I’ve seen a lot of references to Al Capone being brought down by tax fraud in the discussion around Trump’s indictment, and while I think it’s kinda valid, the point should really be that the government tried multiple times to prosecute Capone for his involvement in organised crime, so “tax fraud” was pretty much the only thing they could try him on and be sure of a conviction.
I mean, by all means put Mediocre Mussolini through all the possible trials he could be subjected to, but starting with the small stuff feels a little bit backwards, at least from this side of The Pond.
That’s not what I meant to imply. There’s a difference between “liberals are using the wrong words” and “tossing the far-right a slow-ball”.
Which has most impact?
“Trump, who was most recently acquitted of 39 counts of tax fraud, was found guilty of treason…”
Or
"“Although Trump was also arraigned on 39 other counts, the original charge of treason was the only one to stick…”
?
ETA: I’m absolutely overjoyed at the prospect of this fucker finally facing some sort of justice for all the wrongs he has done and I’m not trying to piss on the parade. What I really, really want though is an undeniable proof-of-guilt in a heinous crime that would Lock Him Up for the rest of his existence, and I’m not sure that “paying-hush-money-in-a-way-that-kinda-might-have-broken-campaign-finance-law” is necessarily the Big Charge he should have been brought in on, given all the potential choices that were available…
There seems to be this idea that somehow the state and federal courts are coordinating their work, and that they should take turns with indictments. That isn’t how the system works. The cases are completely separate, and will be prosecuted as the agencies see fit. It’s entirely possible that there could be several trials going on simultaneously, if the defense starts pulling delay tactics. Anyone with standing can bring a suit, and they don’t coordinate in any way.
(Sometimes in cases of multiple homicides in multiple jurisdictions one prosecution may be set aside if the defendant is sentenced to life imprisonment)
That’s fair, and I think it goes a long way to explain the difference in the perception of the trial in Europe vs the US.
In the UK, the Crown Prosecution Service would decide whether or not to bring a case, and they would naturally lead with the primary charges in the overall prosecution in order to get the highest chance of a conviction.
I don’t think there’s an equivalent to the state/federal prosecution system in Europe, and the fact that there are multiple concurrent charges about to be brought in several different jurisdictions is (speaking for myself, at least) legally odd from a European point of view.
even if we had solid proof of him shooting someone on 5th avenue. That’s how his base works. He’s always right, he’s never done anything wrong, and any attempts to hold him accountable is a witchhunt.
We really need to stop operating under the assumption that the fascist wing of the GOP is all of a sudden gonna turn away from him and become reasonable. That’s not how fascism works.
Yeah, I get that. But it really is weird to expect our criminal justice system to be something other than what it is… Yes, the two are pretty different. But expecting the US to be Europe is just weird. We’re not Europe, despite this place crawling with the descendants of Europeans. For better or worse, this is how we do things.
I entirely get that. The US is just as much (if not more) of a mess as pretty much every other legal system in the world, and it has its own unique peculiarities, it’s just that those peculiarities seem especially peculiar from an outside perspective.
For Europeans the idea that prosecutors could be (a) elected and (b) openly aligned with political parties is bizarre.
In that context, the idea that a prosecutor could be a puppet of some vested interest doesn’t look any more bizarre that their being elected, and indeed would be a logical extension of their partisanship.
except that this particular lie is blatantly false and any reputable news source (I’m not talking about random people’s conspiracy theories) should know better than to let it spread on their websites. I’m not denying that American prosecutors can be biased. I mean just look at our current supreme court. But the people prosecuting trump aren’t being financed and puppeted by some scary Jewish globalist conspiracy. Trump is being prosecuted because he did actual criminal stuff.
I (and I suspect most of the other 7+ billion people in the world who didn’t directly vote for the fucker) think it’s great that he’s finally being prosecuted for doing criminal stuff; I literally could not be happier about it.
At the same time, from an outside perspective, it’s insane that it has taken this long to prosecute someone who has lied, cheated, and stolen throughout their whole existence, and who openly led an armed insurrection on the capitol of the country in which they still live, and somehow still isn’t in prison. It’s also pretty difficult to believe that, in the context of the hideous overreach by the police in response to the BLM protests, it would have taken anywhere near this amount of time to prosecute him had he not been a wealthy, white male.
I think that is the root of the disconnect here; I am sharing in the “fuck yeh, finally!” sentiment but I’m also left wondering “why did it take so long?”, “why does he get to go home after the trial and hold a press conference?”, “why are the current charges so minor in the face of everything he has done?” and “is the US justice system really this broken?”
You answered your own question. Believe it, because the ability to avoid consequences has always been part of the privilege of being a wealthy white male. Just ask someone like Prince Andrew.
