Total posts: 5,890
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
How they were treated by a weaponized DOJ was far less similar than their alleged crimes.
They were treated differently because their crimes were different. That's how it works. That's how it's supposed to work. If Trump had returned the documents when he was made aware of them the way Biden did we wouldn't be having this conversation. Why that is so difficult for you it's befuddling, this is really simple stuff.
If there was ever proof that the problem here is MAGA, this is it.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
Well they weren't before people went insane with TDS. POTUS is authorized, as authorized as possible actually.
The crime occurred in 2021. Trump wasn't POTUS.
To know whether the a flaw in the law is being abused one must apply the "other shoe" test...Joe Biden (among many others) retaining classified documents is the other shoe test, the government fails spectacularly, therefore this is lawfare.
It really does just come down to this. You are incapable of telling different things apart from each other when it's inconvenient.
Once again, Biden realized he had them, returned them immediately, then cooperated fully giving the FBI full access to any location which more classified documents could have possibly been stored.
Trump kept these documents in storage, lied to the FBI about having them, moved them from one location to another so the FBI wouldn't find them, ordered the footage destroyed, then when that employee refused he ordered another to flood the room destroying the footage on the process.
There is no world in which these two things are remotely similar. No honest halfway intelligent person would conclude otherwise.
It is the classic fallacy of the subjectivist to confuse the possibility of error or imprecision with a fundamental subjectivity. The ability of a human being to confuse himself over addition, to define it awkwardly, and insist 2+2 = 5 is not proof that math is subjective.
The difference between a statement being objective or subjective in many cases comes down to definitions. If two people are defining a term the exact same way, then whether the sentence formed matches reality can be determined objectively.
Laws don't work this way and they never will because the precise meaning of the pages upon pages of texts will always be subject to interpretation. If it were possible to read the minds of every passage's author and the minds of every lawmaker who helped conceive of them and vote on them then maybe we could call the following interpretations objective, that's not how real life works.
You love to pretend that when I explain to you how reality works I'm somehow endorsing the limitations of humanity. That's just stupid. The question isn't whether this problem exists but how we overcome it. That's the part I would love to get to but people liked you aren't interested in that because you can't defend your position so you'd rather stay right here pretending that I'm arguing 'subjective = good' than to defend your absurd position that what Trump and Biden did are the same.
Created:
-->
@TheUnderdog
Hey BLM; you want non-blacks to care about your organization? Then call it, "Stop Police Brutality" instead of, "Black Lives Matter".
So if the cause doesn't include you, you don't care about it.
That's exactly why black lives matter needs to be said.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mall
There you go.
Our posts did not conflict with each other.
Please rephrase.
You said "this is not what I'm reading on Google". What is not? Why would you say something like that and not show what you are reading? It's almost as if you are not actually interested in a good faith productive conversation.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
Sadly, no, they were touting the man.
Ok... And this is the same thing as the speaker of the house flying to NY to stand in front of an NY courthouse to yell into the microphone in service of the criminal defendant... How?
What is really funny is that every one of these people loved Trump dearly until he ran for president....then magically he became 100% evil....somehow...
They loved him as a TV personality. But they... Somehow... Changed their views of him after he launched his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, advocated for the banning of all Muslims, and later tried to hijack American democracy. Gee, I wonder what changed.
Trump doesn't have a single friend at this trial who isn't running for VP or in need of his endorsement.So I guess that sea of Maga hats outside the courthouses are just average Americans looking for a hot-dog.
No genius, those were cult followers, not Donald Trump's friends.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
No prominent democrat would ever debase themselves this badly for Biden or any other party leader...Really? I have a bunch of clips of Morning Joe and Gavin fawning over the best and smartest president of their lifetime.
You really think these two things are the same don't you?
Touting the accomplishments of the current administration on your cable news show is not the same thing as flying across the country to stand on the steps of a courthouse and yell into the microphone in service of your dear leader.
The funniest part of all of this is that they all claim they're just there "as a friend". Trump doesn't have a single friend at this trial who isn't running for VP or in need of his endorsement. His own family isn't there except for I think Eric once, his own wife isn't there.
Everyone knows you don't really care about this or about him. But he's the dear leader so he snaps his fingers and you come. That's what I'm talking about. That's what debasing yourself looks like.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
So you brought subjectivity into the debateThat is incorrect.
You may not have called it that but that's exactly what you did. The central point you've been making to justify your claim that these charges are illegitimate is that the law cited doesn't match the crime. And by doesn't match the crime you mean doesn't match exactly, and therefore prosecutors are just inventing ways (aka applying thought) to draw a line between the charges and the actions.
Here is an example from post 216:
"Oh did Biden lie to the FBI", doesn't matter does it. The law you claim Trump broke doesn't say "willfully retain documents while lying to the FBI"
Well no, of course the law doesn't say that all of this must happen "while lying to the FBI" because that would be oddly specific and would thus legalize many different ways in which the same wrongdoing would principally occur. That renders the effort to outlaw such actions pointless.
Instead this law along with pretty much every law ever written is intentionally vague to guard against the creation of loopholes. Here is the law Trump is being charged with violating in the documents case:
"(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;
So the questions here are, was he unauthorized to have the documents in question? Did he have reason to believe this information could be used to the injury of the US? Did he willfully retain and fail to deliver them to authorized personnel?
These are not complicated questions at all, so no reasonable person can argue that the answer to any of these questions is no. So what do you do instead? Pretend that the level of ambiguity here is the problem. Pretend that because there is some ambiguity on some level, well that's the problem and it means the government is engaging in corrupt lawfare.
