• DontRedditMyLemmy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    276
    ·
    6 months ago

    Honestly I can’t understand why the “hush money” is all the rage. THIS is the crime that would put ANY other American into a supermax. This isn’t justice.

    • Snapz@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      106
      ·
      6 months ago

      The “hush money” framing is such a cutesy, bullshit spin to neuter the actual repeated and unapologetic fraud here. Basic human and business ethics concerns to side for a moment, It’s purely fraud against the American people without remorse and it’s actual election interference.

      You wouldn’t say that a serial killer that stabs and kills their victims is on trial for “night night pokes”. How was this allowed to get casually accepted like this without challenge from society?

      • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        6 months ago

        “My neighbor in Tel Aviv is in jail for murder, or, as we call it, enhanced tickling.”

        -Colonel Erran Morrad (Sacha baron cohen)

        • suction@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          6 months ago

          I don’t even know if they care about the -ism, they want a pyramid system with them above the law. Like Russia with Putin and his clique of friendly oligarchs who can do whatever they want, until they displease him, which is when suddenly they’ll get arrested for “corruption”.

      • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        6 months ago

        Can you expand more on the election interference part?

        Totally understand inciting an insurrection to be interference, but using campaign funds to manage public relations problems seems a legitimate use.

            • nxdefiant@startrek.website
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              17
              ·
              edit-2
              6 months ago

              More to the point, the paperwork crimes would have been misdemeanors if he hadn’t been doing it all for the explicit purpose of influencing an election. That’s what made them felonies.

            • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              16
              ·
              6 months ago

              Yeah, if he was upfront about things then there would be no criminal case

              However saying he set up shell companies to carry out falsification isn’t moralising

                • ssladam@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  16
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  6 months ago

                  I think you misread. He said “disguising”, which only means intent to keep hidden by masking the truth.

                • suction@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  7
                  ·
                  6 months ago

                  I don’t think anyone is still naive enough to think you can win over Republicunts. The way to stop Trump is to battle voter apathy and tear down barriers to vote, because the majority will not vote for Trump if they get to cast their votes.

        • krakenfury@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          6 months ago

          That was not the legal issue of the case, though. Campaigns have to be very transparent with how they spend contributions, for obvious reasons, and it was easy to prove that this appropriation was obfuscated.

        • villainy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          6 months ago

          using campaign funds to manage public relations problems seems a legitimate use

          It is.

          What he did was try to hide payments made to benefit his campaign. Would you consider illegally financing a campaign to be election interference?

          • spongebue@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            8
            ·
            6 months ago

            Not just the financing, but hiding the Stormy Daniels story during the election. They were using the National Enquirer (yes, I know) to promote Trump, make up stories to bring down his opponents, and hide the Stormy Daniels story (which was needed when the “grab them by the pussy” video leak caused chaos and arguably almost sunk the campaign). THAT’S where the election interference came into play.

            • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              6 months ago

              They were using the National Enquirer (yes, I know) to promote Trump, make up stories to bring down his opponents, and hide the Stormy Daniels story (which was needed when the “grab them by the pussy” video leak caused chaos and arguably almost sunk the campaign)

              Isn’t this part a normal election strategy in the US? And not illegal itself?

              • Wiz@midwest.social
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                6 months ago

                If it’s something of a monetary value that benefits the campaign, it must be reported. And it definitely has a monetary value, since he paid money for it.

              • spongebue@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                6 months ago

                Honestly, I’m not sure how exactly the law is written. I believe that was a factor out of several that raised the misdemeanor of falsification into a felony (by doing so to conceal a crime). The judge’s instructions to the jury was that they needed to be unanimous that a crime was being concealed, but they didn’t have to agree on which one(s). Unless some members of the jury go to the media (for their sake, I sure hope they don’t) and that gets brought up, we’ll probably never know which way that wind was blowing.

                • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  6 months ago

                  Thanks.

                  In the future I’m sure politicians on all sides will be paying people to keep certain facts quiet. I was just trying to confirm what is legal and what is illegal.

    • takeda@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      98
      ·
      6 months ago

      The business records fraud case (“hush money” is misleading what it was) is just the first case that nothing blocked it from proceeding.

      Documents case is blocked by Canon, J6 is blocked by SCOTUS, I guess the Georgia case could proceed too, but was maybe more complicated than this one.

    • Starbuck@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      78
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Because the hush money case is the only case that is likely to happen before the election.

      The J6 case in DC got screwed by the Supreme Court refusing to take the appeal before waiting for the DC appeals court to rule. It was obvious that the Supreme Court was going to step in and rule, so Jack Smith requested them to just take the case and they declined saying they wanted to let the DC court decide first. Then they took the appeal a month or so later anyways. Now they have held hearings, but even if they rule against Trump, all they have to do is delay until late July and they know that the justice department won’t be able to resume the trial in time.

      In the documents case, which is the most fundamentally simple case, Eileen Cannon has ratfucked the whole process to the point that it’s unlikely to start before July. It should be an open and shut case, but she’s entertaining all sorts of crazy legal theories and giving them months to elaborate on them.

