Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump

All: please don&#x27;t post low-substance and&#x2F;or high-indignation and&#x2F;or political battle comments to this thread, or any HN thread. We&#x27;re trying for something else here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>.<p>This is on the front page because it&#x27;s historically significant and intellectually interesting; so please comment if you have something to say that enhances those aspects. I know it&#x27;s hard to detach from the passions of the moment, but that&#x27;s kind of necessary for curious conversation*, so it&#x27;s good practice.<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=true&amp;sort=byDate&amp;type=comment&amp;query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=true&amp;sor...</a>.

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I&#x27;ve scrolled through the top ~10 or so comments, and none of them, describe or comment on the nature of the charges against Trump. To be fair to the commenters, most stories are vague.<p>The charges relate to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, but hush money is not a crime. It&#x27;s also not a crime to have an affair with Stormy Daniels. So the most salacious parts of the story are not what the crime is.<p>My understanding is that the crime is around how the money was delivered. I&#x27;m having trouble finding a good description, but CNN has this to say:<p>&gt; Hush money payments aren&#x27;t illegal. Prosecutors are weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying the business records of the Trump Organization for how they reflected the reimbursement of the payment to Michael Cohen. Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor in New York.<p>&gt; Prosecutors are also weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying business records in the first degree for allegedly falsifying a record with the intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal another crime, which in this case could be a violation of campaign finance laws. That is a Class E felony, with a sentence minimum of one year and as much as four years.<p>I&#x27;m not a lawyer and it&#x27;s hard to parse the above, but it sounds very technical. It sounds like they have to prove two separate crimes, and connect them with intention. Intent of course is always hard to prove in court.<p>Overall this seems like a weak case to me.

I commented on my understanding of the situation on reddit a while ago. Copy&#x2F;pasting here:<p>He paid off Stormy Daniels to keep her from talking about their relationship. Paying her to stay silent is 100% legal, there is absolutely no issue with an NDA like that. The illegal part isn&#x27;t the what, it&#x27;s the how.<p>Political campaigning laws set a limited budget for how much money you can spend on campaigning, which is defined as &quot;any payment made by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office&quot;. Daniels talking about her relationship with Trump is something that could have had a significant impact on Trump&#x27;s presidential campaign, so paying her to stay quiet is considered a campaign expense. Paying your lawyer for legal advice&#x2F;representation is not a campaign expense, though, so what happened was that Cohen himself paid Daniels (there&#x27;s no law against that), and the campaign paid Cohen for &quot;legal expenses&quot; (which aren&#x27;t considered campaign expenses).<p>The problem here is that, of course, this was just a way to make Cohen an intermediary for the process of the campaign paying Daniels. This is problem in two ways. First, it goes against the campaign spending limits, so goes against campaign laws. Second, it&#x27;s a form of falsifying business records.

Nearly the entire point of the United States at its founding was that the law should apply to political leaders. We are overdue for setting the precedent of a former President being charged with a crime, and we ought to go back and charge a few other former Presidents with crimes while we’re at it.

I think it sets a good precedent. If indicting past presidents (and vice presidents) for crimes committed while in office (or while running for office), well, the courts are going to be busy on this front for years to come. Bush and Cheney are certainly candidates, r.e. those &quot;Saddam has an active WMD program&quot; claims. The list could be expanded to include charges related to the unConstitutional domestic spying programs, the assassination of an American citizen without due process, the kickbacks from foreign countries in the form of jobs for family members, the lack of prosecutorial effort regarding the 2008 subprime fraud situation... and just imagine if these prosecutorial standards were also applied to the House and Senate? The perp walk would stretch around the block.

NY grand juries (regular people) do all of the actual work without prompting from the DA.<p>The only thing the DA does is provide witnesses and physical evidence and read the laws relating to the evidence.<p>The grand jury asks all the questions of the witnesses and reviews all the evidence.<p>Then they vote to indict or not in private. The DA asks if they voted and how. They report their votes.<p>At no point is the DA coercing anyone to vote a certain way, which would be illegal. At no point are jurors discussing the case with anyone outside the jury room (also illegal).<p>The rumors are there are dozens of indictments, each one based on evidence and witness testimony.<p>There’s this huge cloud of politicization over this, but the reality is Trump, his attorney, and possibly others committed crimes and this grand jury is holding him accountable.<p>As law-abiding citizens, is this not what we expect and has it not been the foundation of our judicial system for 247 years?<p>Or is a former president simply immune from our laws and judicial processes?