It's an absurd argument but when defending such an absurd position that's all you got. And since that's all you got that's all you've given me to respond to. So for the sake of argument I'm pretending that you're being serious and presenting this in good faith. But you quickly show that you are not.
Your argument is essentially:P1: Subjectivity in legal charges is badP2: the charges against Trump are subjectiveC: the charges against Trump are badIt would never have assumed you would cede P2, but you said there are no objective charges which means they are all subjective; then this argument wins.
The argument wins at what? The point of putting the argument in such clear and simple terms is to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of it.
Again, it is the standards of subjectivity you have set through your own arguments that I am using here which is exactly what's forcing me to argue kindergarten level philosophy.
If the level of subjectivity that qualifies here is on par with what your alleging then the same logic must be applied to all criminal charges to make a fair comparison. So any charge using any law that wasn't written for the specific allegation becomes "bad", which means all criminal charges are bad since every charge is unique in some way. And if all criminal charges are bad then these charges are bad not because they are as you call them lawfare but because they are themselves... criminal charges. It's a tautology, which is to say it is a pointless meaningless statement.
It is an absurd conclusion, but the error is in the premise that whether an act is criminal is subjective, which is your assertion; not mine.
There's a saying in legal circles: "if the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither the facts nor the law is on your side, pound the table".
The curious part of this saying is the second part; "argue the law". What does that mean? Have you ever hear anyone "argue" that 2+2=4? Have you ever heard of a legal challenge to how many years a defendant must spend in jail after being sentenced to two counts each at two years a piece?
No, of course not. Because that's what a fully objective determination looks like. Whether the law properly applies to the actions alleged looks entirely different. Why do you think that is if this is all objective on the same level as 2+2?
I would really love to see how your "clear definition" of the law would apply to someone who shares US secrets with a foreign advasary without authorization. Cause you know, they inferred it must be ok.If the inference is correct they were authorized.
The question clearly presumes the inference is incorrect.
If they were elected POTUS then action and authorization are identical.
Until the person elected is no longer POTUS. At that point all the next president has to do is reclassify them in his mind and whoala, he's back in violation.
The absurdity works both ways.
Joe Biden didn't "think it was ok".Then it was willful.
Not according to the law.
If you believe the meaning of laws is subjective there is nothing to debate on that subject
And yet appeallate court challenges and SCOTUS oral arguments will continue to be had as they have been for all 200+ years of our country's history.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
That's exactly my point, in many if not most cases there is no such thing as an objective determination that any given act matches to what the law describes.If I were to teach a class on how to debate, and someone asked me "how do you know you've won (and are no longer hearing anything relevant)", my answer:When they start to talk about subjectivity.
Thank you for proving yet again what I've been saying; your schtick is transparent and predictable.
What you should be teaching the class is how to bullshit your way out of a position you can't defend. The only reason I'm here talking about subjectivity is because you are the one claiming it should never be a part of the legal process. So you brought subjectivity into the debate and are now claiming you're winning the debate because I'm talking about it. That's just plain stupid.
Your argument is essentially:
P1: Subjectivity in legal charges is bad
P2: the charges against Trump are subjective
C: the charges against Trump are bad
This is why I have to talk about subjectivity and the absurdity of an argument that relies on premises that can be used against literally any charge that has ever been brought against anyone, ever. All one has to do is play the infinite regress game until we find a point where subjectivity is required to proceed, then declare everything after it subjective, which is exactly what you've been doing.
This is why it is meaningful and relevant to talk about which actions are worse, because that is an inescapable factor in any law that has ever been crafted. But that's the conversation you refuse to have. Why? Because your position that what they did is the same is absurd and you know it.
When laws can't be understood by an average citizen you're not living in a free country. I declare any law that requires college to be understood to be unconstitutionally vague, obtuse, or esoteric.
Then go start your own country, because the founding fathers of this country understood that laws have be applied to real life, which will always be complicated. That's why the right to an attorney was built into the constitution.
The man who spends a month in jail "for" speeding (while telling a cop he's an asshole) is not experiencing "justice".
Correct. Perhaps next you can tell me what this has to do with anything I've argued.
Rather they should infer that the information is no longer classified.
So your conception of how classification of national secrets works is inference. I would really love to see how your "clear definition" of the law would apply to someone who shares US secrets with a foreign advasary without authorization. Cause you know, they inferred it must be ok.
It answers questions like "Why isn't every former president and all their staff in jail" and many other questions under that umbrella, such as "why would Joe Biden think having a bunch of classified stuff in a box in his garage is fine?"
Every former president and their staffs are not in jail because none of them repeatedly lied to the FBI telling them they didn't have the documents the government was asking to give back, none of them started moving their troves of government documents from location to location to evade detection, and none of them attempted to destroy the evidence of their crimes afterwards.
Joe Biden didn't "think it was ok". That is why he returned them immediately upon discovering them without anyone even noticing they were missing, and then fully cooperated with them as they searched every other location he could have possibly had more documents.
don't pretend a law is being violated when you just fucking admitted no crime was clearly defined.
A law being "clearly defined" (a completely subjective determination) is not a requirement for enforcing that law. What it means is that it's enforcement may have to run through some additional hurdles (as in judges, an appeals process and ultimately a jury) before it can be declared that the law in question was violated.
It's not an "admission", it's a basic understanding of how laws work.
