The former is literally the real legal system, nothing shadow about it. Shadow would be some hidden deal to drop charges or something.
It's also not DDOS when a huge part of what you call "real" is exactly the same, so not unwillingly overloaded but willingly complicit.
No, this is literally a "both sides" issue. Lawfare is not new. See the continuous legal battles over the second amendment in states like NY, NJ, and CA.
> Two other judges, John Higgitt and Llinét Rosado, said James had the authority to bring the case but argued for giving Trump a new trial. And the fifth judge, Justice David Friedman, argued to throw out the case, saying James lacked the authority to bring it.
The reason a democrat would be involved in such prosecution is because every GOP member has effectively sworn fealty to Trump and they will fiercely protect him from any accountability.
Biden was many things, but not corrupt in the sense that Trump is. Yes, his son did business trading on his relationship but that was legal (albeit distasteful).
Most dem voters dislike corruption, even if it's one of their team; I don't see that on the other side of the aisle. Disclaimer: I am not a dem.
If you're talking about the criminal case, it's even worse, as CNN's chief legal correspondent explained: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-... ("Most importantly, the DA's charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process."). Or, as an MSNBC legal columnist explained: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-guilty-hus... ("Most DAs wouldn’t have pursued this case against Trump. Alvin Bragg got lucky. Let’s be honest with each other. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump was convoluted.").
You could write an entire Harvard law review issue about the novel legal issues raised by the Trump criminal case: Can a state crime be predicted on an uncharged federal campaign finance violation? can someone violate campaign finance law--which is focused on preventing candidates from misusing donated funds--by using their own money to pay off a porn star? Can you bootstrap a misdemeanor into a felony through a triple-bank-shot involving an uncharged secondary crime and a choice of three possible tertiary crimes? When you prosecute someone for a business records misdemeanor, but almost all the allegedly bad conduct relates to unspecified secondary and tertiary crimes, how do you instruct the jury? When you give the jury three different options of uncharged tertiary crimes to support the uncharged secondary crime, which in turn supports the charged primary crime, on what points must the jury reach a unanimous decision?
Google's and Apple's "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich" was a more straightforward legal theory than the Trump criminal case.
1. Trump is the epitome of a corrupt pol and has pretty much gotten away with everything his entire life.
2. Prosecuting him was not in the form of of attacking a rival, it was addressing issue #1
3. If the roles were reversed and this was Biden we were talking about, most dem voters would still be for prosecution of blatant corruption. The magic of Trump is that his supporters (which apparently you are one of) are fine with him doing anything he wants, up to and including shooting someone on Fifth Ave
Another example is the Mackey case, where the appeals court unanimously overturned the entire conviction, attacking both the legal reasoning and the evidence underlying the entire case. It’s pretty clear the whole thing was cooked up to “get” an influential pro-Trump Twitter user. See: https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/5d7bf858-ff...
The legal system bends to those in power and "justice" occasionally makes an appearance.
Meanwhile the DOJ has been weaponized to serve as the president's personal attack dogs and the entirety of the federal workforce is being staffed with only those who swear fealty to Trump, rather than the constitution and what it stands for.
IANAL, and I'm not equipped to review whatever legal fancy footwork is involved, but I am 100% confident that the Biden admin was as stand up as could be hoped for (i.e., flawed but not devoid of principles), and that Trump has only these principles:
* self-enrichment
* self-aggrandizement
* deflection of any criticism or culpability
What rubs salt into the wound is that tens of millions of my fellow citizens literally worship him as a gift from God and will defend him to the end. Watching democracy die before my eyes is beyond heartbreaking.
"Trump corrupt" !=> "this case was sound."
I also provided an example of the Mackey case, where the DoJ was weaponized to go after Trump supporters on Twitter.
I don't like the twitter case and think it was a mistake. Not as bad as the case that drove Aaron Swartz to suicide (under the Obama admin).
But to lecture on the propriety of the prosecution and declare that it was "weaponized" is a stretch. The feds have made plenty of bad decisions across both sides of the aisle, and their intentions should always be worthy of scrutiny.
The DOJ (and every other federal agency) is being gutted of anyone who does not swear fealty to Donald Trump (the person, not the office) -- that's weaponization.
