I'm sure you've all read lists lists of the extraordinary lengths the judge went to in this case to bring about the outcome he got. Now we have to reckon with the spectacle of 34 "felonies" that are really disputes about whether a declared expense should have been categorized in the books as "a legal expense" or "a campaign expense." This isn't even a bright-line issue; paying a lawyer to settle a dispute out-of-court in a way that produces an NDA is the sort of thing that would very regularly be a legal expense. It's the most common of common practices. They might also be campaign expenses, but it's definitely not obvious that they aren't legal expenses.
So these are debatable even as the misdemeanors the law actually makes them out to be; but they were charged as felonies. On what justification? Because they were supposedly the basis of a conspiracy to commit some third crime. The prosecution didn't bother to say what that crime was for sure. The judge told the jury that they didn't even have to agree on what crime had been conspired, so long as each of them thought that one or another crime had been.
Based on the word of a convicted perjurer, with the judge suppressing expert testimony to the contrary, the jury has decided to convict on all charges. What is the appropriate penalty for such a mass of felonies? I asked a couple of progressives I know what they thought, and they said, "A couple of nights in jail" or "I would prefer that he be prohibited from running for office, and no jail (or a couple days)."
For 34 felonies?
The lack of justice is a sort of justice only because it now applies to at least one rich man as it so often does to the poor. It's almost fair if no one gets any justice, and fairness per Aristotle is one of the two aspects of justice.
Of course, the other aspect was lawfulness, and that's clearly gone here.
3 comments:
I doubt a single vote was changed, nor was a single argument modified on either side. The purpose was to give his opponents more confident access to what they regard as bright-line distinctions:"But they were felonies." "The jury found that they were actually campaign expenses." "Now he has been convicted." When you want to kick someone, it is a comfort that someone said it was okay.
I have already heard people intone the news about the conviction as if this proves it was very very serious. Not that they had any doubt he was guilty before they even heard what the accusations were, because he was already guilty of Being Donald Trump. Yet they feel this should be the final straw for his supporters, that they now see the light of day that they were wrong all along.
Orange Man Bad got $35 Million campaign donations in less than 24 hours. This "felony conviction" just gives him street cred, as well as making him a Martyr in a millions of people's eyes.
The MSM making the happy dance all over the air waves is a real bad look. They're not going to like the new rules.
Remember when they got rid of the fillibuster so Obama could get all his federal judges confirmed?. It didn't work out for them when it became time for Trump to get all his federal judges and Supreme Court Justices confirmed.
Minnesota's Progressive-Democrat Congressman Dean Phillips is begging New York's guv Kathy Hochul to pardon Trump "for the good of the country." He's not looking for a Ford pardons Nixon to mitigate the divisiveness flowing from Nixon having been caught out, though. Phillips' post:
You think pardoning is stupid?
Making him a martyr over a payment to a porn star is stupid. (Election charges are entirely different.)
It's energizing his base, generating record sums of campaign cash, and will likely result in an electoral boost.
Phillips isn't interested in tamping down our nation's current divisions. He's interested only in nakedly favoring his Progressive-Democratic Party, and he has no concerns at all for partisan division mitigation. His "for the good of the country" is just so much gaslighting.
These are the stakes.
Eric Hines
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