The Omnibus P01135809 Criminal Investigation Thread

I doubt that you're a utilitarian in the purest sense. There are some very large moral problems associated with that.
But even allowing for them, your argument here presupposes that abstaining doesn't have the potential for other effects beyond the immediate choice - such as replacing Biden as the nominee, making long term changes to the Democratic Party or reforming the two-party system itself.

Also, can you describe to me what you think accountability looks like for any incumbent running against a person like Trump? It seems to me that there is none, and that this points to a system which is fundamentally broken.

https://thehill.com/regulation/cour...-in-appeal-of-new-york-civil-fraud-judgement/

I would say that when one interjects things like "pure," there are certainly caveats to be had and questions to be raised, and there are probably large moral problems associated with any given philosophy.

My argument that people are morally responsible to take steps to prevent the greater evil when it is apparent and when there is a noticeable differentiation between evils does not presuppose that there are no other effects beyond the immediate choice. I suppose one could argue that it presupposes that any effects beyond the immediate choice still do not change that the greater evil is the greater evil (or at least, the reasonably foreseeable ones do not. If it were to turn out that Biden took his win and installed himself as dictator for life or if Trump ushered in a golden age in his second term, I don't think that would undermine the moral decision-making when there is no reasonable basis to think either would be the case).

My argument presupposes that it is better to actively fight the greater evil than not to, that by not, that not fighting against the greater evil is to a degree being complicit in the greater evil gaining power, and thus blameworthy.

As I said elsewhere, there is nothing stopping one from moving for all sorts of things, including the things you list and then some, before, during or after choosing to vote. But it's a fairly safe assumption none of those things (with the possible exception of asking Biden to step down) will bear fruit between now and November.

"Accountability" is a broad concept and is not limited to whether or not they win re-election. It would include one of the things you yourself alluded to: long-term changes to the party. It would also include political embarrassment, the inherent government's checks and balances, electoral defeats for other candidates and the politician's party in general, revision of their historical legacy, etc. etc.

The 2000 election didn’t clue you in to that?

https://bsky.app/profile/joshuajfriedman.com/post/3kmite3ibn52h

As someone said on Bluesky: THIS AIN’T RENT-A-CENTER!

The bond is $335m not $100m. PAY UP!

Trump is broke. And screwed.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/arthur-engoron-judge-trump-civil-fraud-case-received/story?id=107637877

NEW: NY appeals-court judge DENIES Trump's request for interim stay of enforcement of monetary judgement in civil-fraud case and grants expedited briefing schedule for March. Judge GRANTS interim stay of bar from applying for NY loans and from serving as officer or director of NY business.

https://bsky.app/profile/joshuajfriedman.com/post/3kmixjbawe62w

Order at link.

"Sure candidate A rapes kids, but Candidate B rapes kids AND puppies, so voting for A is the greater good"

Can’t believe there are four justices that think post-presidential immunity is worth taking up.

Guessing it is just a delay tactic to try and push trial past election.

Remember that DOJ sought expedited review of this issue from the Court last year (skipping the circuit courts). They refused and punted it to the DC Circuit, which took months; then dilly dallied all this time after the DC Circuit’s decision, before finally issuing a grant. It’s pretty transparent.​

https://bsky.app/profile/nycsouthpaw.bsky.social/post/3kmj4lgl5ll2r

And 5 willing to grant a stay. That’s what really chafes.

The complicit do a lot of workj to blame their participation in bigotry and hate with the victims rather than ever saying enough to the people doing it. Really, saying Biden is better than Trump is like saying the Uvalde shooter is a great choice because it wasn't the Las Vegas shooter. You really should never be forcing the choice of either of them on the people. It is really not a choice at all when you consider we have other options that are good, but we are never presented with them.

The complicit Biden Bros really do not want a good or decent choice. They like the shit world, and want to blame others for showing there were better options for not eating shit. Just like the Trumpanzees they do not want to admit they like the evils of Joe Biden and do not want it to be pointed out that they love killing muslims, love restricting GLBT people, love taking women's rights away, love bussing black people, love rape, and never want to vote for a better world bnecause socialism is a bad word they know nothing about.

It is all the same thing. What is the real difference between slowly drowning in the middle of the ocean while the elite in the lifeboat push your head underwater, or getting eaten by a shark? Maybe you could get a spot on the lifeboat but neither Joe or Trump will give it to you because they both think of you as human waste meant to serve them.

Let us not forget to thank Joe for choosing Garland because he did not think prosecuting Trump was a good idea.