And btw, there will always be laws that are not clearly defined so long as laws are written by human beings. That is not (as you would predictably argue) an endorsement of legal ambiguity, it's a recognition of reality.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mall
Ok this is not what I'm reading on Google point blank period.
What isn't?
Created:
-->
@IwantRooseveltagain
This guy is a convicted felon, who admitted in his testimony that he secretly recorded his former employer,” Vance said, adding: “Does any reasonable, sensible person really believe anything that Michael Cohen says?” - JD VANCEI’m sitting here listening to a guy on the stand that they had to get out of house arrest because he lied in another court to testify in this court,” Tuberville said. (In fact, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, not another court. He was also released from home confinement in 2021). - Tommy Tuberville
Do any of these MAGA cultists ever stop for a moment when attacking people like Cohen to wonder if he's so terrible and such a liar why was he at the center of Trump's world for so long?
(That was rhetorical, of course not)
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@IwantRooseveltagain
This is exactly what we are talking about when we say MAGA is a cult. At the end of the day it has nothing to do with ideology or policy positions, it's all about this one man. No prominent democrat would ever debase themselves this badly for Biden or any other party leader, and more importantly, there is no prominent democrat who would demand it.
The two parties are not the same.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
right, but the alleged "crime" is COMMON PRACTICE
I don't think newspapers paying for stories so that they could not report them is common practice, but that's just a hunch.
if killing a story in the middle of an election was rare, or unprecedented, then there might be an argument for it being a "crime"
The argument is to look at what the law says and determine whether the actions alleged meet the definition. What's not an argument is to claim that because other people have done the same thing it is no longer illegal.
What exactly is your issue here? You don't seem very interested in understanding the law since you keep bringing this up but haven't attempted anythin a single legal argument. So what is it? Are you claiming this is lawfare like ADOL? Are you claiming this is morally wrong? What is your issue, and why?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mall
Some.gettimg bent of shape, frustrated struggling to prove something they can't.
It's not them that are struggling. All you're doing here is closing your eyes and plugging your ears to every piece of information being thrown at you, and then boasting because no one can get you to accept the information.
If you don't want to understand anything about this subject that's on you, not on anyone else.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mall
But is a theory a fact itself?
If you are not capable of processing the answer to this question as anything other than a yes or a no, then the answer is yes, a theory (in science) is a proven fact.
In the real world however, things are more nuanced than that.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
if a crime is clearly defined in the lawit doesn't matter if there is a legal precedent or not
But you are arguing that this charge isn't clearly defined into law, so that is irrelevant. The question is; how to we handle charges of crimes that are not clearly defined?
Answer: we litigate them and use those results as precedent for future cases.
Therefore, your original statement that there is no legal precedent for this is irrelevant. That's not an argument against the charges.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
the very idea that applying thought towards enforcement of the law is itself the problem."thought", that is a strawman. The thinking that is appropriate is thinking about what the law says and whether the acts are objectively part of the category.
That's exactly my point, in many if not most cases there is no such thing as an objective determination that any given act matches to what the law describes. That is the part that inescapably requires thought, and that is the very reason why we rely on judges, lawyers, and to some extent juries to decipher it. That is why we have an appeals process, and eventually a supreme court. If the legality of all charges were objective we wouldn't be subjected to hours worth of absurd hypotheticals in oral arguments as justices try to figure out how to rule on a legal challenge.
the reason laws exist is to remove discretion from government to minimize tyranny and abuse.
Remove descretion *as much as reasonably possible*. Because again, removing it entirely is not humanly possible.
I shouldn't have to argue this because it's plainly obvious, but I do because that's what you're relying on to hold your position.
You try to claim what Trump did with his documents and what Biden did with his documents is the same. You can't possibly make that argument with logic and reason, so you try to make this a purely legal argument (despite having no qualifications). That attempt goes no where either because you still have the same problem so you end up with no other argument but to remove the very concept of descretion and subjective determination from the application of laws themselves, a tactic that would work against any charge if accepted which is exactly why it fails.
Laws are pointless (or worse) to the degree they allow discretion.Using it to persecute blacks is one of an infinite number of ways it can be abused
Anything can be abused, the possibility of abuse doesn't in an of itself doesn't justify it's removal (otherwise you'd be fighting to remove the 2nd amendment).
The remedy is to ensure checks against abuse, which our system of justice has plenty of. The problem is that no amount of checks could ever possibly be sufficient against a cult ideology wherein anyone who attempts to hold the cult leader accountable is de facto corrupt. That's like trying to change the mind of a flat earther.
Are you seriously about to go down the whole "Trump can declassify documents with his mind" path?I'm all the way down that path and always have been. If your claim is that classified documents can't be in the possession of ex-presidents then by the very act of taking them home a president declassifies them
Oh my god. Of course you believe this nonsense.
Please explain something then... If a president declassifies something in his mind, how does the rest of the government know to treat the information as such?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mall
When you Google search this, that's just what the definition comes out to. All the synonyms are of an idea, premise, presupposition, proposition, etc.The antonym is fact.
The first definition when you Google the word theory is exactly what I and everyone else here has been explaining to you all thread; a theory is a framework for explaining a set of facts.
But again, the conversation here has nothing to do with how it is used most often colloquially which is what dictionaries will moreso reflect. The question here is how the word is used in science, because "the theory of evolution" is a scientific term.
This is very much like the word guilty, which in any normal context just means "he did it" but in a courtroom the word guilty specifically means "proven beyond a reasonable doubt by a unanimous jury verdict". Same word, but in a courtroom it is a much higher standard.
