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No, the independent prosecution is charging, and the independent jury convicting, a criminal who happens to be the political opponent of the current administration. Being the political opponent can't be a get-out-of-jail-free card when you actually commit crimes.
And it's yet to be determined whether jailing is going to happen. I think that's deferred at least another month?
He wasn’t the opponent when the charges were brought. He was just a loud mouthed ex-President.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/15/1044234232/trump-announces-ru...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-stormy-daniels-manhatta...
It takes an extreme level of blatant criminality for anyone to indict, let alone convict, a politician.
The DA, Alvin Bragg, is not independent, he's a Democrat.
Your observation is true, and yet, we kind of need to keep a civilization running, and for that we need courts and stuff. What kind of plan do you have for how things would be different, and will it actually work in the real world?
But we can certainly remember that dirty politics exists and be wary of it.
When we say someone like a prosecutor is "independent" it means they are not directed by a superior. Bragg is not directed by the mayor of NY, the governor of NY, the AG, or the President. He may be a Democrat, but he's still independent (lower case "i"). If you come in and call him a "Democrat" when someone else calls him independent, you are implying he is a Democrat before anything else, and his actions are driven by allegiance to the party. That's not true.
So can you tell us anything specifically that Bragg did that was not independent, where he was directed by Biden or Democrats?
Or did he prosecute Trump as the law directed him to?
Clearly not. He essentially said "We have to get Trump" before he even found a crime to charge him with. Then invented a "novel legal theory" to prosecute him.
Going to need a source for this. Every source people have pulled up for me so far attempting to "prove" this has Bragg saying something to the effect of "I will follow the facts where they take me". Maybe you have a different source?
> Then invented a "novel legal theory" to prosecute him.
You mean he applied the facts to the law and brought a prosecution where he thought a crime had been committed, as is his job as DA.
Can you explain why "inventing a novel legal theory" is wrong or indicative of bias? Or evidence that Bragg is somehow controlled or not independent?
And he listed his long experience of opposing Trump administration policies. "I also sued the Trump administration more than 100 times... So I know that work". Notice he said "Trump administration" - that was political opposition, he was suing to oppose Trump's policies. Even in his previous position, he was a political opponent of Trump, and used his office to pursue political goals. That's clearly bias.
https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/apr/12/heres-what-ma...
> Can you explain why "inventing a novel legal theory" is wrong or indicative of bias?
Because legal changes should not be retroactive. If something is currently illegal, it doesn't require a "novel legal theory" to prosecute. Novel legal theory is just a way of saying "let's change the way the law is interpreted or enforced". And that's fine, as long as it's only enforced after the change is made public.
That's a declaration of intent to prosecute Trump for what he did. That's the difference between "hold him accountable" and "get him".
This is the kind of general, anodyne political statement every candidate ever makes. Seriously, if this is the basis we use to overturn cases as evidence of bias, then it would mean every Republican is immune from prosecution from every Democratic DA, and vice versa.
> Notice he said "Trump administration" - that was political opposition, he was suing to oppose Trump's policies. Even in his previous position, he was a political opponent of Trump, and used his office to pursue political goals.
And with this statement you've made the definition of political operative to include everyone in a state government opposed to the policies of the federal government controlled by the opposing party.
So now that you've made everything politics, nothing is politics, and we can get back to the facts at hand.
> Because legal changes should not be retroactive.
There was no legal change, the law was applied as written as it has been to many other individuals.
> If something is currently illegal, it doesn't require a "novel legal theory" to prosecute.
The novelty here is applying new facts to an existing law in a way that hasn't been applied before. That's what people mean when they mean "novel". They don't mean the law is being twisted to fit the facts. They don't mean the law is somehow new or different this time. It's the same as it's always been.
The novelty comes from it being unknown whether or not the facts actually fit the law by virtue of the "theory" being untested in court. This novelty is not unfair to the defendant. It doesn't mean they are being singled out or unfairly targeted for prosecution. It just means the specific facts of the case haven't been tried in this way before, and why should they have been? The facts are unprecedented.
> Novel legal theory is just a way of saying "let's change the way the law is interpreted or enforced". And that's fine, as long as it's only enforced after the change is made public.
No, that's a terrible system. All that means is you can get away with crimes if you are creative enough. You would just have to point to the novelty of the theory, the fact that the law hasn't been applied that way before, and then you'd be free. Then that specific crime would be open season until the bug was patched by legislation, which we all know takes forever. It's like discovering a zero day exploit, advertising it, and then hoping an unspecified patch will fix things at some point in the future. Uh, no that's a recipe for an pwned system, sorry. Novel crimes call for novel applications of the law. Criminals have an asymmetric advantage as it is with the presumption of innocence, there's no reason to give them more of an advantage.
