Criminal Charges Against Trump?

The Off-Topic forum for anything non-LDS related, such as sports or politics. Rated PG through PG-13.
User avatar
Moksha
God
Posts: 5810
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 3:13 am
Location: Koloburbia

Re: Criminal Charges Against Trump?

Post by Moksha »

I have a hard time imagining that Republicans will ever return to normal. Trumpism is now in their blood. Seems like they will oppose democracy and push for a fascist dictatorship every chance they get.

The United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack is still producing evidence on the scope and breadth of this coup against the United States of America.
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
User avatar
Res Ipsa
God
Posts: 9569
Joined: Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:44 pm
Location: Playing Rabbits

Re: Criminal Charges Against Trump?

Post by Res Ipsa »

Some Schmo wrote:
Thu Dec 16, 2021 4:30 pm
K Graham wrote:
Wed Dec 15, 2021 3:51 pm
In a sane world FOX news would be held to account for knowingly lying on air. This is the end result of Reagan getting rid of the Fairness doctrine. There was a time when news outlets werent allowed to tell lies.
Reagan screwed America in the ass and certain Republicans are still reminiscing about the pain.

It's outrageous to me that the media suffers no consequence for lying, while at the same time allowed to profit off their programs. You're right; it should be criminal.
Gotta say I wince whenever somebody proposes to criminalize speech.

The entire rationale behind the Fairness Doctrine was the limited number of broadcast channels available for broadcast on the public airwaves. There was no comparable doctrine for, say, newspapers because there were so many newspapers and they didn't use a public resource to transmit information.

The development of cable TV, which is transmitted across privately owned wires or fibre killed the rationale behind the Fairness Doctrine. I doubt it would have survived a constitutional challenge when applied to cable news. Yes, it was killed during the Reagan presidency, but it was living on borrowed time.

Having government determine the "truth" in the realm of political speech is fraught with hazard. If we do that, the "truth" will depend on who controls the government. We'd be one election away from having whatever Fox says become the "truth" and any reporter or editor who disagrees be thrown in prison. Stealing a line from Cultellus – be careful what you wish for.
he/him
When I go to sea, don’t fear for me. Fear for the storm.

Jessica Best, Fear for the Storm. From The Strange Case of the Starship Iris.
User avatar
Some Schmo
God
Posts: 2469
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 3:21 am

Re: Criminal Charges Against Trump?

Post by Some Schmo »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Thu Dec 16, 2021 7:05 pm
Some Schmo wrote:
Thu Dec 16, 2021 4:30 pm

Reagan screwed America in the ass and certain Republicans are still reminiscing about the pain.

It's outrageous to me that the media suffers no consequence for lying, while at the same time allowed to profit off their programs. You're right; it should be criminal.
Gotta say I wince whenever somebody proposes to criminalize speech.

The entire rationale behind the Fairness Doctrine was the limited number of broadcast channels available for broadcast on the public airwaves. There was no comparable doctrine for, say, newspapers because there were so many newspapers and they didn't use a public resource to transmit information.

The development of cable TV, which is transmitted across privately owned wires or fibre killed the rationale behind the Fairness Doctrine. I doubt it would have survived a constitutional challenge when applied to cable news. Yes, it was killed during the Reagan presidency, but it was living on borrowed time.

Having government determine the "truth" in the realm of political speech is fraught with hazard. If we do that, the "truth" will depend on who controls the government. We'd be one election away from having whatever Fox says become the "truth" and any reporter or editor who disagrees be thrown in prison. Stealing a line from Cultellus – be careful what you wish for.
As you know, it's against the law to lie in court. I don't see why free speech applies to journalists doing a job that's supposed to be in the public's interest. I think we either need to make the news publicly-funded/not-for-profit and force everyone else to abandon calling what they do "the news" or criminalizing media outlets knowingly spreading false information, or not correcting reporting errors after the fact. The way it is now, damned Alex Jones can call himself a journalist.

I understand your fear about the government deciding what's true, but in the perfect media world I'm imagining, a reporter isn't allowed to report something that can't be fact-checked by anyone. I mean, while I'm imagining the impossible, I might as well go all the way.
Religion is for people whose existential fear is greater than their common sense.

The god idea is popular with desperate people.
User avatar
Moksha
God
Posts: 5810
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 3:13 am
Location: Koloburbia

Re: Criminal Charges Against Trump?

Post by Moksha »

How does the House Committee question the Republican Congressmen involved in seeking to overturn the election and end the American republic?
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
User avatar
Moksha
God
Posts: 5810
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 3:13 am
Location: Koloburbia

Re: Criminal Charges Against Trump?