Just going to drop this here, make of it what you will.<p>&quot;By intentionally obscuring their payments through Perkins Cole and failing to publicly disclose the true purpose of those payments,” the campaign and DNC “were able to avoid publicly reporting on their statutorily required FEC disclosure forms the fact that they were paying Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump with the intent of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” the initial complaint had read.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apnews.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;russia-ukraine-2022-midterm-elections-business-elections-presidential-elections-5468774d18e8c46f81b55e9260b13e93" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apnews.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;russia-ukraine-2022-midterm-elect...</a><p>The truth is you could pin a charge on a large percentage of politicians if you were determined to. There&#x27;s clearly an element of selective prosecution here, regardless of whether the charge is valid. To make a martyr of Trump over small time crimes is not going to be good for the country in the end.

To play devil&#x27;s advocate a little bit. From a structural perspective, it was pretty much impossible for the courts to recruit any jury that wouldn&#x27;t be biased. Furthermore, the case was in New York, which is a very democratic city. I would be surprised if any jury picked from there wasn&#x27;t biased and wouldn&#x27;t have convicted him of any crime the judge put in front of them.<p>To be perfectly clear, I am not a fan of Donald Trump, and personally think he is likely guilty. I&#x27;m just commenting on a specific aspect of the case that I find interesting.

We are a people who have decided to be governed by laws rather than kings, or religions or dictators or putins. The laws applies to all the people equally. Everyone is entitled to a jury. A jury of peers decides. That is who we are. That is what a democracy is.

Hacker News is better without unrelated political news.

I know it is campaign finance fraud that is the actual charge, but that fact that of <i>all the possible things</i> they could have charged him with, it&#x27;s something tied to a sexual act feels so both disappointing and so American. It&#x27;s likely they can actually get a conviction, so I guess there&#x27;s that.<p>You can already assume right-wing media will spin this into &quot;Really? All you could get him for was a BJ?&quot; Feels a bit like the late-night comedy of the Clinton impeachment.

Is it weird that I don&#x27;t care? When he was in office he drove me insane. Now I really couldn&#x27;t be bothered. I think I&#x27;m desensitized to... politics, or justice, or something.

if anyones wondering why an indictment might not have charges announced, its generally because the prosecution is working to limit the ability of the defendant to influence the court of public appeal before the trial. The prosecution is certainly versed in former president Trumps histrionic theatricality.

while i’m not a fan of donald trump, it is chilling to realize that this could happen to any one of us after using campaign funds to make hush money payments to pornstars

The only news we have is that the indictment consists of more than 30 counts related to business fraud. The exact list has not been released yet. So, speculating is pointless.

The indictment is sealed. Nobody knows what it says, not even Trump his lawyers. Trump and his lawyers might know Tuesday at Trump’s arraignment.<p>CNN Law Enforcement analyst John Miller reported (based on two sources) to Erin Burnett that the indictment has 34 counts relating to falsification of business documents&#x2F;records.

Alright let me make the argument why indicting Trump is a horrible idea. It&#x27;s really not hard to see why, if you have any insight into what the other side thinks:<p>1. First there are two alternative realities being played in real time in US: This arguably is the first time this has happened in US history (maybe civil war was another time) but two populations have become so isolated that they essentially live in 2 different realities. An amusing moment that depicts this occurred in John Oliver&#x27;s recent segment where he plays a clip of Ron Desantis bragging that the UN hates the laws he passed and John plays it completely incredulous why would someone brag that he is hated by the UN. Since this audience is mostly liberal and understands the liberal worldview, please quiz yourself what worldview would brag about being hated by UN. If you cant understand, you literally can&#x27;t understand anything about ~48% of the country, and if you&#x27;re serious about politics you need to at least understand the 2 sides, ideally more than that. The fact is most of the US population barely understands the other side and so they will necessarily clash on most political issues.<p>2. There is a huge amount of democratic energy on both sides. There was always a lot of political energy on the left, since RooseVelt, Civil Rights movement, now LGBTQ, Black Lives Matter etc. It used to be a characteristic of the left. Now there is in fact a suprisingly large amount of political energy on the right, that first started with the Tea Party Movement in the 2010&#x27;s and of culminating Trump who could essentially be considered a Populist Leader from the Right.<p>3. So we have two populations, with large political energies compared to any time in recent history, who also see the world so differently that neither can understand each other. The only reason this hasn&#x27;t led to civil war like situation is because they both still to some extent follow the law, and still believe in Democracy as a schelling point for choosing who rules them. Now if you go ahead and jail the populist leader, you are going even closer to complete political fracture especially after a good chunk of the population believes the election was stolen from him. If you think this will convince any Trump supporters they&#x27;re wrong (lol), I have a pipe dream to sell you.<p>Quick question, who is the most criminal president in US history? If your instant answer wasn&#x27;t Obama (or if it was Obama because of drone strikes lol), you definitely do not understand the other side in any meaningful way to heal any political fracture this country is suffering with. So good job playing your reenactment in our version of Populares vs Optimates, and we all know how that ended