Theory means just that but in the world of professionals who practice and adhere to the principals of science.
any form of reasoning based on a subset of facts to come to a conclusion doesn't necessarily make the conclusion fact
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
If both of these sentences are facts, wouldn't it follow that it is also a fact that Socrates is mortal?
It stands to reason that if evolution was fact, many religions would be shut down by now.
Most modern religions are based on the idea that 2,000 years ago a man rose from the dead. You can't possibly believe any scientific discovery will change the way religious people think.
A wise man once said "you can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themself into"
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
there is no legal precedent for charging someone with "defrauding voters" for killing a story
The case is far more complicated than that, but setting that aside... If no prior legal precedent was a valid reason for acquittal then no crime could have ever been charged under our legal system.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
Discretion exists to the degree of imperfection in the law.
And the laws will always be imperfect, because no two situations are exactly the same. That's why descretion is, has always been, and will always be necessary when it comes to enforcing the law, just as it is within every society on earth as well we every society that has ever existed all throughout human history.
To the Jim Crow southern sheriff being black was enough proof of being a troublemaker. That was the context they needed to pull over a black guy. People who believe in the fallacy you just expressed tie themselves in endless loops "oh discretion is good, but not for the wrong reasons..." bla bla bla
So basically; people have used descretion to effectively outlaw being black therefore descretion itself is bad.
This has essentially been your position all throughout. You're not arguing against "my" application of the law, you're arguing against the very idea that applying thought towards enforcement of the law is itself the problem. And of course you do this completely ignoring the fact that it is literally impossible to interpret what laws mean and how they would apply to any situation without it.
You mean like noting that all classification authority flows from POTUS and if he isn't authorized then no one is?
Are you seriously about to go down the whole "Trump can declassify documents with his mind" path?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
Excited? No I was just explaining to you why your cartoonishly ridiculous hypothetical would never happen in real life.It's happening right now.
The scary thing is that you really do believe this.
You cannot escape the fact that your interpretation makes hundreds of other people guilty and is a break with all precedent.
List these hundreds along with the evidence that would be sufficient to justify a prosecutor's resources to bring a charges. Then you'll have a case.
Your "worse" is the red herring. What you think of as "worse" has nothing to do with the implications of your interpretation of the law in question.
It's not a red herring, it's the entire point. You're comparing two very different things and claiming them to be the same because you can find a 1% overlap in the Venn diagram of illegality, then wonder why they're being treated differently.
If I was doing 71 in a 70 zone, I'm speeding, but I probably won't get pulled over. If I'm doing 138, I'll be lucky if I don't get arrested. And if I don't, they'll dish out a ticket for every violation they can find; seat belt, window tints, failure to signal, etc...
And then you'll come along claiming this is lawfare because both were speeding without a seat belt but only one got a ticket.
Laws are not written to account for every possible variation, degree of severity or contingency because that is literally impossible. That is why not only in this country but in every society that has ever existed in human history and every society that will ever exist within human civilization, the enforcement of the law will always require human discretion. That, by definition, means there will always be some difference from one situation to another in whether a charge is brought, how strongly that charge is sought, and it's eventual outcome. The question when comparing one charge to another is therefore not whether everything was applied exactly the same, but whether said discretion was appropriate given the totality of the circumstances.
This is where your arguments fall completely off the intellectual cliff. Your schtick by this point is transparent and predictable; find the point where discretion was applied, note the differences, then claim lawfare. No regard for how one situation was different from another, no regard for what those laws were written to protect against in the first place.
It's not a serious point of view, it's the weaponization of every technicality you can find to advance your political agenda, which is to burn it all to the ground because it isn't working for you the way you think you're entitled to.
And it would be one thing if this conversation was between law students who actually gave a shit about the difference between NY statue 175.10 vs 175.5, but neither of us do. We're talking about this only because of its political implications, so to pretend that "worse" is irrelevant to this conversation is fundamentally dishonest and frankly stupid. Worse does in fact matter In every sense because determining what's worse and treating it as if it was worse is the entire point of why we have laws and why we have a political system in the first place. It's why you are purporting to be so upset about what's going on right now.
Don't have time to respond to the rest. Maybe later.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
and what you seem to be saying here is that you don't want to haggle over legal detailswhile at the same time haggling over legal details
More like being dragged into it. This thread was supposed to be about the oral arguments at the SC bit this is the case the Trump supporters love to talk about because it's the only one where they have a plausible argument against.
But when I talk about not wanting to haggle over the details, I'm talking about the criminal statues and the legal theory connecting all of the different charges. What you're talking about is the basics and I take objection to the way you are both oversimplifying and strawmanning the case. This case might ultimately pass muster legally or not, but your portrayal of it is that it's so obviously absurd on its face which feeds right into the MAGA cultists conspiracy claims. It's far more complicated than that.
paying to kill a story in the middle of a campaign is not a crime
The judge seems to disagree with you, as well as higher courts that have so far failed to intervene.
it is not a campaign expenditure if there is evidence that the expense would have happened regardless of the campaigntrump paid to kill similar stories BEFORE he ran for president - so it is reasonable to believe he would have paid to kill this story regardless
That will be for the jury to decide. From what I have seen it seems obvious this was all about the election.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
Cohen wasn't running for president, but you seem to think if Trump told Cohen to pay Stormy that counts.
He didn't just tell him. Cohen worked directly for him and was paid by him, so Trump was every bit involved in the scheme as Cohen.