This is not SCOTUS' fault. The reason we have a time problem all goes back to why Biden chose Garland. Garland never wanted to prosecute and had to hbe forced to. So he waited until it was too late and appointed Jack to do it. If he had done this right away after the election, we would not have a time problem. All of these questions were going to be brought up, and yes we should have SCOTUS weigh in.

Let us not forget we have had it brought to light during Joe's presidency that SCOTUS is allowed to be bought, and there is no legislation or presidential fight against this. What is Joe doing about the lavish gifts for SCOTUS? He is fucking sleeping. He cvould be out there screaming like Trump did every single day of his presidency about this, but he is eating ice cream.

Thank your glorious leader Joe for this delay, because it is his gift to little orange fuantleroy. If Trump does get to be president and throws Joe in prison, along with congress, I am going to actually cheer him and wait to do the revolution until after he hangs all of them. Every one of them deserves him to kill them all for allowing him to remain free after trying to kill them in the first place. To bring this back to Hitler, if they had killed his traitorous ass instead of letting him live they would have avoided a huge problem. You do not give this level of traitorous slime a chance to come back and kill you when he says it is what he is going to do. That is unless you are sleepy joe and the complicit dems.

Illinois Judge kicks Trump off the ballot (for now) under 14th amendment.

Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie Porter placed an immediate stay on her decision until March 1 "in anticipation of an appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, or the Illinois Supreme Court."

A Trump spokesman responded in a statement, calling Porter's ruling "unconstitutional" and adding, "We will quickly appeal."

States need to just keep doing this to keep him running around.
See how he likes the delay game.

Lots of billable hours to stiff his lawyers out of...

To be CRYSTAL CLEAR:

Not taking agressive steps to restrain Bibi's genocide is a horrific choice on Biden's part BUT

The thesis of "lesser of two evils" requires an alterative choice that would make a different choice ON THAT ISSUE.

If one says "I can vote for the guy who's standing idle while genocide occurs, or the guy who will expel all immigrants THEN you are choosing between two distinct evils under the assumption that on either end, the alternative is better on the other issue. In this case, Trump would be arguably WORSE in relation to Gaza which makes Biden "the lesser of two evils" on the specific issue on your mind. At worst, it's a wash and so you choose based on other issues.

BOTH.

I have as much contempt for Garland as one can possibly have but, first things first:

THE FIX IS IN.

No matter how SCOTUS ultimately decides - and at this point you cannot assume it will be anything sane - it is now crystal clear that they will do EVERYTHING possible to run out the clock so that Smith can't finish ANY trial before Election Day. (not sure how this applies to Georgia)

The took over two weeks to issue a decision they could have published the next day after they got the appeal. (this after they tripped over themselves to expedite the Colorado ballot case)

Now they schedule arguments for SEVEN WEEKS from now and there's no time limit on how long they take to decide, which could easily be when they do all other decisions in June.

When the DC case was paused upon this appeal, the sides had 88 days left on the schedule to do their preliminary prep for the DC trial. That means that if SCOTUS issued a decision the next day (wildly unlikely given this foot dragging) that gets you to July 20. And the potential jurors were told that the trial was projected to take 3 months so that takes you down to roughly 3 weeks before the election.

If you get into September then you have to contend with the DoJ tradition that you don't take court action against any candidate within 60 days of election day and we already know that we're only in this position because Merrick Garland is an absolute disaster when given the chance to delay. Whatever his motivation (cautious prudent bla bla bla or malicious intent to see this trial never happens) his behavior is clear and it seems unreasonable to think he'll consent to starting a trial that will end in October.
Albeit, I'm not sure he has recourse to stop it without firing Smith outright. I get the impression that if he can't, Smith will say to Trump "You brought this on yourself by delaying" and plow ahead.

To be clear, beat him in November and none of this matters but you have to be both incensed AND deeply disturbed that the reactionary majority of the court is willing to be so nakedly partisan and confident that no repercussions will befall them.
Oh, and also, out here expecting us to pretend that immunity is really an open question. Which it is NOT.

They might as well hang up RNC banners in the chamber and show up for a standing ovation at the convention.

Millions of voters: "It really matters to us how we vote if Trump is convicted of a felony and it would change our vote if he is"
SCOTUS right wing: "Oh well bitches!"

All that said, Chutkin has been savvy to this point, so MAYBE she says to Trump's lawyers "the clock starts now on your 88 days since 54 of them are being wasted by SCOTUS" (they already wasted over 2 weeks) So if she made such an order on March 1 that would theoretically let them start the day after Memorial Day IF SCOTUS has issued their opinion by then. This would produce a verdict by Labor Day.