      • space@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        21
        ·
        6 months ago

        It’s been 4 fucking years since Trump has left office. A regular person would never get his trial delayed for that long. If a trial can be delayed for 4 fucking years just because the accused is a powerful individual, it means that the rule of law doesn’t apply the same to everyone. If powerful people are exempt from the rule of law, democracy is dead.

        • Starbuck@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          6 months ago

          Well, that’s Merrick Garland’s fault and there is a lot of blame there. He thought he could take the high road, avoid all this, and let Trump slink off into the shadows like every other failed presidential candidate.

      • barsquid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        6 months ago

        They need to delay until at least November, which is when they know what the Constitutional Originalism says about the case.

      • suction@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        Cannon

        Out of interest, isn’t there a way in the US justice system to take a clearly not impartial judge off a case? I think it’s proven beyond any reasonable doubt that her tactics are politically motivated and unnatural / untypical compared to the usual procedure…

        • Zink@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          6 months ago

          Just like with police, judges and politicians both have LOWER expectations for conduct than the random citizen for some reason.

          We random normal people have to disclose & avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest working for ordinary boring companies. I’ve taken that training more than once.

    • rayyy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      40
      ·
      6 months ago

      “hush money”

      It was about the falsification of documents. Hush money is legal.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      34
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      The hush money one is the first one to actually go to trial, so it’s mostly that. The documents case is basically suppressed until they can somehow get rid of this judge, and the other 2 cases are also being held up in places.

      The hush money case isn’t likely to put him in prison though, I don’t think there’s any precedent of a politician going to prison for that. And of course there’s going to be appeals that can easily push it until past November.

      • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        6 months ago

        There’s plenty of precedent for locking people up when the steal classified documents. It doesn’t matter if they’re a politician.

      • DontRedditMyLemmy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        6 months ago

        It’s my understanding that there’s a pretty ironclad contract between the government and a cleared individual. This is really just a matter of enforcement, and it’s hard to see how this isn’t one of the most brazen and extensive cases of mishandling classified material. Better people have gone to prison for a lot less, so I say again: no justice.

        • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          6 months ago

          I have known of people getting dishonorable discharges for simply looking at classified information they were not supposed to, careers over due to misunderstanding or picking a document up after an accident.

          If someone other than Trump had all these documents they would be gone from the earth. We would never hear from them again as the FBI went through their life to figure out who else was involved and how they got away with boxes of these documents.

          • DontRedditMyLemmy@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            6 months ago

            Literally just ready an article this morning that a Navy seaman got 18 years in prison for leaking information after being socially engineered by a foreign agent.

            • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              6 months ago

              I was in for ten years, and a battle buddy of mine was telling me about a soldier in his platoon who got the other than honorable discharge over classified stuff.

              Here is what happened: car accident on post, stuff is all over the intersection. The guy is an E5, already deployed once, is by all means upper crust for a career. One of the people in the accident was the G2. The E5 sees there are classified documents. Calls it in, but decides to help out and scoops them all up into a neat little pile and secures them in his vehicle. He then sits in his vehicle so they are secure.

              This is entirely against what he should have done as there was no risk the documents would have blown away. The only reason he didn’t get prison time was due to having an ArCom for Valor. But he is gone and his army career was over at that point for mishandling - simply mishandling - classified documents.

              Trump has fucking pallets of them, and “oh gosh, what do we do? UwU it’s sooo tricky!!”

                • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  6 months ago

                  I think the big thing was him being alone in the car with all of it.

                  I don’t know what to do in that situation to be honest, but it’s probably a “secure the scene and make sure no one goes in or out” type of deal.

      • NoSuchAgency@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        6 months ago

        And it is going to get overturned on appeal. It was an obvious political trial with a judge that donated to Biden, his daughter was bringing in millions because of the trial and the prosecutor ran for office pledging to take down Trump. That’s why Trumps bringing in record donations from small donors now.

      • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        6 months ago

        The Supreme Court may well just decide that Trump has absolute immunity, depending on what their pay masters tell them to do.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      it’s not hush money. there’s literally nothing illegal about paying to kill a story. this case was about election interference, and the media’s inability to report that is such a key tell.

      trump didn’t pay to hush people up, he paid so they wouldn’t wreck his campaign. that’s where the crimes come from. that and tax evasion.

      Now, all that said: I spent nearly a decade in the army. The way he handled sensitive and secret info during his term, and then taking it home after - this shit cannot stand. How can we expect an 18 year old to take their responsibilities seriously while letting this shit slide?

      it’s fucking bonkers. if anyone else tried this they’d be waiting for their trial in federal prison, they’d never see the light of day etc.

    • TheHound@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      6 months ago

      I’m starting to think it’s strategic on jack smiths part. He’s got to let her dig a hole so deep and make her bias so blatantly clear that the 11th circuit can’t do anything but boot her off the case.

    • Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      6 months ago

      Shit they wouldn’t put you in supermax, there wouldn’t be a trial. You just disappear. Shit, Snowden went to Russia. All he wants in a public trial.

    • Veneroso@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      6 months ago

      You have to try to commit treason.

      It’s one of the few crimes explicitly defined in the Constitution.