When you can explain the overlap been the Schwarzenegger campaign's involvement and falsification of business records with Trump's then you might have a case of a legal double standard, assuming California's laws are the same.It's all about the context you see. The portents were very different in California at that time.Someone saw an eagle high in the sky. The chicken bones were laid out quite uniquely.Always the same tired, failed, illogical...
Blah blah blah. Why quote me of you're not going to respond to a word I just said?
"Oh did Biden lie to the FBI", doesn't matter does it. The law you claim Trump broke doesn't say "willfully retain documents while lying to the FBI"
You're conflating two different things and as usual, don't understand the very basic idea of enforcing laws.
We can have this conversation in a political context or a legal one. Since neither of us are lawyers, the latter makes no sense unless we're really just in it for the intellectual exercise. Neither of us are, so that's just dishonest.
In a political context all we're doing is evaluating it from an overview. The law has all sorts of technicalities, it is the job of prosecutors to go after wrongdoing by using the laws on the books to go after it. You keep framing this as lawfare, that's just stupid. It's how every criminal Enterprise has been gone after for over a century. No one complains of lawfare when a mob boss is sentenced to prison for tax evasion.
The overview here is where we step back and recognize as thinking human beings that lying to the FBI in order to hold onto classified documents is worse than realizing you have them and immediately returning them.
If you don't want to acknowledge that basic fact and instead want to play the "let's pretend we're lawyers" game then here is a helpful snippet...
"Willful retention is not accidental, negligent, or reckless. Rather, a defendant only retains NDI willfully if he or she knows he or she possesses it and knows that such possession is prohibited due to the nature of the information."
So when you are lying to the FBI about the documents you possess, you are almost by definition guilty of willful retention. That describes Trump. It does not describe Biden. This isn't complicated.
here. You ABSURDLY claim "legal expenses" is a false label, but that does not in any way or in the slightest degree change the fact that you are also claiming hush money (compensated NDAs) is a campaign finance violation.
The $130k you paid to a porn star to keep her quiet is not a legal expense. That's a fact.
Paying to keep a story out of the public for the purpose of winning election sure sounds to me like a campaign expenditure. Not a lawyer here, but I fail to see how it is not.
As I've said about 3 or 4 times already, I really have no interest in the legal minutiae of this case, you guys keep dragging me into it because you'd rather talk about this than the cases this thread was about. But if we set aside the legal technicalities for a moment, you cannot pretend that you seriously believe Trump's primary motivation for paying off her and McDougal was anything other than protecting the campaign.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
Then they should put it in the charges... oh wait, they can't, no jurisdiction.
Remember when you were all excited about jurisdiction stopping abuses? Nope, not when there is lawfare to wage.
Excited? No I was just explaining to you why your cartoonishly ridiculous hypothetical would never happen in real life.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mall
That's what it is at the end of the day. We communicate in a language we can understand, otherwise there's no sense in communicating.
Agreed. The reason this particular misapplication of the word theory generates so much blowback is because it's a very common retort from theists wherein their own ignorance of what the word means in a scientific context is being used as an argument against an established scientific fact. On a large scale, this argument is dangerous and sets all of us back, so the more educated we all are the better.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
A payment from a personal account to a lawyer labeled as "legal expenses" has now been declared to be "campaign spending" without any input from the FEC or anyone involved.Basically if you went out to buy an apple, they'll claim you're trying to illegally hide campaign spending because if you don't eat you'll look unhealthy on camera and that might hurt your chances.
This reminds me of when "marriage sanctity" advocates claim that if we legalize same sex marriage then soon people will be marrying their coffee table.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
There is no real court case against Trump in New York because the analog of the burglary was a vaguely alluded to campaign finance violation that was never charged much less convicted.
The burglary example was a response to 3RU7AL who implied that an act which "by itself" is not a crime cannot be charged as a crime, a claim which is easily false.
You keep alluding to this campaign finance violation that was "never charged". You do know that is one of the central elements on trial right now... Right?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
the schwarzenegger case is an example of a tabloid paying for a story in the middle of a political campaign with the intent to kill the story
And tabloids are free to do that all they want. Tabloids aren't running for president and therefore aren't subject to campaign finance laws.
When you can explain the overlap been the Schwarzenegger campaign's involvement and falsification of business records with Trump's then you might have a case of a legal double standard, assuming California's laws are the same.
Till then, the fact that you continue to compare these two while leaving out the actual crime alleged here tells me you aren't well versed on the basics. Either that or you're just being fundamentally dishonest. Either way, if you are really interested in the legal theory here I suggest you spend some time googling it instead of pressing me to explain it even though I've said multiple times already that I'm not a lawyer and am really not interested in the legal manutia of this case.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
Now imagine that nobody was indicted for burglary but you're still getting charged with a felony as an accessory.
Sounds pretty messed up. Do you have a point?
Your "rule of law" is not my rule of law.
Yeah, that is obvious. My rule of law is about a process that begins with crafting laws, and following systems that determine whether those laws are broken. Your rule of law is one in which you are the only arbiter of what is legal vs what is not, any perceived wrong on your part nullifies the entire system, and every judge, prosecutor, juror, lawyer, professor or scholar who disagrees with you is fake and in on some plot to destroy the country.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
what's the difference between the arnold schwarzenegger case and the trump case under discussion regarding "defrauding voters" ?
Don't know anything about the Schwarzenegger story. You tell me - did the story contain every element I described above? If so, care to provide a summary? Cause if not, I'm not interested.
this is not a crime in-and-of-itself
I already explained this. Did you read it? Do you have any thoughts on it?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
Wow, I didn't know that refusing to comment on a story = suppressing that story.