That's the BEST CASE scenario right now, and it depends on SCOTUS ruling before Memorial Day. Which...yeah.
(and not telling her she can't)

Feels like at this point we've mostly crossed over into an Oligarchy wherein we have a High Council of Six who effectively run the country and everything else is kabuki. If it's not true now, we have exactly one chance to hold it off (to the extent that we can)

Not being allowed to chose on an issue like this is a bigger statement on the problem. Yes, the nuanced choices come down to congress which should be where we have more than two people with one idea and you never get the idea of not backing zionist genocide.

However, there is a reality that you and the media telling us we can never doubt the old white guy ignore. Biden moves when kicked in the ass. So kicking him in the ass and threatening his re-election tog et him to do something is an option. It is the only option available to those who do not want the genocide. What is worse is the Biden Bros in the media and here are so excited about killing those muslims they are trying to shame those fighting against it in the one way they can, and the only way available.

Biden is not Trump and he has been moving on this issue and changing with obvious pressure and threat to his re-election. This is the truth, he has changed due to threats of not voting for him. So the only recourse left for all the people supporting the genocide in Gaza is to threaten all those who withold their vote for biden by pretending they are voting for Trump. This is despite the fact none of those people threatening not to vote for Biden is adding a single vote to Trump's pile. Trump's votes stay the same, as does the number needed for Biden's victory over him. No one is making it any harder to beat Trump. The only one makinfg Biden lose is Biden by offering upo no alternative to genocide in Gaza.

So get up and start telkling Biden to stop fucking around and tell Bibi no more funding for you. That is the only way he will get more votes. He will never lose any Biden Bros, just like Trump will lose no Trumpanzees, but if he wants more votes then he has to be an option beyond Trump. That is how this shit works.

Yep.

Her March 4 date could still be on the calendar if they had done so.

It's absolutely certain none of them think it's an open question. The Six (in the absence of us knowing whether any on the right didn't sign on) are running an open undisguised op to protect Trump from conviction before Election Day. Any maneuver that makes it take longer can be confidently predicted.

Now, the Six MIGHT in fact decide that he enjoys immunity on these charges - but even they don't think it's ACTUALLY an open legal question, they'd simply be flexxing their High Council muscles and daring us to do anything about it.

Then the question of our time becomes - can the Democrats muster the spine to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

I'm not optimistic on that question.

That's utterly ludicrous and you should ignore such a person's judgement on every other question.

IF the two choices are equivalently evil, then sure withhold your vote and bunker down for the impending doom.

If they are not, then there 's NO rational logic that says you should forfeit the opportunity to VOTE AGAINST THE WORSE EVIL. Such a vote is NOT an endorsement of the one voted for but an obstruction of the one voted against. How is this so hard for some people?

This alol came down to prosecution, which means we had one person to worry about. That person is Biden. He appointed Garland because when discussing what to do about Trump Garland was not going to do much. That is what Biden wanted as a gift to the right so hopefully they would vote for him. It was a terrible idea, and Biden has no one else to blame but himself. The dems have no one else to blame but Garland and BNiden for the delays that have put this so later.
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They are the only people who could have prosecuted Trump for his federal crimes. No one else had that choice. No one else wqas responsible for the wait. The prosecution of Trump and his people in the courts relied upon a spexcial prosecutor being appointed. That was delayed by two years by no one else but Biden.

In this case SCOTUS was always going to get involved in the Trump claim that he had immunity. Thjere was never an option SCOTUS was not going to hand down that decision. Frankly, they are doing it quickly for SCOTUS. Garland could have appointed a special counsel 2 years earlier. Even if he had done it 6 months earlier we would not have this problem. This has no one else's shoulders to lie on, and SCOTUS should really be handing down the legal decision that a president is not able to break any law they see fit. If only Biden had appointed a decent AG we would not be here.

If SCOTUS does say that Trump is immune, then they blame on their shoulders, but the only reason this is so close to the election is because Biden and Garland decided to wait to prosecute as a gift to the republican voters in hopes that they would vote for Biden. This is on every fucking Biden Bro's shoulders because we had alternatives who would have prosecuted Trump way earlier than 2 years too late.

You could have had Bernie, Warren, or even Buttgag, but the dems forced biden to the win, just like they did this year. This is what we get for allowing the dems to be unchallenged.

The dems did something about it. They ran Biden. They did it twice knowing he wanted to give repugs everything. The only reason Biden is our president, and up for re-election was they forced it upon us. Any time there was an option the dems forced them to resign.

