Yah, the whole thing seems to hinge on them convincing a jury that he violated campaign finance law, but also getting them to ignore the fact that he isn’t actually being charged for that. The experts seem to agree that it’s not a great case, really. Also worth noting that other politicians have been charged for the same thing (notably John Edwards who paid hush money to a woman he had a kid with) but nobody has ever been convicted for it.
Hopefully it’s just the beginning though. Things like the election tampering in Georgia are a lot stronger. There are phone calls, witnesses, etc.
He did it to defraud voters - THAT is the root of the crime. He paid off someone (and colluded with David Pecker on the Catch and Kill stuff) whose information could very much have impacted the election. THAT is the fraud.
I’m not sure what the uncited article you speak of is saying, but the indictment charges him with many counts of business fraud, but each count specifies that these were done with the intent to hide a crime. The introduction of the indictment though specifically states the laws being broken are “election laws”.
I think that the case may be a bit stronger than that. There was a crime, and Michael Cohen went to prison for it. I don’t believe that the New York statute requires the crime in question to be one’s own crime. If the prosecution can show that the false business reporting was to cover up Cohen’s well-established crime, then I believe that they have a real path to conviction.
Of course, “the protesters” are the J6 terrorists, “the police” are any that don’t bow down to him, and “communities” are white billionaires. Ironic, ain’t it?
I’m split about 50/50 on whether I think it’s this, or when he started talking he forgot it was being charged at the state level. /(not really s, but would be on a saner timeline)
Yah, agreed. It’s almost always a mistake to overestimate his intelligence or planning. He’s just screaming emotions from the rooftops and none of it means anything, most likely.
I think many (like that podcaster I was listening to about this) are desperate to apply some kind of intelligence to this man because people don’t like what it says about America if someone this stupid and incompetent succeeded so much.
To put a finer point on it, the country needs him to be smart because if he isn’t, then everything white people have ever said about America is a lie.
I think you’re right. Maybe one of the reasons why his fanbois are so virulent is because they need to believe he’s a genius because otherwise their belief in the great American meritocracy is a lie. If the meritocracy is a lie, then they are truly never going anywhere. They believe themselves to be very smart, thus the meritocracy will reward them any minute now. That all goes out the window if Musk turns out to be just a spoiled rich kid who failed upward his whole life despite being a complete moron.
It’s worse than that. If the meritocracy is a lie, they’re failures despite the fact that they’re white cis-het males who weren’t as lucky as their idol was (until he too was exposed to the rest of us a lucky and privileged mediocrity).