I think the main question is: Why does Trump get indicted and Bush does not? The answer could be: Bush did a crime that supported some of the elite&#x27;s supposed interests, while Trump demystified the president&#x27;s role, which is clearly against the interests of &quot;the elite&quot;, if you want to call it like that. In my opinion, war crimes are far worse than not declaring hush money correctly, but everybody has their own priorities.

What would John G. Trump (1907-1985) think?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;physicstoday.scitation.org&#x2F;do&#x2F;10.1063&#x2F;PT.6.4.20181019a&#x2F;full&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;physicstoday.scitation.org&#x2F;do&#x2F;10.1063&#x2F;PT.6.4.2018101...</a> &amp; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;John_G._Trump" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;John_G._Trump</a><p><i>&gt; American electrical engineer, inventor, and physicist. A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1936 to 1973, he was a recipient of the National Medal of Science and a member of the National Academy of Engineering ... In 1943, after the enigmatic Nikola Tesla’s death, the Federal Bureau of Investigation asked Trump to examine Tesla’s papers to determine whether he had been working on anything that might have relevance to the war. ... After the war Trump became the director of MIT’s High-Voltage Research Laboratory, a position he held from 1946 until his retirement in 1980.</i>

I do think that presidents should be charged and tried just like anybody else. IMO they should get no special treatment - same laws and process should apply. It does seem like an odd indictment in light of past crimes committed by presidents, so if they are going to go after Trump, they should go after others as well.

I appreciate that this is not the most clear cut charge against Trump and potentially helps his chances at reelection (theoretically).<p>Anyone else would&#x27;ve been at least indicted as well. This is an indication that the rule of law is prevailing. Even former presidents aren&#x27;t above the law.

<p><pre><code> &gt; After he became president, Mr. Trump and his company reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the hush money and falsely recorded those payments as legal fees. </code></pre> so, if i understand correctly, the main issue is the &quot;falsely recorded those payments as legal fees&quot; part and not the hush money part?

Seems like a good time to remind folks that &quot;indicted&quot; is a synonym for &quot;accused&quot;

Something interesting, number of corrupt US presidents:<p>GOP<p>Warren Warding, Teapot OIL reserve scandal<p>Richard Nixon, Watergate which was funded by illegal Corp political funds which were money laundered through Mexican banks<p>Donald Trump, Alledged money laundering to fund hush money to porn star, alledge russian money in Apartment sales via Netherlands anonyomous corps, etc.<p>I cannot seem to find any factual stuff on corrupt Democratic Presidents, aha aha while the Electoral College act was inspired by the Civil War events including the only time Democrats attempted voter fraud none of the elected Democrat presidents were involved in that effort.

No surprise that the amount of ignorance in this thread is breathtaking.

I am going to post a mildly unpopular opinion on what it actually means.<p>In a word: nothing.<p>Regardless of how you see Trump, he is, and has been basically since he became President, the presumptive nominee of the Republican party with remaining candidates hoping to take him down. With all that in mind, what does this indictment actually mean in terms of possible penalty?<p>In a word: nothing.<p>Felon can still run for POTUS spot. There is a reason for that too along the lines of &quot;well, you don&#x27;t want current political party to just make up shit willy-nilly&quot;.<p>All this before we even get to the substance of the actual transgression, which, to me at least, is on about the same level as Bill Clinton&#x27;s charge ( and arguably, his was worse depending on deeply you want to discuss it -- because contrary to some comedians, it was not just about a bj ).<p>So who benefits?<p>Trump. Media ( good circus equals good ratings ). The guy who will be running the circus will make a name for himself.<p>And.. that is it. I am not even sure why I am taking this as stoically as I am. Maybe the over the top happiness displayed on other social media made me hesitate.<p>FWIW, I am all about &#x27;no one is above the law&#x27;, but, I think, anyone on this forum can easily point to instances where that is not exactly axiomatic lately. And I think you will note my restraint in not pointing out any names for the sake of trying to keep this post semi-neutral in tone.<p>Now.. note that they are getting him on some relatively small stuff. All that stuff about Russia, nuclear secrets raid, running bs charity, being peed on.. none of that panned out in a way that touched Trump. And that is the last card to play.<p>You would think they would get him at least on something better to put on the news. They are getting him on a legal technicality that he will shrug off the same way he shrugged off not paying taxes.<p>And this? This will only make believers more adamant and it does not in any way damage Trump. This is democrats saying:<p>&quot;We don&#x27;t know how, but by golly we are gonna lose this one!&quot;<p>You gotta laugh man. You gotta. Otherwise you will start crying.

Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that he is guilty of this crime. Should we ignore it? If we further acknowledge that he is a nitwit without an inkling of knowledge about history, respect for democracy or the United States unless it aligns with his aggrandizement, then is this not like trying to nail Al Capone for tax fraud?<p>Are their supposedly intelligent people on this forum who truly believe Donald Trump to be a patriotic American, holding the interests of the country above the interests of himself?

It’s about time that there are consequences for a man who took over the USA on a platform of essentially denying that he could ever face consequences.<p>Let the wheels of justice turn.

As the saying goes: &quot;A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich&quot;. Still big news...I&#x27;ll just wait and see if the charges stick.

Biden pardons Trump.<p>Outrage mitigated. Base can’t rage.<p>Biden easily wins re-election.

I&#x27;m generally cynical about party politics, but this takes the cake.<p>Perhaps if other recent elites were prosecuted for lying the United States into wars or openly advocating for torture, I would have a bit more patience for prosecuting Trump&#x27;s bad bedroom behavior.<p>I am reminded of Clinton&#x27;s Lewinsky scandal. Although I was very young at the time, it seemed so trivial in comparison to the magnitude of the office. The next administration went on to destabilize the Middle East under false pretenses. Where was the equivalent outrage for, &quot;Lying to congress&quot; ?<p>The president is largely a figurehead and a politician foremost. There&#x27;s nothing honest or reputable about the profession. They could be uncharitably described as professional liars. Their sexual peccadilloes are of no interest to me. The obsession with their bedroom activities seems totally dysfunctional. These people should not be idolized or presented as a standard of behavior in any regard, much less for their sex lives.<p>Hard not to see this as yet another &quot;The Emperor Has No Clothes&quot; moment for party politics and US democracy. Outstanding issues remain, such as the existing wars, new wars and serious economic issues. Given this context, under what standard is it relevant how Mr. Trump paid a sex worker?<p>I wish the best for the US and the world at large, but this is just insane. For those somnambulists who are under the influence of this illusion, for those who think this is a rational endeavor which is not symptomatic of a much larger dysfunction - Please, I implore you to take a step back and examine the bigger picture. Consider a brief glance in the mirror as well.

Many interesting posts here. One thing I wonder, is if they&#x27;re trying to use this case as a precedent for further&#x2F;additional criminal charges. If you prove one, then the subsequent charges become easier to indict for. Makes making subpoenas easier to request in a court of law.

Remember, a Grand Jury indicted John Edwards, a vice-Presidential candidate, for essentially the same thing Trump is being accused of -- that is using campaign funds to hide an affair.<p>Prior to Edward&#x27;s indictment he was thought be the future of the democratic party, if Edwards was convicted on all counts he faced up the 30 years in prison, he beat the charges though -- a rarity in federal prosecutions.<p>So there is precedent for indictments for this particular crime, not that this should matter, in a republic everyone is subject to the same law and jurisprudence.

LegalEagle has quite a few videos on the various investigations into Trump, his organization, and his associates if you&#x27;re curious about process: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;@LegalEagle&#x2F;search?query=grand%20jury">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;@LegalEagle&#x2F;search?query=grand%20jur...</a><p>He&#x27;ll probably have a video out on this soon.

Pretty weak case. Is this really what they go after Trump for? Not sure this emboldens the belief in the rule of law either way, as this is clearly politically motivated.

I think this post should be removed now that most people have had a chance to see it or atleast discussion should be stopped. HN shouldn&#x27;t be a political platform.

Inciting a legion of goons to attack the White House is one thing, but paying hush money to a porn star is on a whole new level; that just can&#x27;t be ignored. No siree.