Biden should have canned garland after 6 months of not appointing a SC on the Trump cases.

These are effectively equivalent.

To make such an analogy you need the alternative to be engaged in a different sort of evil that would pose the question "which of these evils is worse?"

Agree about firing Garland, not that he should ever have been appointed and a lot of folks were saying so that spring.

But the Dem problem is a systemic normalcy bias running through the entire old-guard of the party. You see it in Pelosi's resistance to impeachment, you see it in the Dem-controlled Senate oversight committee, (and foreign affairs and others) not even hinting at holding the sort of investigation that the shitheels in the House are holding. Does Jared Kushner deserve 50 times the anal probe Hunter is getting?
Damn skippy! Same with the documented Russian interference, Trump's profiteering, campaign finance violations and on and on. But they don't. You can see it in Durbin's idiotic allegiance to the Blue Slip and Schumer letting him. It's not a specifically Biden thing, it's virtually every Dem in Congress (with a tiny handful of exceptions like Barbara Lee) who came to Congress in the 20th century.

They still think they operate in a Pre-Newt institution, and they refuse to let go of that myth.

"This all came down to prosecution"

Not when the fix is in. Do it fast, take your time, whichever. When SCOTUS is in the tank for the Trumpublican party then you can't win unless you restructure the court itself.

Now, as an ethical matter YES you should move with ALL possible speed to prosecute - Smith should have been appointed at least once the Committee started releasing its finding at bare minimum. It is a failure and should be called such that we're doing any of this in 2024.

But with this court, it would have on been a moral victory.

"Even if he had done it 6 months earlier we would not have this problem."

Respectfully disagree. No one controls SCOTUS schedule but the court and they proved with Dobbs that they will fuck around for political reasons.

Let's say they brought this to the court a year ago under basically similar circumstances, then they take until June to release their opinion - and that opinion is to remand it back to Chutkin to hear more pleading on whether or not this particular act was an official act that MIGHT be immune or absolutely not so (which she'd say "it's not") - then Trump appeals THAT to the 11th and lose and THAT to the full 11th and either lose or be denied and THAT to SCOTUS and now we're well into THIS term of SCOTUS wherein they can not tell us what they decided...until June.

They ARE that craven.

Again, I AGREE that Garland/DoJ should have acted faster on principle, but the court has shown it's hand. As it turns out, this was inevitable.

Nothing stops SCOTUS from releasing opinions hypothetically when it wants, but I'd assume traditionally, any case that was taken up for argument gets an opinion that same year. So if hypothetically Garland had appointed a special prosecutor sooner and Trump was indicted a year earlier, it's most likely that many of these issues would have been resolved by now.

It is like always with the complicit. Pass the blame off on a scapegoat while the news covers Biden's ass and keeps the dems covered for running Trump's savior again. The idea that somehow SCOTUS was never going to decide on Trump's idea that he was immune from prosecution was a improper fantasy. No way this was never part of the Trump prosecution. Trum0p was always going to claim this, and SCOTUS was always going to weigh in. I hate trump and say this is a fantastic claim, but SCOTUS was always going to have to hear it.

Deliberately leaving this without time was purposeful and planned. There is no way Joe and Garland did not know this trial was going to run this long when Biden was appointed president and he appointed Garland. They both knew this, and they both knew the other would do this because they vetted Garland for his opinions. They did this and were the only people cable of federally charging Trump for his crimes.

SCOTUS can only carry the blame if they decide Trump cannot be prosecuted. SCOTUS could not take up the issue earlier on their own. They needed trump to declare immunity in a trial, and then to have it go to appeals, and then get asked to go before them and decide to take it up. They are acting fast. I figured minimum of a year before it was even presented to them, and at least 6 months before a decision. This is lightning fast for them. I cannot even Blame Trump for this because it is his defense and we give people a defense. If we did not give him his defense we would make him and FF correct. This is the law, the guilty get to defend themselves in court. That takes time. That is not even a flaw of the system, because without that black, trans, women, and anyone but WASP rich powerful men would be in prison.

I am just wondering what Biden got paid for this shit, if it wasn't just the dems giving him the presidency. That corrupt asshole belongs right next to his buddy Trump in prison, and when Trump has him executed for his gift to him, I hope his wife and traitorous kid are killed before him so he can see what his help for Trump was worth. The rest of us will have to deal with whatever Trump does, but at least watching them die painfully at his hands will be a fun laugh we all get for the problems that man caused.

https://bsky.app/profile/mmasnick.bsky.social/post/3kmjcmmavnw2l