I'm happy to call out each and every mistake the Biden admin does, but it's almost quaint in comparison to what his successor is doing. We've moved well past the "both sides" debate -- what is happening now is fascism and un-American to it's core. So yeah, boo hoo about the twitter case.
You're correct about (2), and that's the problem! A criminal case that relies on an uncharged secondary crime, which in turn relies on one of three uncharged tertiary crimes, to bootstrap a primary misdemeanor into a felony must stand on its own. Uncharged, unproven past conduct is irrelevant.
> magic of Trump is that his supporters (which apparently you are one of)
My wife and I are Fed Soc members, but we like the Georgetown cocktail parties and voted for Biden in 2020! We weren't going to vote in 2024 until the Trump criminal conviction. It was literally radicalizing. My wife used to loathe Trump, but she drove up to Pennsylvania to volunteer for his campaign after that conviction came down.
No shit.
You're a case study in radicalization by this point and one that I follow with some morbid fascination. If you, an intelligent lawyer and son of an immigrant can be radicalized to the point that you are cheering on the people who would be more than happy to deport you and most of your family on the basis of your skin color alone without any kind of due process can be radicalized then anybody can be radicalized, including me and that is a very sobering thought.
I sincerely hope that when this is all over you are still living where you do and that you and yours get through this in one piece but I would hate to be in your shoes when - if - the moment comes that you realize you are on a very dangerous path. Note that your strengths - intelligence, knowledge of the law - are being used against you.
I've seen a similar thing happen with two close friends who after 9/11 fell in with the wrong crowd and turned into 'truthers'. They were both very smart but also apparently quite gullible and they and their fellows were pushing each other ever further down into the hole.
I wrote about them:
https://jacquesmattheij.com/2020-12-19-complot-theory-believ...
Since then, after burning up all of their friendships they moved to the heartland of Australia where they are now prepping for the end times.
Sometimes it doesn't take much for a person to be radicalized and the way out is a lot more difficult than the way in.
Well, some food for thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOAl8EYlz1s
Based! I can just picture Kash finishing the job by deporting the last remaining immigrant: himself.
Regardless, it’s telling that we were talking about legal theories but you couldn’t keep out that intrusive thought about my skin color and immigration background.
There was a time that I looked up to you, but that time is definitely past.
As for KP: he is just an even more extreme example of the same thing.
Hey now, my interpretation of legal issues has been narrow since I was a law student. My second-year administrative law class used Gary Lawson's textbook (https://fedsoc.org/contributors/gary-lawson). The seminal cases all had notes after them along the lines of "isn't this clearly unconstitutional?" I remember nodding along and getting angry that the mid-20th century Supreme Court had fucked up the Constitution so badly.
So, no, I don't care that Trump is dismantling an administrative state that shouldn't exist in the first place. Despotism is not when the President fires Department of Education bureaucrats. It's when the President tells you what you can and cannot build on your own land. So far, Trump hasn't been doing that.
Putting all that aside, I'm perfectly fine for you to attack me as a constitutional Taliban. But why bring my skin color into it?
As opposed to what is happening right now?
Do you think Trump is fixing the constitution somehow? He's all but wiping his ass with it.
> So, no, I don't care that Trump is dismantling an administrative state that shouldn't exist in the first place.
He's not just dismantling an administrative state. He's wrecking your countries' institutions left, right and center and those institutions are the glue that kept the country alive and together. It kept you healthy, educated and employed.
> Despotism is not when the President fires Department of Education bureaucrats. It's when the President tells you what you can and cannot build on your own land.
I don't think that matters much when your land is bought at firesale prices right out from under you because otherwise you won't be able to make ends meet. The manufactured crisis you are going through right now is redistributing wealth at a fantastic rate. And guess who is on the receiving side.
> But why bring my skin color into it?
Because unless you are living under a rock it should be painfully clear by now that you've voted massively against your own interests. Skin color is exactly the thing that this administration seems to be using as the distinguishing factor between the 'in' and the 'out' groups and that does not change because there are a couple of convenient exceptions. Or do you think giving White South Africans a speedrun through US immigration is an accident of chance?
Maybe you think that you too will be one of the exceptions but more and more people are finding out that they too voted against their own interests. This doesn't stop just with illegals, criminals, immigrants or homeless people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
Have a look there and then look through that lens at the last six months. See a pattern?
