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That is perfect and brilliant so therefore probably too much for me to hope for. I really hope someone forwards that to the judge.
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Indeed. I just would like those who are claiming the “slippery slope” of jailing a former president and presidential candidate to consider the even bigger slippery slope of letting a defendant threaten court staff families, the jury, and witnesses. That’s the friggin’ north face of Denali in comparison.
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“Mr. Trump, the last thing I want to do is put you in jail. You are a former president of the United States and possibly the next one as well.”
Well, there you have it. Justice will not be served. The judge is already openly admitting that he’s going as far out of his way as possible to exempt Trump from the same consequences anyone else would have to face. Do we really think the actual verdict will have any teeth either? This was fucking over before it even began. He’s getting away with it AGAIN.
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You may be right about the contempt issue, but it is waaaay to soon to be all gloom and doom about the outcome of the trial itself. The judge won’t be the one determining guilt. That will be the jury.
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My confidence that the jury hasn’t already been stacked in his favor (or will be intimidated and law enforcement will do nothing about it) is diminished by this unabashed special treatment. But I sincerely hope you’re right.
ETA: And, oh, let’s not forget, “guilty” might mean another meaningless fine rather than jail time. The jury may determine guilt but the judge still decides the sentence (within certain boundaries determined by the law), no?
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With great power comes great responsibility, and by repeatedly defying the gag order he has shown a complete lack of responsibility. All the more reason to toss his sorry ass in jail.
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Yep. Every judge has been bending over backwards not to turn sanctions against Trump for his behaviour into a punishment with the appearance of political retribution. So he gets the process of increasing fines, etc, rather than a punishment he can actually feel. But Judge Merchan, I believe, will actually follow through with the threat when Dumpty continues violating his gag order. And rightly so.
I don’t know how long a stint in pre-trial detention will be at first (a day? a weekend?) but anyone want to start taking bets about how long he’s in there before Fuckface Von Clownstick starts smearing poop on the walls? 
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There’s a phrase in German that is unfortunately not easy to translate into English: “vorauseilender Gehorsam”. It can be translated as “anticipatory obedience” but that doesn’t capture all the nuance of obsequiousness and eagerness[1]
This phrase is often used when talking about the Third Reich, especially the time before the Nazis took power. It describes the situation in which people, very often officials, did what they thought the Nazis wanted without them even having to ask, either because they were scared what would happen to them once the Nazis were in power, if they hadn’t shown enough obedience and weren’t seen as helping on the way up, or because they agreed with the Nazis and wanted to help even if they didn’t have to or weren’t officially allowed. This is what I’m seeing here.
The concept is somewhat similar to the legal concept of “chilling effect”, only it’s used in a moral and political sense rather than a legal one. The German Wikipedia page about vorauseilender Gehorsam also links to this Japanese word as its equivalent in English Wikipedia, but there’s honestly not that much overlap from what I can see: sontaku ↩︎
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That actually sounds reasonable, that behind the scenes preparations are being made. The only thing that makes me sad is that if it were true, someone would have leaked it already.
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Not necessarily; I’ve worked on some classified projects that had preparations carried on under the aegis of normal files for unrelated work.
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