What's when funnier is that the FBI who decided not to comment which you have somehow equated to "burying the story" ultimately reported to Donald Trump. So why aren't you going after Trump for suppressing the laptop story?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
What are the hallmarks of the disinformation Hillary Clinton spread regarding Russia?
Your claim, you tell me.
They didn't The FBI told them what to censor. The only decision they had was to defy the FBI or not. You can call that a right, but it's not one exercised often without serious real world consequences.
You guys are such liars. You're talking about one platform, I'm talking about the entire media apparatus. Beyond that, Facebook decided to work with the FBI, which makes perfect sense when your goal is to stay clear of a foreign disinformation campaign.
This of course has nothing to do with the actual topic, just a predictable redirect which is what happens when you have no argument. So feel free to reply to the above paragraph of you want to, it is irrelevant to this topic so I will ignore it.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
this is not a crime in-and-of-itself
Of course not, it's the same thing for most crimes.
If I walk into a sporting goods store and purchase two ski masks and two hunting rifles, I have done nothing illegal. But if my intent when making that purchase was to give it to my two friends so they could rob a bank, I am now an accessory to burglary.
Actions are not taken in isolation. No where else in life would we excuse behavior on the basis of "if we eliminate the context sounding this act then there's no wrongdoing".
Nowhere.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mall
Now people may use the term however they use it.
People always use terms incorrectly. The word dumb actually has nothing to do with your intelligence, it means you can't speak.
Insanity is a clinical designation, it doesn't mean "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results".
Begging the question is a logical fallacy where one assumes the premise they are trying to prove at the outset, it doesn't mean "it really needs to be questioned"
These are all creations of popular culture. Sometimes words get misused so often that dictionaries have to add definitions to account for it. Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.
"Theory" has fallen into the same phenomenon.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
if the story would not change enough people's minds to sway the electionthen how can anyone pretendthat burying the story "defrauded voters" ?
Because the law doesn't depend on whether the person succeeded in swaying the election. The act is what's (allegedly) illegal. In the end there is no possible way to know whether this would have made the difference, so if that was a requirement the law would be unenforceable.
The act of concealing pertinent information from someone before they make a decision is fraud, by definition.
do you think that burying the hunter biden laptop story also "defrauded voters" ?
No one buried the story, it was out there for the entire world to see well before voters made their way to the polls. What happened was that multiple platforms and news outlets approached the story with extreme skepticism based on the lessons learned from the prior election, how absurd on its face the story appeared, the source of the story, and the timing. As the intelligence community correctly stated, the story had all of the hallmarks of Russian disinformation, so any intelligent and responsible individual would have waited to learn more before treating it as factual.
But even setting all of that aside, these platforms made their own decisions as was their right. None of them paid to gain exclusive access to the story so that they could ensure no one ever saw it. All they did was say "we're not going to let our platforms be used to spread this until we can verify it's not Russian propaganda". That's a perfectly normal, reasonable, and responsible thing to do.
Now if it was the Biden campaign who paid for exclusive access to the story so they could bury it right before the election, and then in order to further conceal it wrote the expense off as legal fees, then that would have been shady at best and illegal at worst. And every Trump supporter would have no issue seeing the problem with it.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
Demanding an audit and then pointing out that you only need to find one more than the purported margin to change the outcome is.
Oh right right right, Trump called Raffensburger because he was concerned about the integrity of Georgia's election count and just wanted to ensure the vote tally was accurate. And if it just so happens that they find one more vote than Trump lost but and thereby flip the state, well that was a positive but completely unintended consequence which had absolutely nothing to do with why Trump called him.
And it's also just coincidence that the seven state's who's integrity Trump was just trying to ensure also happened to be the seven state's Trump lost by a hair. Again, nothing to do with flipping the results, just making sure the count is accurate. You know, to protect the voters.
I don't know what you get out of pretending to be this stupid, but I hope it's working.
It's illegal to point out things that are illegal?
It is when it's part of a scheme to pressure someone into breaking the law.
Google harder.
Translation: "I have no argument left but am incapable of changing my mind and accepting defeat so I'm just going to pretend that somewhere out there is a point that I understand which refutes your facts and that you are the one too ignorant to find it"
You don't care that they are trying to imprison a man for an invented felony because you're just so sure it's wrong.
You are so dishonest it's headspinning.
I just explained that I had no position on what the law here says because this is very complicated legalese and I am not a lawyer. So of course what you heard was "I know everything and can't possibly be wrong".
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mall
Anything else that is not about evolution that is called theory is actually a theory and not fact.
Words are often used differently in science than they are in every day life. When someone says "I have a theory", what they really mean is "I have a hypothesis". But I suspect people started using the word theory to describe this because hypothesis sounds nerdy and geeky. Theory has a better ring to it.
In science, a theory is a framework for which a set of facts is explained. Much like a hypothesis, except in science for something to be called a theory it has to be proven. So when you say evolution is "just a theory" that's like saying "all the prosecution did was prove their case".
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
like the precise repayments from Trump to Cohen,Not a campaign violation. Trump is free to spend his own money whenever he wants to.
This is yet another example of normal basic everyday ideas suddenly becoming unrecognizable to MAGA cultists.
If I give my boy "Fresh" $10k to blow at the casino cause I got it like that, that's me spending my own money on whatever I want. If I hand him that $10k to kill someone, that's me taking part in a murder.
What you intended to get in return for your money determines whether it is a crime and how serious that crime was.