It's racism as one major theme and probably misogynist overtones as another. The last thing Trump has respect for is the law (whether private, constitutional or criminal does not seem to matter much) unless it is as a tool to exact revenge.
That a lawyer would support the man whose own lawyer needed a lawyer and ended up convicted is already weird enough.
Recently someone commented to me that the whole point of the tariffs is to curb consumerism in the United States, without further explanation when asked where they got that outlandish idea from. There is no point in arguing anymore, it is literally a waste of time...it's so sad to see obviously intelligent people fall for for this, even against their own interest as you mentioned.
There's so much to criticize Trump about! A lot of the COVID-era inflation was Trump's fault thanks to those Trump checks. You could provide a stirring defense of free trade. RJK, Jr. is a kook! Anything that doesn't put you in the untenable position of arguing that the non-whites in the U.S. aren't as smart as you in knowing their own interests.
Ok, so you're just trolling. Fine. It is not funny.
> Anything that doesn't put you in the untenable position of arguing that the non-whites in the U.S. aren't as smart as you in knowing their own interests.
I have six months of evidence and I think that is enough. I'll happily collect another 6 months and we'll see how you are going to twist to justify whatever they'll do between now and then. Prediction: it won't be good. Best of luck.
I find the exact same reaction in anti-vaxxers and people of faith. Try to get a religious person to recognize the folly of their faith -- it only makes them stronger.
I think there's two paths of resistance that might help:
1. Concise messaging
2. Mockery and humor
A prime example of this is anti-abortionists labeling themselves as "Pro-life". Who doesn't love life? And babies? Then there's "entitlements" for public insurance programs. Death taxes for estate taxes. And for our esteemed council in this debate, "Law and Order". And so on...
I don't have any easy or immediate remedy here, but I believe this path needs to be followed to help sway hearts and minds.
And for #2 (poop!), most people are vulnerable to the sting of mockery, certainly evidenced by how Diaper Don himself lashes out when made fun of. We need more of that, and more for the Deplorables who worship him. Yes, there needs to be a parallel track of trying to be nice and inviting, but we are literally at war for the survival of democracy in the United States (the civil war never ended -- the south had their fingers crossed when they surrendered).
Another unfortunate note: this war is also waged by religious fundamentalists (and white nationalists), and while I respect an individual's right to their own worship, we should be vigilant in pointing out that: "Religion is like a penis. It's nice to have one and fine to be proud of. Don't whip it out in public or shove it down someone else's throat"
What keeps America alive and together is the virtue of the average American, not counter-democratic "institutions." America was a stable democracy from the beginning long before we had any of these institutions. I'd trade every Ivy-league grad in the world in all the most august institutions for a million ordinary Iowans.
>> > But why bring my skin color into it?
> Because unless you are living under a rock it should be painfully clear by now that you've voted massively against your own interests.
But that wasn't relevant to our discussion. Why are you so fixated on the racial angle that you brought it up in unrelated conversation? Why does it feature so prominently in your mental model of Trump?
As you are proudly a Fed Soc member, are you also a follower of Jesus? From the makeup of your compatriots in SCOTUS, I'm guessing you're a devout Catholic. Does your faith inform you in your voting?
if we take the results of 2016 and 2024, then our "virtue" is on life support lol, still this is an inspiring speech and I'm honored to quote it and I thank you for writing it, hacker news thrives on good content like this.
>counter-democratic "institutions."
the US is very big, and a government is going to have a civil service, hopefully that span administrations as is often the norm, institutional knowledge is a thing. Obviously yes, some folks hate that shit.
>America was a stable democracy from the beginning long before we had any of these institutions.
history has entered the chat
> I'd trade every Ivy-league grad in the world in all the most august institutions for a million ordinary Iowans.
oh man, reminds me of my IT days, like database consistency was always some "ivory tower thinking", I hated 3 am troubleshooting sessions, especially since I was locked out of the bugfest that caused them. gives me flashbacks! you could literally be my boss lol
>Why does it feature so prominently in your mental model of Trump?
yeah, racism features prominently in my mental model of trump too. I think its part of the "reputation" part of reputation, resume and rapsheet.
The 6 members of SCOTUS who are of your ilk are the exact enablers of our subject of discussion.
And yet you dodge #1. How artful. Now I know that you've not been engaging in good faith, either intentionally or just how Fed Soc taught you.