      Unfortunately, I doubt that we’ll ever see him charged.

        • wolfpack86@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          6 months ago

          It doesn’t count. You need to wage war or aid/comfort the states enemies.

          If they can prove he did something with the documents, eg sold Intel to Iran, for example, there’s likely a case. Saudi it gets complicated since the US doesn’t call them an enemy.

          Either way, nothing in the case comes close to justifying a treason charge, though he clearly was acting against the best interests of the country.

          • Veneroso@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            6 months ago

            Well, there’s the whole “comfort part” to the people who tried to do it. Its probably not enough, but he said that he loved them and has since called for the freeing of the “January 6th hostages”.

            Anyway, as the other guy mentioned, Trump is on record of requesting a list of agents, a number of those people ending up dead, and this was around one of the times that Putin met with him. And remember, Trump had no response for the reporting that Putin had put out a bounty on US personnel abroad…

            • Veneroso@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              9
              ·
              6 months ago

              That one there is pretty much “on the nose”.

              Of course, Trump intentionally didn’t let them record transcripts of his meetings, which is not suspicious at all.

  • snooggums@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    89
    ·
    6 months ago

    Those complaints filed since May 16 “appear to be part of an orchestrated campaign,” according to Pryor, whose appellate court reviews cases arising from federal district courts in Florida, Georgia and Alabama.

    Well, yeah. Any kind of change requires a coordinated effort to get enough attention for something to happen.

    • SpezCanLigmaBalls@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      True but if we switched sides here for a moment the left would be yelling foul play and I’m a Democrat. Just lots of visible hypocrisy

      • ThrowawayOnLemmy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        76
        ·
        6 months ago

        The other side already sends death threats and is calling for a war over a conviction against Trump by a jury of their peers. I dunno if I’d be that concerned about their take on hypocrisy.

      • henfredemars@infosec.pub
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        Both sides though.

        As a leftist I want to see justice done regardless of the party affiliation. However, I can say that my preferences for justice and equality before the law could be a factor in whether or not I consider foul play to have occurred.

      • barsquid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        6 months ago

        If we switched sides here for a moment it would be Hillary testifying multiple times in actual purely political questionings and the Repubs still finding nothing worth going after. Nobody would be screeching or sending death threats.

        If we switched sides it would be whatever the fuck these top investigators are doing on the Hunter Biden Laptop case. None of us give a shit beyond thinking it is dumb as fuck. Again, nobody is sending death threats.

        • SpezCanLigmaBalls@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          6 months ago

          You notice how you go completely outside the context of this situation?

          Let’s say Hillary was on trial and we had a situation like Trump’s. If Republicans did this exact orchestration of complaints I guarantee you this sub would be screeching about obstructing justice and anything else related.

          I feel like you’re going to have a hard time sticking to the context of this situation and not go about what Republicans have already done which I know and understand but that doesn’t mean we should be doing bullshit like this.

          https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/03/politics/cannon-orchestrated-complaints-trump/index.html

          It obviously did nothing good. It never was going to. What was the point of it? Why cheer it on? Why not just let Jack Smith corner her like he obviously is doing and not interfere?

          Please tell me how this was actually a good thing vs just bad overall. It’s extremely hypocritical for us to raise pitchforks toward the right about everything they do and then cheer something like this on. Sure, it’s not as low as the right has gone but that does not give any reason for why this was the right thing to do over just letting Jack do what he’s doing.

          Now complaints can’t even be sent in. Way to go Democrats. You blocked off all complaints for a judge about something we all know she’s doing. So now if there is anything new to complain about, shit outta luck.

          Like, cmon dude. You’re allowed to be critical of your own political party. Just because Republicans have done what they have doesn’t mean we should start doing shit like this.

        • SpezCanLigmaBalls@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          6 months ago

          Congrats, look what You’ve done

          https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/03/politics/cannon-orchestrated-complaints-trump/index.html

          You think this actually did anything good? Seriously? If there was a case against Democrats and Republicans did this exact same thing you guys would be spewing about how they’re trying to stop justice and messing with the legal system. Nothing good was done by this.

          And yes, you can actually be a Democrat but see outside the echo chamber of social media. How about you let Jack Smith do what he’s trying to do and not allow this bullshit to be cheered on.

          Now please tell me why I can’t be a Democrat just because I decide to call something out that obviously will do no good for anyone? I would love to hear it. It’s crazy how if you don’t fit all the criteria on social media of the echo chamber you suddenly can’t be what you claim. It’s so hypocritical, especially for Democrats to say shit like that

          Guess what? You’re actually allowed to criticize your own political party believe it or not. The Democratic party isn’t supposed to be a cult but when you aren’t even allowed to criticize your own party it really starts to look like one doesn’t it?

  • suction@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    6 months ago

    Serious question, if judges show an absolute will to be biased and politically motivated like she does, how is she still in the position? Shouldn’t her higher-ups replace her with an impartial judge? And if that’s impossible, how is the US a country of law?

  • Melllvar@startrek.website
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    6 months ago

    Her continued presence on the bench, not just on this one case, is fatally undermining the already tenuous legitimacy of the federal judiciary.