.

                You were saying that Trump should have been arrested on January 7. Then what? A case so poorly put together that he gets acquitted? A conviction that gets overturned on appeal because the defense didn’t have adequate preparation? Just as Trump should be accountable like anyone else (to be clear, he’s a piece of shit and I’m pissed Aileen Cannon and SCOTUS have done him so many favors to put us in this position) he should have the same legal protections as any other defendant. That includes a speedy trial on arrest as the constitution says. I understand you know people who were screwed by the system. That shouldn’t happen to anyone, and definitely shouldn’t be used as a justification to have it happen to more people.

                • @Blue_Morpho
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                  17 hours ago

                  A case so poorly put together that he gets acquitted? A conviction that gets overturned on appeal because the defense didn’t have adequate preparation?

                  Arrests are made, then the case is put together. That’s the way it works.

                  They didn’t wait 4 years for Luigi. We had video of Trump telling the crowd to attack.

                  • @spongebue
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                    3 hours ago

                    There’s a threshold to be met. When you kill someone not in self-defense, your intent isn’t as relevant (maybe there will be a different degree of murder/manslaughter considered, but it’s pretty obvious that there’s something to arrest you for)

                    Trump had enough left out in his speech (“go to the Capitol building and protest peacefully”, could mean “do the same thing you’re doing here but outside the Capitol building”) to give some plausible deniability on its own. In the months/years to follow, we learned important details like that he knew the crowd was armed (and said to remove the metal detectors). That he knew he lost and didn’t believe the bullshit conspiracies he was spreading (and was advised as much). Things that are very much needed in a criminal trial to reach that proof beyond a reasonable doubt, especially with that intent part of things that’s very hard to prove in cases like this.