I didn't "dodge" it. I explained it was irrelevant. The conduct for which Trump was convicted was having a payment to Stormy Daniels recorded in the books of his family owned company as "legal expenses" instead of "hush money." To turn that into a felony, prosecutors invoked several other uncharged crimes--which means they didn't have to prove them--in a triple-bank-shot legal theory so convoluted it's best explained with charts: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/charting-the-legal-theo.... The prosecution never clearly articulated the exact legal theory, but what comes closest to their trial presentation is something like:
1) Violation of New York records law (175.05). But this is a misdemeanor. To step it up to a felony, you need to prove that the records were misrecorded to cover up a second crime.
2) Stepping (1) up to a felony based on New York Election Law 17-152, which makes it illegal to influence an election by "unlawful means," which requires a third crime. According to the press: "Attorneys specializing in state election law believe the statute has never been prosecuted." https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-hush-money-case-relies.... Moreover, the prosecutors never actually charged this crime, meaning they didn't need to prove all the elements.
3) Supporting (2) based on violation of federal campaign finance law. Notably, the FEC, which is charged with administering federal election law, had declined to bring any charges against Trump in connection with the Stormy Daniels payoff. Prosecutors also never actually charged this crime, meaning they didn't need to prove all the elements.
The prosecution also threw out two alternative crimes for (2), and the judge then instructed the jury that they didn't need to be unanimous as to which other crimes the business records were doctored to cover up.
The merits of this prosecution are entirely about the legal theory and the legally relevant facts. Whatever else you think Trump did is completely irrelevant. That's one of the few things Fed Soc folks and liberals agree on. If the target of this prosecution had been a child-trafficking kingpin, the lawyers at my former white shoe firm would be lining up to take on the multiple Supreme Court cases that would come out of challenging this prosecution.
> Fed Soc, eh? I'm shocked you'd consider Biden as everything I see about the org is as a right wing networking club, culminating in ownership of SCOTUS.
Fed Soc has far more Democrats than your typical non-ideological lawyer's organization (e.g. the American Bar Association) has Republicans. It's just lawyers who aren't feelers, and those are on both sides of the aisle.
Isn't that the crux of the matter? You have a (crypto)billionaire president using his presidential powers and personal wealth to start frivolous lawsuit to shut down his opponents. If that doesn't worry you I really don't know what to tell you.
That may be true --- or even a 100x response. But the thing is that a 100x (and probably even a 10x) response to many of these norm violations would take us well beyond the entire realm of lawfare. A 10x response would be at least "ignore everything the entire federal court system says because it's irredeemably corrupted", if not actual armed resistance.
Even going back well before Trump, norm violations like McConnell holding Scalia's seat open already made it clear that the Supreme Court was no longer a meaningful institution (if it ever had been). I don't mean I didn't like some of their decisions. I mean the entire thing is a meaningless charade, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and 366 in leap years. And that is just one example. The level of "counter-response" required to recover from the norm violations we've had over the last 10-20 years requires an overhaul to the very foundations of our system of government.
You might just get it. If the country survives as an entity. Otherwise you might get several new systems of government.
> It should also be based on good faith
Setting the wishes aside, it isn't, the judges easily act in bad faith when it suits them, so this also doesn't explain much.
Neither is it "designed" to take bad faith at face value, again, to be specific - just read the Supreme Court case about this law. The flood/design explain nothing: it would've been just as easy to block the implementation of what the court itself says is an unconstitutional law (see, no "good faith" basis required) and then don't even review it fully because the court has no time (see, the flood can flow in either direction)...
It isn't, and it isn't designed to be based on good faith or good faith actors.
there are many many resources online you can find on the matter
Contract law requires many things, including "a meeting of minds"; that does not imply that all civil lawsuits and criminal hearings require "a meeting of minds".
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith_(law)
There are many resources online you can find on the matter.
That is false, and the wiki paragraph does not say that
https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_11
> quite distinct from criminal law.
Trumps frivolous lawsuits have been civil matters, which is obviouos because private persons do not file criminal lawsuits, prosecutors do that.
Are you sure? This is the first sentence of my link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith_(law)
> In contract law, the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing is a general presumption that the parties to a contract will deal with each other honestly, fairly, and in good faith, so as to not destroy the right of the other party or parties to receive the benefits of the contract.