Can you cite a single case before Trump's where this law was applied, as a felony, without actually charging the defendant with the other crime that makes it a felony?
I looked. In the cases I checked, the second crime was charged.
And an honest observer has to wonder why that second crime wasn't charged in this case. Did the prosecution doubt they could prove it?
Pure algocratic justice.
The universe, and its circumstances, has itself a bias towards occurrences we believe to be unfair. Old news.
Several prosecutors prior declined to prosecute. Centrist legal experts doubted the case. Of course partisans always opined one way or the other, but you had independents questioning this trial.
When he wins like Colorado case then it's all fine. But, if he loses - witch hunt, politically motivated, Joe Biden, blah blah.
> On October 14, 2020, twenty days prior to the 2020 United States presidential election, the New York Post published an article based on content provided to the publication by Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
(They can't just wave their hands and change the result, they have to say that the laws can't exist)
That is obviously a violation of due process, punishing someone for an uncharged and unproven second crime.
But that's what was done in this case, under the DA's by all accounts "novel legal theory".
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Edit: I'm "posting too fast" so I'll respond here. You pointed out that the statute doesn't require proof of the second crime. I agree, it does not.
And that's precisely why the SC could declare it unconstitutional - it punishes an alleged second crime (by elevating the first crime to a felony with more serious penalties) without providing for due process in the prosecution of that second crime.
And I just read about a second reason the SC could overturn the case:
"The Supreme Court has long held, under a doctrine known as the “rule of lenity,” that “fair warning should be given to the world, in language that the common world will understand, of what the law intends to do if a certain line is passed.” Thus, when the meaning of a criminal statute is unclear, the Constitution sometimes requires that statute to be read narrowly because an unclear criminal law did not give potential defendants “fair warning” that their conduct was illegal."
"if the current slate of justices decide that they must have the final word on whether Bragg may prosecute Trump, they could easily invoke the rule of lenity to justify asserting the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over the case."
https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/4/4/23648390/trump-indictm...
That doesn't really seem to require that the second crime is charged, or demand some certain level of proof (it just says "intent to commit another crime"). I guess I agree that if you wanted to make sure the felony stuck you'd charge the second crime in an attempt to establish that intent, but the statute doesn't really spell that out.
Successful commission of the crime is not required. Nor is it required that the jury all agree on what other crime was attempted. If the prosecution makes the case that the defendant tried to commit 12 other crimes and each member of the jury thinks intent on a different crime was proven beyond a reasonable doubt, they are well within their conscience to convict.
To me, those are all the reasons this law is unconstitutional. New York shouldn't be able to simply write a law that ignores due process in the prosecution of some other alleged crime.
Put aside your feelings about Trump and ask yourself if that's a situation you'd like to find yourself in: accused of a laundry list of crimes and convicted even if the jury doesn't agree on which one you committed.
It seems that this trial is just one of many[0] (in fact, such felony cases under this law aren't uncommon at all and no one has successfully made your argument in appeals of cases where this specific law[1] was applied.
Perhaps you could get in touch with one of your former law professors to clarify your reasoning (you are actually a constitutional lawyer, or at least attended law school, right?), as it doesn't seem to comport with the jurisprudence of New York and/or Federal courts.
[0] https://www.justsecurity.org/85605/survey-of-past-new-york-f...
And that document doesn't say whether the second crime was actually charged in any of those cases. It could well be that in those other cases, due process was observed, the other crime was charged, and the objection I raised here did not apply.
That was true in the first case discussed in the link, The People of the State of New York v. Josue Aguilar Dubon, AKA Saady Dubon, AKA Alejandro Ortiz. "He and his company, Epic Auto Repair Corporation, were indicted on second-degree Tax Fraud, two counts of third-degree Tax Fraud, and two counts of fourth-degree Tax Fraud."
https://www.bronxda.nyc.gov/downloads/pdf/pr/2022/102-2022-J...
I'll let you check the others, if you like.
This is, to give an analogy, in the same space as OJ Simpson being found guilty of wrongful death and innocent of murder, for committing the same actions, and the fact that he could be tried for both not being a case of double jeopardy.
OJ wasn't "found guilty of wrongful death". He was found liable, because that was a civil case, not a criminal one. That difference is also why double jeopardy didn't apply.