There&#x27;s a lot of questions I think to what extent politicians (or appointed government offcials) should be accountable when they leave office.<p>I think the poster child for this is Henry Kissenger.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;edition.cnn.com&#x2F;2002&#x2F;WORLD&#x2F;europe&#x2F;04&#x2F;22&#x2F;uk.kissinger&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;edition.cnn.com&#x2F;2002&#x2F;WORLD&#x2F;europe&#x2F;04&#x2F;22&#x2F;uk.kissinger&#x2F;...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0326306&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0326306&#x2F;</a>

Perhaps this is a concerted, organized legal strategy that Georgia, NYC and the Feds have organized.

Watching this play out from abroad, it looks like a political prosecution. Not a good look for the US.

Biden should pardon him if he gets convicted. Would do wonders for the unity of our country.

Sounds like we will know the specific charges on Tuesday when Trump turns himself in.

It&#x27;s like handing out speeding tickets at a racetrack.

agnostic non political comment based on logic:<p>Possible the arrest comes to thwart presidential nomination?

Political theater. If anything, this will help Trump and possibly give him a boast in his own party.

Oh, this is interesting. By the same reasoning, would a grand jury indict companies who pay former employees they fired not to speak ill of them?

Without the law applying to all, there is no law.<p>The fact that we&#x27;ve come this far -- with all that Trump has done -- and are now only getting to what equates to a grain of sand in the grand scheme of all that he has managed to pull off... that tells you a lot. We&#x27;ve been playing with fire for a long time. If this isn&#x27;t just the start of charges, we&#x27;re in a lot of trouble.

I understand this is a revised case, with a new legal theory. Public opinion matters, the case has to be sufficient enough to go after a leading candidate for president.<p>so lots of questions like this will come up:<p>What does the state of NY have anything to do with enforcing federal election laws?<p>How is paying hush money a crime, when it hasn&#x27;t been before?<p>How can it be an illegal Campaign contribution, when Trump was financing his own campaign?<p>7 year old case, how isn&#x27;t this past statue of limitations?<p>The State&#x27;s witness is a self-confessed liar, how can his testimony be sufficient.

Judging comments from republicans on Twitter &quot;this is a political prosecution, from a biased Soros backed prosecutor&quot;<p>Selective prosecution to try to sway an election was rejected once by voters after when Bill Clinton was impeached for his affair. So this will not directly boost Democrat&#x27;s chances, might even make Donald a martyr. But would make sense if the strategy was to split the vote on the right.<p>Trump being in legal trouble is the carrot that got DeSantis to run. The problem is if DeSanits defeats Trump in the primary, he can&#x27;t win in the general precisely because he defeated Trump. Trump has too many supporters that will never switch sides.

Banks collapse. Weakening of the dollar. Former American president indicted. Plots to pause and inhibit AI technologies development through petition. Never ending rain and gloom on the west coast. School shootings.<p>I am not one for conspiracy but it really does not seem like the tides are moving in the United States favor right now.<p>Why does every day feel like we are getting closer to some kind of tipping point? Into what I don’t know, but I’m hoping we don’t get to a point where there’s no going back.<p>It is hard not to read this as politically motivated. A lot of this crowd tends to lean excessively left, but I would urge you to be aware of the broader geopolitical considerations of what is at hand here.

I remember helicopters flying back and forth when the riots broke out, kept me up. Will I be watching Civil War across the border? I&#x27;m getting the feeling that things are going too far, and sensible people let the crazies take over. Feels like a setup for DeSantis to run, while keeping Trump in legal limbo.

The argument for what makes it a bad precedent is that it means incumbent parties will use it to prosecute their opposition. If the best you can do is jail your opponents to keep them from running, that&#x27;s not representation, it&#x27;s just a war for control of a weapon. I think he will gain unexpected support from some principled moderates as a result.<p>There is a streak of nihilism in the tactics used against this former president, and it has become an attrition game where winning means being the last one disqualified for cheating or the only one left not in jail. As though they think <i>it&#x27;s only organized crime when you lose</i>. Comedian Duncan Trussel quipped the other day that politics has become, &quot;an Olympics for narcisistic sociopaths,&quot; and that&#x27;s a pretty good characterization. I&#x27;m not American and I can&#x27;t say I&#x27;m neutral, but I do think that the malice this indictment demonstrates is weakness, and that&#x27;s a fundamentally un-american sentiment that will repel a lot of reasonable people. I have acquaintences who will treat it as a betrayal, but what I believe is that Americans are better than this. Poignant that we live in a time where that could be so unforgivable.