This is the first sentence of your original link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith#Law
> In law, bona fides denotes the mental and moral states of honesty and conviction regarding either the truth or the falsity of a proposition, or of a body of opinion;
There is nothing in there that supports the assertion:
> It [the legal system] should also be based on good faith.
Any legal system based on good faith will fall over in its very first year of operation. They are usually designed to be resilient to bad faith actors. The problem (which you seem to be alluding to) is that, by design, the system errs on the side of caution.
In order to actually be punished for barratry, for example, there needs to be evidence beyond reasonable doubt. Any doubt as to the bad-faith intention and the system will not proceed with punitive measures.
And that's just for barratry - the other sins that people perpetrate on the system have equally cautionary consequential actions taken.
Trump is winning most of these fights in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court. Activist groups are flooding the system with a bunch of weak cases, getting weak, poorly reasoned district court rulings, then getting overturned on appeal.
> Activist groups are flooding the system with a bunch of weak cases, getting weak, poorly reasoned district court rulings, then getting overturned on appeal.
Trump's > 90% success rate at the Supreme Court should be read as an indictment of the Supreme Court, not of the lower courts.
I feel like you are unfamiliar with who you are replying to. That doesn't make it any less amusing.
Yes.
> If so, I'd expect them to understand that recent decisions such as Trump v. Casa and McMahon v. New York are pretty flimsy.
That's what makes it extra interesting.
McMahon v. New York is obviously correct. A preliminary injunction is an “extraordinary and drastic” remedy requiring a showing that the plaintiff is likely to succeed in the merits: https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/civil-resource-manual-21.... The argument that federal courts can supervise a reduction in force where the individual firings aren’t themselves illegal (e.g. race based) is a tenuous argument. Besides, what’s the irreparable harm? Being fired is one of the classic examples of something that can be remedied by after a trial with reinstatement and backpay.
With regards to McMahon v. New York, what makes you think that the plaintiff is unlikely to succeed in the merits? The court can absolutely take into consideration the intent of the Trump administration and McMahon as his secretary to illegally shutter the Department of Education. On the one hand, you have the executive branch's ability to oversee a reduction in force; on the other, you have the executive reducing force as an end-run around the duty charged to them by law. If the "unitary executive theory" means that the executive can discharge duties they are bound by law to execute, then the Constitution is meaningless (as Sotomayor cites at the very beginning of her dissent, Article 2 section 3 charges the President to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"). Your argument that irreparable harm extends only to the staff being fired is also naively narrow; the states brought the suit, not the staff of the DoEd. The states argue--correctly--that if the Department cannot carry out its duties, then a vast array of students and teachers that rely on services funded or administered by the DoEd would be harmed. It seems batshit to argue that the harms done to the executive by temporarily curtailing that power outweigh the harms that will be done to an uncertain but certainly vast number of people in the interim. It's worth noting that, in this case, providing relief simply means that the government must maintain the status quo for a few months or however long it takes for the case to work through the courts. Restoring someone's job with back pay is sufficient when one person is fired. It is not sufficient when the executive has eliminated 50% of a statutorily-mandated department of the federal government with an eye to cut more.
On the law, the rulings are correct. Article II, Section 2, cl. 1: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." QED. The contrary "precedents" were ginned up to support Woodrow Wilson's racist fever-dream of an executive run by "expert" civil servants instead of the elected President: https://ballotpedia.org/%22The_Study_of_Administration%22_by.... I remember sitting in Con Law class and reading these cases thinking how obviously wrong they all were. I couldn't even dream that we would ever be able to clean out this horse stable!
> preferring to instead punt the issue and allow the harm to continue, completely circumventing the merits of the cases.
That's because almost all of the rulings coming up to the Supreme Court were preliminary injunctions where the lower court made no determination of the merits.
> making the bizarre claim that enjoining the Executive Branch from doing whatever it wants pending a full trial harms it in greater proportion than the harms being actually inflicted on ordinary people.
Read Marbury v. Madison and look at how much ink Justice Marshall spends trying to avoid enjoining the Secretary of State to do something as ministerial as delivering an already-signed letter. He literally invented judicial review in an effort to avoid that result. Think about how Marshall's lengthy analysis of how courts can't enjoin discretionary actions of the President would apply to the sweeping injunctions being handed out these days.