Post by Moksha »

Res Ipsa wrote:We'd be one election away from having whatever Fox says become the "truth" and any reporter or editor who disagrees be thrown in prison.
Even more, that same resolution would spell the end to American democracy and be the start of a new thousand-year Reich. Fox would occupy the position of official propaganda distributor as long as they toed the line and paid kickbacks to party officials.
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
User avatar
Moksha
God
Posts: 5810
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 3:13 am
Location: Koloburbia

Re: Criminal Charges Against Trump?

Post by Moksha »

Stephen Colbert knows the awfulness of this attempted coup against America:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A42PYVlkfU
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
User avatar
Moksha
God
Posts: 5810
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 3:13 am
Location: Koloburbia

Re: Criminal Charges Against Trump?

Post by Moksha »

Would a charge and conviction on racketeering bolster Trump's standing in the Republican Party? Show he is one of the guys?
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
Chap
God
Posts: 2308
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 8:42 am
Location: On the imaginary axis

Re: Criminal Charges Against Trump?

Post by Chap »

The word is that our Donald is beginning to be a little ... concerned.

Hope it does not spoil his Christmas.

Why Trump appears deeply unnerved as Capitol attack investigation closes in

The Guardian
Hugo Lowell in Washington DC
Mon 20 Dec 2021 07.00 GMT
Donald Trump is increasingly agitated by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, according to sources familiar with the matter, and appears anxious he might be implicated in the sprawling inquiry into the insurrection even as he protests his innocence.

The former president in recent weeks has complained more about the investigation, demanding why his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, shared so much material about 6 January with the select committee, and why dozens of other aides have also cooperated.

Trump has also been perturbed by aides invoking the Fifth Amendment in depositions - it makes them look weak and complicit in a crime, he has told associates - and considers them foolish for not following the lead of his former strategist Steve Bannon in simply ignoring the subpoenas.

When Trump sees new developments in the Capitol attack investigation on television, he has started swearing about the negative coverage and bemoaned that the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, was too incompetent to put Republicans on the committee to defend him.

The former president’s anger largely mirrors the kind of expletives he once directed at the Russia inquiry and the special counsel investigation when he occupied the White House. But the rapidly accelerating investigation into whether Trump and top aides unlawfully conspired to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory at the 6 January joint session appears to be unnerving him deeply.

The portrait that emerges from interviews with multiple sources close to Trump, including current and former aides, suggest a former president unmoored and backed into a corner by the rapid escalation in intensity of the committee’s investigation.

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

But as Trump struggles to shield himself from the select committee, with public hearings next year and the justice department said to be tracking the investigation, the path ahead is only likely to be more treacherous.

The former president is especially attuned to his potential for legal exposure, even as he maintains he did nothing wrong in conferring about ways to overturn the 2020 election and encouraging supporters to march on the Capitol. He has expressed alarm to associates about repeated defeats in court as he seeks to stop the select committee obtaining some of the most sensitive of White House documents about 6 January from the National Archives, on grounds of executive privilege.

The reality is that with each passing day, the committee seems to be gathering new evidence about Trump’s culpability around the Capitol attack that might culminate with recommendations for new election laws – but also for prosecutions.

“I think that the justice department will keep a keen eye on what evidence the committee has accumulated, as well as looking out for witnesses for a potential case,” said Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense now a law professor at New York University.

“One of the outcomes of the committee’s work and the public hearings will be to demonstrate individuals who might be wanting to come forward as witnesses and that’s got to be very important to justice department prosecutors,” Goodman said.

House investigators are expected to soon surpass more than 300 interviews with Trump administration officials and Trump political operatives as part of a process that has yielded 30,000 documents and 250 tips via the select committee’s tip line.

The flurry of recent revelations – such as the disclosure of Meadows’s connection to a powerpoint outlining how Trump could stage a coup, as first reported by the Guardian – raises the specter that the select committee is swiftly heading towards an incriminating conclusion.

Trump’s associates insist they are not worried, at least for the moment, since the select committee has yet to obtain materials covered by executive privilege either through Meadows or the National Archives that could ensnare Trump personally.

The former president’s defenders are correct in that respect – the committee does not have messages that show Trump directing an attack on the Capitol, one source said – and Trump has vowed to appeal the National Archives case to the supreme court.

Rules Committee votes on holding Meadows in contempt<br>epa09641599 January 6th committee members Liz Cheney (L) and Bennie Thompson (R) testify before the House Committee on Rules on a resolution recommending that the House find former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress, in the US Capitol in Washington, DC, USA, 14 December 2021. The contempt vote comes after Meadows's refusal to comply with a subpoena issued by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United

But no one outside the select committee, which is quietly making progress from a glass office on Capitol Hill with boarded-up windows and electronically secured doors, knows exactly what it has uncovered and whether the inquiry ends with a criminal referral.

