- cross-posted to:
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- politics
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- politics
A court-ordered financial auditor has caught Donald Trump quietly moving $40 million from the Trump Organization into a personal bank account—seemingly so the former president could pay his whopping $29 million tax bill.
Trump isn’t supposed to be moving any money around without alerting Barbara S. Jones, a former federal judge in New York tasked with babysitting the Trump Organization for its relentlessly shady business practices. But on Wednesday, she notified a New York state court about some major bank transfers that were never brought to her attention by the Trumps.
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Because the US has never had a former president get caught so badly and there isn’t precedent for this.
Particularly in that he’s running for president again, is the presumptive GOP nominee based on poll data, and the Supreme Court is functionally in his pocket.
That last part is important. Courts are bending over backwards to accommodate him, because they don’t want to give him any way to claim his trials were unfair. You can only appeal a ruling on the basis of mistrial. Basically, you have to show the appeals court that your previous trial was unfair in some way. So the lower courts are doing everything they can to avoid giving him ammo for that appeal.
Because the lower courts know that if it successfully gets appealed, the courts get exponentially more conservative as they go up. So his chances of getting away with it dramatically increase with each subsequent appeal. And if it makes it all the way to the SCOTUS, they’ll happily light the constitution on fire to let him walk. So their best chance is to nip it in the bud now, by making the courtroom proceedings as appeals-proof as possible. And the only way to do that is to avoid seeming unfair at every opportunity.
In a legal sense, it’s only unprecedented if you start from the assumption that the law doesn’t apply to former presidents the way it does to anyone else.
The real issue is they’ve never tried to prosecute a tinpot dictator with an army would-be terrorists and a bunch of collaborators in key positions in the federal government.
There is precedent, the GOP just likes to forget that. Ulysses S Grant was prosecuted as a sitting president. It was for a misdemeanor of “speeding on horseback while in the city limits of Washington DC,” but that just reinforces that we absolutely can and will prosecute even a sitting president for minor crimes, much less a “former president,” which is just a normal citizen, for 96 felonies.
Fair. Didn’t know about that(the grant speeding arrest).
Looking it up, there is a marked difference in that Grant accepted that he’d been fairly caught(even if his compatriots didn’t) whereas the guy who gives orange a bad rap looks for all appearances to be willing to get rid of the democratic process entirely to evade consequences.
It is unfortunate that Watergate and the Bush Administration’s legalizing of Torture never got their proper treatment. Perhaps if they did the current situation wouldn’t have happened.
I only know about the Grant thing because I found out that was the third time he had been pulled over, the previous two he was a General, and there was a small war going on at the time, while I was looking into the illegal shit that caused Qualified Immunity.
*Because the US is a kleptocracy masquerading as a democracy.
I’m no fan of the current court, but to say it’s in Trump’s pocket is ludicrous. If they were, they would not have rejected his election challenge appeals related to the 2020 election.
Yeah people need to accept that he’s never going to jail. Best we can hope for is to keep him bogged down in lawsuits and appeals until he dies of big Mac overdose
I honestly never imagined anything would actually make it to court, so I’m not so sure of that anymore.
Or just have the mysterious and illustrious Deep State assassinate him or something.
The prisons are full and my guillotine is hungry
Guillotines are ment to minimize pain. Might I suggest a reel of high test fishing line and 1995 Suzuki Samurai.
Have you considered a career in the CIA? I hear they really appreciate this combination of creativity and questionable personal ethics 🙃😅
Counterpoint: spoon
They were, yes. But you’d be surprised how much that fails in practice.
For example, it was concluded that it took 7 seconds for death to actually happen, and that’s with a sharp blade. A dull one might not even be lethal.
For death to happen, but the sudden loss of blood pressure causes instant unconsciousness
[Thunk]
“HEY BASTARD, DIDN’T YOU SHARPEN THIS THING?”
has been a conversation that has been had before. just saying.
The actual answer is “because the law moves very slowly in general and Trump knows it’s to his advantage to draw out the process”. There’s nothing particularly unusual about this process. The people who go to jail right away are people who can’t afford lawyers and take bad deals, or who can’t afford cash bail (which usually leads to them taking bad deals).
He has the Power of Baby Jesus on his side 🔥
The power of a baby Jesus… He’s dependent on everyone else for his survival, and he shits himself frequently.
😂
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That edit… I didn’t downvote you, but you’re really that upset about 4 downvotes?
This ain’t R*ddit. Lemmy is, for the moment, still small enough that single-digit numbers of votes are significant.
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Some people down vote because they want comments that actually add to the discussion to be at the top, and comments that ask the same rhetorical questions ad nauseum to be at the bottom, so they don’t have to scroll as far to find meaningful discussion. At least that’s why I downvoted you
How is that question rhetorical?
A question isn’t rhetorical because you or others like you haven’t been able to answer it. It’s the most important question in American politics right now.
Wikipedia: A rhetorical question is a question asked for a purpose other than to obtain information. In many cases it may be intended to start a discourse, or as a means of displaying or emphasizing the speaker’s or author’s opinion on a topic
The question wasn’t asked to obtain information. It was asked to emphasize the point of the post, and there was already another comment from an hour earlier asking the exact same question (scroll up in this thread.)
Or do people really not know why Donald Trump is getting special treatment at this point? It’s the most obvious answer in America politics right now. It’s been clear that America has 2 criminal justice systems for centuries now, and Trump is clearly in the one where you don’t go to real jail, ever.
The complaint that he deserves to be in jail is valid. I’m saying I prefer a thread where we talk about the topic of the article (what he did) and not a thread where every other comment is some variation of “this is ridiculous!” “Why isn’t he in jail!” “Call me when he’s actually in jail and I’ll listen!!!”
It just gets old so I downvote the comments that I don’t want to see in every single thread, so other people that actually add to the conversation can get seen. But here I am wasting words on that exact thread, so I guess I learned to not take the bait and reply to a downvote whiner next time at all.
You’re confusing the information not being readily available with people not actual wanting it.
You can prefer whatever you like in terms of discourse by scrolling past the parts you don’t like. It doesn’t mean you get to mislabel people’s questions to denigrate them. It’s intellectually dishonest.
Man I’m allowed to downvote shit I don’t want to see at the top of every post. Like that’s why they put that functionality on this site, I am allowed to use it to vote on what’s the most relevant comment. You’re not the ruler of Lemmy.
It was a redundant, pointless, low effort comment that repeated the one at the top of the thread so I downvoted it and I did scroll past it and move on without saying anything. Then the dude whined and labeled everyone downvoting him as a coward, presumably because he assumed they supported Trump (remember how you feel about people being mislabeled and denigrated?) so I corrected him about my reasoning. What the fuck is wrong with that?
The irony of you not scrolling past my comment and instead chastising me is palpable.
JFC, I didn’t say not to downvote or to have literally any other honest opinion about it.
Take your straw manning elsewhere, you can’t debate reasonably so we’re done here.
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It triggered you enough to edit your post to whine about ‘cowards’. You’re the one that asked for an explanation from your downvoters, I was just standing up and explaining myself to be counted by you like you demanded.
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So you do care about up votes then, or you wouldn’t be using it to claim you “came out on top”. You called me a coward for downvoting you so I responded and called you out for being thin skinned, and you’ve done nothing but prove me right since. But if that feels like a win to you then that is just super cool man.
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