You would think a topic like this would be somewhat lower ranked in a tech-oriented forum but it seems even those of us who are technically inclined cant evade the pull of politics.<p>As side note, heres my 2 cents:<p>This is extremely dangerous and unprecedented. Its a long standing practice common law tradition to refrain from prosecuting political leaders unless a serious crime is involved (Prosecutorial discretion).<p>Ignore Trump, he&#x27;ll likely win or worse-case get a misdemeanour. This just changed the whole game, the judicial branch just got weaponised as political tool.<p>Unless somebody puts a conclusive stop to this nonsense, things are about to get very ugly. This is the kind of thing you see from third world countries with corrupt&#x2F;unstable institutions.

1. The FEC&#x2F;DOJ elected not to pursue the case in 2018. 2. Cohen&#x27;s attorneys produced a letter saying Cohen was not reimbursed for the $130K 3. Stormy Daniels attorneys produced a letter denying that an affair ever occurred. 4. North Carolina failed to convict John Edwards in 2012 of a similar charge, though with actual campaign funds. 5. Bill Clinton settled Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit in 1998, while a president for $850K. 6. Law professors from Turley, Desrchowitz, both liberals, have stated there&#x27;s no case here. 7. Bragg himself had previously declined to pursue these charges. 8. Bragg routinely does not pursue charges against major crimes. 9. Hillary Clinton, Joe &amp; Hunter Biden and a host of other shady political figures have not been indicted and in some cases, not even investigated for far more serious offenses. 10. This confirms in the mind of Trump supporters as well as to the average man on the street that there are two systems of justice, one for the left and one for the rest. 11. This will not end well for Bragg nor the country. It&#x27;s bound to ignite a response from Republican AGs in some states.<p>Welcome to the mess created by the democrat party and there Big Tech&#x2F;media axis.

This seems like an obvious call to civil war when we jail an ex-president who is the frontrunner for the next election. Jailing a person who could as likely as not be be supported by a majority of voters for the presidency would probably be the single most anti-democratic act to ever occur in the US. I never thought we could outdo secret trials, but here we are, doing a speedrun into total collapse.<p>I&#x27;m just astounded that the centrist blob thinks that they can get away with this utilizing a largely right-wing military, an extremely right-wing police force, and a extremely well-armed and numerous right-wing element of the population. It&#x27;s madness. Maybe (most likely) the lords of surveillance and and propaganda have a better idea of the country&#x27;s pulse and and potential reaction than I do. Maybe the incompetents in the Biden Admin aren&#x27;t running the show, and the intelligence agencies are fully and competently in control.<p>If some African, Central Asian or South American country arrested the presidential frontrunner for paying a prostitute not to mention that he patronized her, everyone would recognize it as a country about to fall into violent anarchy. It&#x27;s sad that in the clouds our suburban upper-middle class have their heads in, there apparently aren&#x27;t any mirrors.<p>If you believe in democracy, you hate this. If you believe in the version of the &quot;rule of law&quot; being bandied around that insists that law occupies some abstract space above the will of the deplorable population, a place ruled by angels that resemble the Warren Court and were educated at Harvard, Yale, or small private liberal arts colleges in the northeast - I think you may be absolutely blindsided in the coming months.<p>edit: somehow, corporations got the unlimited ability to bribe politicians and political parties, but campaign finance laws can be warped to cover this shit.

I think this is unfortunate because it cheapens American democracy even further in the eyes of adversaries who want nothing more than to mock us on the world stage. Whatever your view of the balance between the need to enforce laws vs. keeping national politics out of law enforcement: From a foreign policy point of view, it&#x27;s a catastrophe.<p>There are three classes of countries, as I see it, that indict or jail leaders out-of-power in the opposition. (1) dictatorships like Myanmar (2) quasi-dictatorships acting under a veil of democracy, like Brazil (3) places on the brink of civil rupture, like Israel.<p>To say that this was intended by the Constitution of a breakaway American Republic is mad, because no sane English colonist would have chosen to renounce the crown if they&#x27;d known an idiot like Donald J Trump would be President 200 years later. Of course power should be held to account! As many people here have said, Presidents that committed war crimes would be a better target for prosecution. Or Trump&#x27;s own crimes in office would be.<p>This prosecution under these auspices and for these reasons places us (Americans) squarely in the realm of third world semi-democracies.<p>I don&#x27;t know if anyone has brought this up, but I hope Joe Biden will be wise enough to immediately issue Trump a pardon and bring this to a close. If Trump is indicted again for something serious, like insurrection, that would be a different matter. It&#x27;s not possible to divide politics from law in a case where the defendant has a rabid political following and was the President of the country (as insane as that seems). Biden needs to pardon him right away.