The material Meadows turned over alone depicts an alarming strategy to stop Biden’s certification on 6 January, involving nearly the entire federal government and lieutenants operating from the Willard hotel in Washington.

One member on the select committee described the events around 6 January as showing a coalescence of multiple strategies: “There was a DoJ strategy, a state legislative strategy, a state election official strategy, the vice-president strategy. And there was the insurrection strategy.”

The text messages Meadows received on his personal phone implicate Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr, and Republican members of Congress. Texts Meadows turned over to the committee might also be used by an enterprising prosecutor as evidence of criminal obstruction to stop a congressional proceeding if the White House knew election fraud claims to be lies but still used them to stop Biden’s certification.

While Meadows never testified about the communications, a cadre of top Trump officials, from former acting national security adviser Keith Kellogg to Pence’s former chief of staff Marc Short, have moved to cooperate with House investigators.

The trouble for Trump – and part of the source of his frustration, the sources said – is his inability, out of office, to wield the far-reaching power of the executive branch to affect the course of the inquiry.

The limited success of strategies he hoped would stymie the committee – ordering aides to defy subpoenas or launching legal challenges to slow-walk the release White House records – has been jarring for Trump.

“I think what he’s finding is that as the ex-president, he has a lot less authority than he did as president. But his playbook doesn’t work if he’s not president,” said Daniel Goldman, former lead counsel in the first House impeachment inquiry into Trump.

In a reflection of dwindling legal avenues available to undercut the investigation, Trump has returned to launching attacks-by-emailed-statement on the select committee, stewing over his predicament and what he considers an investigation designed only to hurt him politically.

“The Unselect Committee itself is Rigged, stacked with Never Trumpers, Republican enemies, and two disgraced RINOs, Cheney and Kinzinger, who couldn’t get elected ‘dog catcher’ in their districts,” Trump vented last month.

In private, Trump is said to have reserved the brunt of his scorn for Meadows, furious with his former White House chief of staff for sharing sensitive communications on top of all the unflattering details about Trump included in his book this month.

Trump’s associates, however, have focused more on questioning the legitimacy of the select committee and its composition, arguing the fact that the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, appointed both Republican members reduces the investigation to a partisan political endeavor.

They also argue that none of the revelations to date – like the Guardian’s reporting on Trump’s call to the Willard hotel, during which he pressed operatives to stop Biden’s certification from taking place entirely – amounts to criminal wrongdoing.

But in the meantime, Trump is left with little choice but to wait for the committee’s report.

“The justice department seems to be more reactive than proactive,” Goodman said. “They might be waiting for the committee to wrap up its work to make criminal referrals.”
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
User avatar
Doctor CamNC4Me
God
Posts: 8981
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 2:04 am

Re: Criminal Charges Against Trump?

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Donald Trump is increasingly agitated by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, according to sources familiar with the matter
I’m always uncomfortable, as a reader, when a vague source is referenced. That could be literally anyone familiar with the subject matter, like, say, a co-worker sharing their opinion as the writer types up this article. This tactic then opens the door for a sort of larping article where the author can just type out a wish fulfillment essay, which is how this reads. It’s cool that the journalist can call a law professor who provides this kind of stunning insight:
“I think that the justice department will keep a keen eye on what evidence the committee has accumulated, as well as looking out for witnesses for a potential case,”



“One of the outcomes of the committee’s work and the public hearings will be to demonstrate individuals who might be wanting to come forward as witnesses and that’s got to be very important to justice department prosecutors,”.
I’m shook.
The trouble for Trump – and part of the source of his frustration, the sources said

-_-
In private, Trump is said to
I dunno. I think a lot of people are sick of this kind of “journalism” and they’re checking out. This writer is writing fanfic. He got a couple of reputable people to give a hot take on the current event, and is simply claiming “sources” have inside knowledge of Trump’s behavior.
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
Chap
God
Posts: 2308
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 8:42 am
Location: On the imaginary axis

Re: Criminal Charges Against Trump?

Post by Chap »

If the writer was just this guy on the internet blogosphere, I would too tend to discount a story that did not name its sources.

But this guy is a reputable journalist working as Washington correspondent for a highly respected international daily, and he has sub-editors and editors over him who care more about the newspaper's reputation than they do about whether he gets his piece in the Guardian today. It is (and always has been) common for reputable journalists to respect the anonymity of their informants by (for instance) referring to 'sources close to the Prime MInister', 'a close friend of Maxwell', or 'informed sources speaking on condition of anonymity'. If they didn't do that, a great deal of reliable and important stuff would never come out in public. In a good newspaper we can expect that if a 'sources' attributed article about Trump gets into print, then someone who knows what they are talking about has confided in the writer of the article. Given the long-term and increasing leakiness of Trump's team (if we can call it that anymore), that is hardly unexpected.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
Post Reply