I can't really discuss due process with someone who doesn't know the difference between civil and criminal law.
The common sense idea would be that investigating the same fact pattern twice would be trying the same crime twice.
The actual law does not agree with that assessment for the reason you have indicated.
Due process doesn't prevent you from being found innocent of a crime and liable on a civil case on the same set of actions, and it (apparently) doesn't prevent you from being found guilty of falsifying documents to attempt a crime without requiring the jury to agree on what crime was attempted.
The prosecution won this case by focusing on a specific crime the false documents were meant to conceal and providing a lot of evidence as to Trump's intent. The defense didn't offer a reasonable alternative intent for the false documents. Intent is usually very hard to prove in court, so it should be reassuring that this law has such a guardrail against abuse.
Each of the alleged crimes has subtle details that separate it from the perfectly legal practice of paying someone for non-disclosure. By failing to charge a specific crime, the prosecution avoided discussing those details.
Ask yourself: why didn't the prosecution charge Trump with violating 17-152, and avoid this issue? Could it be because they didn't think they would win such a charge?
The crime he was convicted of requires proof he falsified documents to attempt to commit those other crimes, not that he succeeded. He doesn't have to be guilty of another crime to be guilty of felony record falsification in attempt to commit another crime.
And the statute doesn't require the jury to agree on what crime was attempted. That's a finding of fact left to the jury, but each juror may choose which scenario is most likely; you can't play the scenarios off each other as reasonable doubt if at least one of them is what happened in each juror's individual best judgment.
And they haven't adjudicated a second crime if they don't agree unanimously about what specific crime was committed.
It's a mystery to me why the prosecution, which has mentioned a state crime they claim applies, didn't charge him with that crime. That would have provided due process and made the conviction far more convincing. Were they afraid they couldn't actually prove that crime?
It is unfortunate, because the system actually only works if defendants rights are protected by competent counsel. But any public defender can tell you that there's no accounting for your client sabotaging your ability to protect their rights.
It doesn't even take a keen power of observation to realize that Donald is completely unable to remain silent on anything. His recent civil fines of ever increases amounts are evidence of that. Getting on TV/Twitter/whatever and admitting guilt is not a great way to avoid a conviction at all, the prosecution will gladly, and rightfully, use your own words against you.
Hunter Biden is next.
Nevermind that probably 10% of HN breaks federal law by possessing weed, and probably another 5% are guilty of serious felony 5+ yrs in jail for simultaneously also living in a house where grandpas shotgun is sitting in a safe somewhere 100 ft from their dimebag of weed.
I hope the people cheering this are aggressively prosecuted for every single crime they've committed. Cuz justice.
Thank fuck he's not running for election then, and if he did commit crimes then lets see them brought to trial.
He's a criminal sure, but selective prosecution to undermine democratic process destroys democracy and undermines equal application of law. If he was pursued this aggressively before his campaigning when he was doing the same illegal corrupt shit it would look a lot less political.
But the felony counts were of him falsifying business records to break election laws.
He did this while he was political, because he was political, and he hasn't stopped being political since.
There's no suddenly here, it finally happened now because that's the speed of the justice system even with trump doing whatever he could to delay it as long as he could.
The rest of the "political persecution" claims fall apart after that.
Being well known for committing crimes and getting away with it doesn’t seem like a good thing.
The question is which is worse, almost everyone getting away with it until/unless they have political enemies, or most everyone equally pretty much getting away with it.
I'm comparing bad to worse, not good to bad. I'm saying in this case it's worse, even though everyone getting prosecuted may be better.
Except they don't[0]. This is a pretty commonly prosecuted crime.
[0] https://www.justsecurity.org/85605/survey-of-past-new-york-f...
Like getting Al Capone on tax crime. Justice isn’t about everything being 100% rule following at all times, it’s about crimes being punished.
Letting him get away with it because he's rich and because he's advised the president while locking up others for lesser crimes would be selective prosecution. If we can't even convict Fauci how can anyone in our society trust the rule of law?
And Trump spent plenty of time in court before showing aspirations of public office. He just tended to bend civil law, not criminal.
Ideally, all are equal before the eyes of the law. But if there be inequality, better the burden to follow the law more closely be upon those with more power and more aspiration, not less.
Sic semper tyrannis
But frankly, I'm not against him being brought to justice for breaking the law either. We have let politicians become too comfortable bending the law to serve their selfish ends; if pinning down Hunter for every law he broke sends a message to the rest that their station can no longer protect their families from the scrutiny of Justice, so be it.