Well, yeah, not today, but grand juries keep getting empaneled and it wouldn't be proper banana republic if the dictator wasn't able to apply his tiny thumb to the scales.
I don't know about you, but I don't think that realizing that the short-fingered vulgarian is very likely to overreach is doomerism. A soviet-style show trial will piss a /lot/ of people off, /including/ wishy-washy republicans and the armed forces.
Then you should clarify you think it's overreach that will fail. Because too many people are acting like it won't fail and it's fucking impossible to tell which is which anymore.
How though? It isn't like the dictator has detailed files on all the people on the jury and their families, including their individual tax returns to blackmail them with...oh wait...
That is what makes the cowardly acts of the media and advertisers in the face of these shakedowns so appalling. Fight back and win when MAGA goons make these claims. Savy companies can build a lot of consumer goodwill here, with the legal fees being well worth the good free press they will generate.
Yeah, that is the plan. It's gonna take a while; having the bottom fall out of everything at once is shocking enough that people need to catch their breath before pulling out the levers of persuasion.
The same will likely also happen in the various civil suit shakedowns as well. Whoever has the "big balls" to stand up to this nonsense is going to make the clowns run this past a jury (if not dismissed sooner) where it will all crash and burn. And that brand will get a Costco like bounce.
Yeah. I don’t know what to think, but this is certainly MY instinct. They can waste time and money and harass people, which is criminal enough. But literally convicting and jailing public figures? That’s…dark.
Feels similar to the inevitable “randomly selected” IRS audits of high profile people. Even if there’s nothing there it makes people miserable for a time.
Now THAT is easier to do (I'd imagine) and so rather scarier really. I've never been audited (and have no money) but everything I've heard makes it sound like an awful experience. And they DO have a lot of discretion, right? It's not like a grand jury has to sign off on it.
Yeah! I kinda remember this. And we all kind of intuitively know they can do this if they want lol. Maybe because we know Nixon did it. (Or at least talked about it a lot? I forget.)
Like, you would need a FEW happily crooked IRS people to agree to a blatant political hit job I'd suppose. But that seems like a WAY lower bar than hauling somebody up on charges. I really don't know much about this though.
it's dark, but it won't happen because legally and logistically it basically can't. sure, they can investigate, but they've investigated before and found nothing! Hillary Clinton was *aggressively* investigated and questioned and nothing ever came of it.
This is the thing - and it is a thin veil of hope but - they do not want to DESTROY the courts, they seek to USE them. So, they must twist them to their purposes with gross bullying tactics, like they do everything else. For now, the courts look like they are firmly resisting 👏🏻
Well right. Which is to say they have encountered what the rest of us know as "reality". Courts are "firmly resisting" in the sense of "doing their job of being courts" Sure, some judges will be more sympathetic to your claims than others, but NONE of them literally work FOR you.
That's just not how we do things here lol. No judge is going to be like "nah, go ahead and do [illegal things] it's cool". You still need to successfully argue that it's NOT illegal lol.
That said, I also wouldn't be suprised if this goes sideways for them. Even full-blown authoritarian regimes sometimes have problems with show trials, and this one is both nowhere *close* to consolidated and run by *remarkably* incompetent people.
I think they can't jail every, or even most, Dem elected officials on trumped up charges. But I bet they unfortunately *will* be able to jail some and intimidate others. We still need to fight back as best we can, though.
For (to give the hypothetical offense GOP idiots are blathering about currently) what is VERY OBVIOUSLY acts that fall well under 1A protections, etc. It's...not close.
Oh sure. Obviously even one would be an outrage. And also would be political gold (not least for the chosen martyr!). That would fire people up like almost nothing else, I'd imagine. We'd never let them forget it!
I recall Anwar Ibrahim being convicted and jailed on a highly dubious charge of sodomy by a *much* more consolidated and longstanding regime. The general consensus is that it backfired badly, and he eventually became PM of Malaysia.*
Comments
Let them make their fatal mistakes.
(sarcasm on the internet is difficult, particularly when it's delivered gleefully, and I'm sorry that I was unclear.)
but the majority of the rest of the media is in the tank for Trump and has been since before he was President the first time
People there needs to be an actual
Crime the jury believes happened. There will
Be nothing there to jail
Them
For
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/us/politics/comey-mccabe-irs-audits.html
Trying to have the audit provide BS results would be hard. But forcing an audit? That likely happened last time.
https://bsky.app/profile/ghostpalmtechnique.bsky.social/post/3lf4csolut224
*Though that was about 15 years later.
Tell that to people all around the country who are held for YEARS without trial.
Maybe if Dem leadership experiences the same legal system as the rest of us then they'll actually care about reform.