Created:
Posted in:
so, yeahnot even slightly "irrelevant"
You asked me whether anyone did surveys to tell if the Stormy Daniels story would have made a difference.
So yeah, entirely irrelevant.
so they had to invent a FELONYwhich is the "conspiracy to defraud the american voter"which is obviously complete bullshit
How? That's exactly what they did.
I have no opinion and have made no argument regarding the illegality of Trump's actions. The legal theory here is complicated and ambiguous. What's not is the fact that this whole thing was clearly wrong. He did falsify business records, he did so to conceal information from the voters, and it very well could have changed enough minds to alter the results.
If you want to debate the legality of this have at it, I just find that conversation mostly useless here where no one actually gives a shit. We're only paying attention to this because this man may very well be our next president and because half the country has accepted him as their cult leader. Whether lawmakers in NY had the imagination to cover this in their crafting of the law is just pure distraction.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
Yep, nothing illegal about demanding audits.
Correct, there is not. Unfortunately for your delusion, calling up the secretary of state and telling him to "find" one more vote than you lost by is not "demanding an audit".
Not a very effective tactic if there was no credible fear he could carry through.
The effectiveness of the tactic is irrelevant to whether it is illegal. But to the point of effectiveness, every single person who has been the subject of Trump's public attacks can tell you about the death threats they receive daily. Anyone in their right mind would consider that pretty effective.
Second and more importantly, they didn't say it was Russian disinformation, they said it has all of the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. Those are two completely different things.So do you have a straight face when you type these things?
Do you? Or do I need to explain to you again basic English, comminution, and logic?
Do you understand the difference between "be cautious before accepting X as factual, and here's why", and "X is false"?
The person who recorded it was not in Georgia. Google it.
Sure.
"While there were rumors about a possible lawsuit against Raffensperger for recording the conversation without Trump's consent, the telephone call recording laws for both locations where this conversation was held, namely the state of Georgia and District of Columbia, only require "one-party consent", meaning any participant of a phone call can legally record it without another party's consent.[56][57][58]"
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
We have a check from Cohen to Stormy. No other evidence of campaign violations.
Sure, of you pretend the rest of it doesn't exist, like the precise repayments from Trump to Cohen, the witness testimony, and oh yeah, Trump being recorded telling Cohen how to make the payments.
And even if we didn't have all of that, you're suggesting what - that personal attorney decided to take out a loan against his home to cover up his bosses sexual affair and his boss, a well known micro manager, had absolutely nothing to do with it? Are these the kinds of favors your personal attorneys do for you?
You can't be serious.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
what this boils down tois the concept of "self identification"
Not really. I could call myself an atheist all day long, if I believe in a god I'm just being dishonest and if I do all of this while being open about my beliefs then I'm just butchering language and confusing everyone in the process.
You can call yourself whatever you want, I'm still going to categorize you in whatever way I think represents my conception of the label I apply to you. That's why it is important to understand what various labels really mean, which is why I always advocate for theists to engage in the conversation of what atheism should mean, rather than whatever they think it does. I think any theist who doesn't accept the "lack of belief" definition would learn a lot from it - if they are being honest.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mall
"Here, let’s try another example. Tell me whether the following sentence is True or False:
“This sentence is false” "False."Do you see the problem here?"No no problem for me at least, I'm direct I said.Even when you try to make a false equivocation I can demonstrate an example of being direct as possible.
Being direct is not something to be proud of when your answers are objectively wrong.
False is not the correct answer. If the sentence is false then that makes the sentence true. And in order for the sentence to be true it would have to be false. It's a logical contradiction whichever way you answer it, so the answer is neither true nor false.
The fact that I along with everyone else here is trying to educate you as to why you you do not seem to understand any of this does not mean we're not being direct. You are deeply confused.
If your answer was "neither", I didn't see you say that.
The whole point of this back and forth was to correct you on your claim that the answer was either a yes or a no. My answer was not the point, your inability to understand anything other than a yes or a no was.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
have they even done any surveys to determine if this stormy daniels thing would have made any difference whatsoever ?
That's irrelevant to whether it's a crime. We have campaign finance laws for a reason and many politicians have faced severe penalities for violating them.
But setting that aside, anyone who remembers 2016 and the aftermath of access Hollywood would definitely recognize that this very well could have turned the election. We might find it hard to imagine today given how in the tank the republican party is for Trump but they were not there yet at that time. The republican speaker of the house cancelled every campaign event with him and republicans everywhere were calling for him to step out of the race.
He was paying to conceal pertinent information from the American people right before they were to decide whether he whould be the man to lead their country. However the legality of that act works out, it's not hyperbolic to emphasize the seriousness of that offense.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
It was also remarked on by Mitt Romney who....Mitt is very unpopular across the country. Just saying.
Yeah, he's unpopular because he's a reminder to republicans on what they used to stand for before giving themselves to the MAGA cult. So what?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
Part of how you know something is a cult is when continuing to believe in it literally makes you dumber.Cue the MSNBC/WAPO crowd saying Biden is in his prime and smarter now than he ever was....
Queue the deflection...
Chicken and egg fallacy, you can't demonstrate without looking first.
Nonsense. Look at what happened in NC in 2018. They looked at the returns and discovered a significant irregularity (a real one, not the silly ignorant examples MAGA followers point to), so they investigated and lo and behold, the republicans were the ones cheating to try and steal the election.
You need a predicate to begin an investigation. Trump throwing a temper tantrum doesn't qualify.
Also, chill with the insults, it's just signalling you are more angry than reasonable.
