368
'He is in serious jeopardy': Legal expert warns Trump his back is against the wall
(www.rawstory.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
368 points (97.7% liked)
politics
19097 readers
3938 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I acknowledge that the electoral college misrepresents the popular vote, but that is the mechanism by which the will of your voting public is polled.
That's not really relevant to my point, which is simply that in a healthy democracy courts need to avoid influencing elections.
So your argument is right, but completely not based on our current reality?
I'm struggling to understand what you're saying.
Yes the electoral college is shit. That's not a reason to allow courts to manipulate elections.
They're already doing that through deliberate inaction. Lock his ass up, already.
Do you want to live in a country where courts incarcerate the candidates they don't like? I'm sure that will work out very well.
Letting guilty insurrectionists run for re-election in clear contravention of the constitution isn't affecting the election in any way in your view?
If you mean I influence the traffic outside my house by not standing in the middle of the road, then sure the courts are influencing the election.
This is more like you're a traffic warden and when people park across the middle of a busy intersection, you do nothing and then claim you don't want to affect the traffic.
If you're a teacher and you let the kids play on their phones all year, have you influenced the learning?
Inaction is a choice and has consequences.
The purpose of traffic wardens is to direct traffic. The purpose of teachers is to educate children. The purpose of courts does not include influencing elections.
Anyone would agree that courts deferring rulings is not ideal, but it's better than a situation where courts are influencing elections.
Do you have any other explanation as to why every judge in every court hearing a case against Trump has expressed reluctance to take any action that might undermine the election?
Actually, the purpose of courts is to enforce the law. It's only of influence in the election because Donald Trump is a 44-time convicted felon and an insurrectionist who is barred from the presidency by the constitution. He brought that all on himself, and didn't think of the consequences.
This is so tedious.
Please, by all means, continue wishing that you lived in a country where courts are used to subvert democratic processes.
I find it tedious too that the Republican party would pick an insurrectionist and serial bankruptee as their candidate and then get butthurt if the courts do their job, somehow believing that Trump's electoral desires outweigh the legal process. I bet if it were a Democrat who was up on felony charges you'd be demanding that they be denied bail!
It's not Trumps electoral desires that outweigh the legal process. The electoral process is the core of democracy, and it can't be subverted by a public institution.
If the electorate is stupid enough to elect an insurrectionist and serial bankruptee then public institutions including courts must allow them to do so. That's a fundamental inescapable component of democracy.
Yes a Trump presidency will be a disaster for everyone. Yes Trump deserves to face the consequences of his many crimes. Yes the American public is about to make a terrible mistake.
However, the dirty complex unsolvable problem is that Trump may have enough support to be elected President. The court is not the right tool to address that issue, because the court is empowered albeit indirectly by the electorate.
It natural to want court processes to expose Trump as the fraud he is and cut his chances at a second presidency. It wouldn't necessarily work out that way though. Courts are regularly used in faux-democracies to empower autocrats. That would be the perception amongst Trump's base and really, if we're allowing courts to influence elections then the only thing separating us from "autocrats" is that we think we're the goodies and they're the baddies which is obviously a furphy.
The only way to get rid of Trump is at the polls. Beat him in the election, send him to jail, watch him disappear into his worst nightmare of irrelevance.
No, the constitution says he's ineligible to be president because he's an insurrectionist. Just the same as Arnold Schwarzenegger is ineligible to be president because he wasn't born in the USA. It's not election interference to keep Trump off the ballot paper any more than it is to keep Arnie off the ballot paper, and it doesn't matter how many people want Arnie or Trump as president, those are the rules of the election. He ought not to be on the ballot paper and the courts should have ruled on this years ago. "BuT DemOCracy" doesn't overrule the constitution. If you want a different constitution, you need to get it through the process of passing an amendment, but as it stands, he's ineligible.
All I can do is to keep rephrasing the same points you're trying to avoid.
Do you really want a court to decide the outcome of an election?
Do you need me to enumerate the many problems that would cause?
I keep answering the question again and again and it keeps blowing your mind and you think I mustn't mean it.
I want the courts to decide who is guilty and apply the law. No matter who. I don't think ex presidents should be above the law, and very very very much neither did the founding fathers.
What I don't want the courts to do is ignore the law just because someone is a Republican, and you think I can't possibly mean it and that there's a massive gotcha for me because there's a theoretical possibility that a Democrat candidate would go to jail, but the crazy thing is that I really do think that that's how the law should work.
It's called the rule of law, and republicans think it means they can put people they don't like in jail, but actually it just means following the rules irrespective of who the person is.
I don't know why you think someone should escape punishment just because they might be elected, particularly if they're guilty of crimes that are supposed preclude them from being president.
You're misunderstanding me. It doesn't blow my mind that a Democrat should go to jail if they break the law, of course they should.
I wholeheartedly agree that everyone should be subject to the rule of law and that both republicans and democrats should be tried for their crimes. The problem that I don't think you've really accounted for, at least not in your comments, is corruption. I'm sure you will agree that the judicial system in the US is partisan, and guilt can be determined according to ideology.
If courts are encouraged to try cases against candidates for elections, you can guarantee that courts will be used nefariously. There are numerous examples of failed democracies where courts are used in that way to legitimise autocrats.
You would be correct in calling this a design flaw, or an inherent limitation of democracy. It's a complex problem with no good solution.
A few months ago I would have agreed with you that Trump ought to be locked up. If he had been locked up 18 months ago, that would have been fantastic. However, after much thought I've come to the conclusion that the only way forward is for him to be beaten in the election.
Great.
Yeah. This.
Aw, shoot. (Not literally, of course.) And we were getting along so well.
Hooray!
Dangit. He should still be locked up. Republicans will be outraged. Outraged, I tell you, every time Republican felons go to jail for crimes they did commit, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen.
For the millionth time, locking up a candidate during an election cycle would make the winner of the election an autocrat by default.
You would've become everything you hate about the republicans.
I've got bad news for you: Trump is going going to be an autocrat. She should be stopped by the course. I'm not going to become anything, and you bizarrely seem to think that the thing I hate about the republicans is that criminals go to jail, but that's really not anything to do with what I dislike about the republicans.
Stopping Trump with the courts is autocratic.