• DontRedditMyLemmy@lemmy.world
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    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
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      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
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        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
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          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”.

      • suction@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Well, some people enjoy my night night pokes. Your momma, for instance. …sorry

      • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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        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
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              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
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              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
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                  6 months ago

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

                  • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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                    6 months ago

                    The only disgusting (immoral) part of this is Trump cheating on his wife.

                    Everything else could have been achieved perfectly legally (i.e. without disgust) if Trump had been smart.

                    I don’t want to disgust you, but “intending to keep things hidden by masking the truth” is practically the definition of politics.

                • suction@lemmy.world
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                  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
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          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
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          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
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            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
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              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
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                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
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                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
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                  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
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      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.

      • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Georgia is blocked due to complaints of impropriety between the DA and her special council.

        The claim is that the DA selected the special prosecutor because of their personal relationship and het ability to use this relationship to influence the special council.

        And that they used money paid to special council for personal stuff. It is bullshit, but afaik they where ordered to pick one. If the DA stays the special council needs to be replaced or vice versa.

        The DA was just reelected… and swapping special council means the new one needs to get up to apeed. Causing more delays. In my opinion, Georgia is also not happening before November regrettably (short of a hilarious twist of faith).

    • Starbuck@lemmy.world
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      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
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        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
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          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
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        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
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        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
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          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
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      6 months ago

      “hush money”

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

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      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
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        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
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        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
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          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
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            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
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              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
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                  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.

      • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
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        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.

      • NoSuchAgency@reddthat.com
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        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.

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          And I’m sure you’re equally as concerned about the conflict of interest from a judge that Trump appointed overseeing one of his trials, right? Surely you are of the opinion that Cannon should have recused herself at the very beginning, right?

        • Absolute dumbass commentary. The jury decided the case, not the judge. Trump literally had no defense to the allegations other than bald denials. The evidence that he did the crimes was written in paper and undeniable.

          • NoSuchAgency@reddthat.com
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            You’re just buying everything the MSM is selling, hook line & sinker. They wouldn’t let Trump have much of a defense. They wouldn’t even let an expert witness testify for the defense. And sure, the jury decides the case based on the instructions given by the judge and this is the only time a judge has ever given instructions like the ones in this case. You really don’t know much about the justice system if you believe that the judge in a case doesn’t play a major role in how a case is decided.

              • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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                6 months ago

                Yeah, but you didn’t read this particular article posted on a random website by a guy who said he totally knows, and that makes him more qualified than all of us here.

              • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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                6 months ago

                Superpatrioteagle50caljesus dot com only has the best news.

                Tune in tomorrow for how we explain how NASA spies on your poop!

                • barsquid@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  No, that’s not correct. You are receiving delusional propaganda about disallowing expert witnesses from somewhere. Where is that from?

                  Bradley Smith was definitely allowed to testify as an expert, but the defense declined to call him. Here, since you like pretending to have read things direct from the court. He was not allowed to show up and instruct the jury, which is the same as decided in the prior cited cases in NY and OH.

                  Where is your delusional propaganda from? The things you are claiming are lies that Donald has been tweeting. So perhaps your delusions are coming direct from the source: a lifelong con man and fraud who committed election interference in 2016.

        • Seleni@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Don’t a lot of people run for office on a platform of arresting and convicting people who commit crimes, though? Or am I missing something?

          • NoSuchAgency@reddthat.com
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            Yeah, that won’t happen, they’ve got such a stranglehold on surveillance in this country, it would never get off the ground and things are just going to get worse. Most younger people and some older people to either keep their face buried into their phones on Facebook or Tiktok propaganda machines or they just buy into everything the MSM tells them so until we fix that stuff there’s really no hope of things getting better

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      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
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      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
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      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
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      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.

        • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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          6 months ago

          I have noticed the loudest, most obnoxious supporters have grabbed the microphone and are screaming. But, the middle of the road folks seem to have abandoned him.

          Don’t rest on your laurels. We need to drive as many people as possible to vote for the Democratic Party to the polls this November. I don’t give a fuck about you if you vote traitor GOP. Kiss my ass and stay home, you do nothing but make the world worse.

        • MrPoopbutt@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          That is what we all thought in 2016.

          Anyone under the age of 40 would rather eat glass than answer a pollster, so it is really hard to know for sure.

        • wolfpack86@lemmy.world
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          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
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            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
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              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.