Sometimes they're warranted. The positions you guys take in these debates when defending Trump are so absurd they just don't deserve to be taken seriously. Like I said, these are rules and/or ideas we apply unquestionably everywhere else in life but suddenly now that we're talking about Trump they go completely out the window.
It reminds me of arguing with 9/11 truthers and watching them twist their entire view of the world around the conspiracy instead of applying it the other way around to recognize how ridiculous it is. What's frustrating is knowing that there are so many millions more Americans doing the same thing. This is why we are on the brink of national collapse. History will be studying this period in American politics for centuries wondering how so many fell into thle MAGA cult.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
you don't know anything if you choose not to look.
That's called an audit, which is done statewide, not only in the places where a conspiracy theory president of the United States who is also the leading candidate demands that you look to find him the votes he needs to flip the result.
It is illegal, read the lawYour claim, your homework.
The prosecutors already did it when they filled the indictment. Read it.
There is no process for challenging election results. People have just used civil suits in lieu of congressional debate and it is an ill fitting mechanism indeed.
Civil suits is the process. That's how a rule of law works.
So he can wield it even if it's not his to wield?
It's called lying and intimidating. Not a difficult thing to understand, if you were actually trying to.
Everyone knows that Trump had many more ways to go after people, like his Twitter account that every republican is terrified of.Super scary, people might listen to him
Yes, it is scary, and it's a fact objectively proven by the increase in death threats received by every person Trump goes after. It was also remarked on by Mitt Romney who shared in his book stories of senators who voted to acquit Trump in his impeachment trials out of great for the safety of their family.
That is why there is no requirement of threats to be explicit in the law, the rest of the country can figure out what threat is even if you pretend you don't.
like they might listen to CNN... or all those "intelligence" officials that all signed a letter that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation when it was in fact NOT.
More evidence of the effectiveness of propaganda. You are the epitome of a puppet follower.
First off all, the fact that intelligence officials signed this letter has absolutely nothing to do with CNN. CNN didn't tell them what to do, CNN reported on it, because that's what as actual news networks do.
Second and more importantly, they didn't say it was Russian disinformation, they said it has all of the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. Those are two completely different things.
The funniest part was the call was illegally recorded. "this is the way the law works" rofl... clown
As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about. The recording was legal, Georgia is a one party consent state. Google it.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@RaymondSheen
Everyone has gods, though, in some sense, everyone is theistic
This just comes down to whether we are speaking the same language. I know of not a single atheist who defines a god as anything other than a powerful supernatural being (at minimum). If you are calling anything else a god and using that redefinition of the word in your definition of atheism then you may be typing words into your browser but you are not communicating with anyone here.
BUT the word literally means the theory, doctrine and/or practice of no gods. Atheist. The prefix a, in this context, means without. Theos means god and ism means theory, doctrine, practice. Atheism is the theory, doctrine and practice of lacking gods.
If as you acknowledge that the "a" in atheism means without, then it literally means without the theory, practice, or doctrine. Therefore calling that a theory, practice, or doctrine is every bit as logically absurd as calling ignorance a form of knowledge.
Beyond that, I really don't understand why you insist on wasting time with this. Atheism is really simple; I do not hold the belief that a god exists. That's it, why the need to bootstrap all of this other garbage onto it? If you want to know what any individual thinks or believes why not just ask them? Why create a label that in the end won't apply to the millions of people who identify as atheists?
A much more worthwhile conversation I think is what should the term atheist should be thought to mean. Theists love to insists it means "the belief that no gods exist" which I would argue is logically untenable and an entirely useless definition. That would be much more interesting than diving through suffixes or claiming a lack of something really means the presence of that very thing.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@IwantRooseveltagain
Kinda like how Trump fully repaying a European bank was zero quantifiable material harm to New York?So we should all be able to lie on our mortgage applications? How did that work out in 2008 when borrowers and lenders both misrepresented their credit worthiness and the quality of the loans going in to mortgage backed securities? It was the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression.
When it comes to the duty or responsibility to hold someone accountable there are two general reasons; the first is based on the immediate harm caused. If I assault someone and that person is harmed I must now be held accountable for it.
The second is based on the preservation of systems that are necessary for a multitude of reasons (safety, profit, etc.). If I violate a policy at my job and am not punished that will encourage others to violate it as well, which in turn will result in harm to the company regardless of whether my individual actions resulted in any immediate harm.
Part of how you know something is a cult is when continuing to believe in it literally makes you dumber. Ideas that apply everywhere in life that are so basic and so simple to understand, all of a sudden have to be re-written in order to keep your cult allegiance straight. It's absolutely remarkable how Trumpers cannot see this.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
Go on….You go on, you're asserting it's illegal, but all you've said is "pressuring". It's all pressuring to change the outcome by changing the procedure.
It is illegal, read the law and then perhaps the dictionary.
Well at least you didn’t try to argue that ridiculous position, that gives some hope that you’re really not that dumb even though it does show that you are fundamentally dishonest, with yourself at best.
Here, let’s try this: Do you think there is a reason why there is a process for challenging election results written into the law that involves a court of law with legal filings, an established burden of truth, legal representation on both sides, and a judge, but what is not written into that law is the right to just call the person in charge of elections and telling them how many votes you need then to go out and "find"?
It wasn’t Trump’s to wield genius.Then there was no threat *grins with halo hovering*
If it wasn't Trump's to wield that's part of what makes it so egregious. Second, what stupid statement. Everyone knows that Trump had many more ways to go after people, like his Twitter account that every republican is terrified of. The fact that he recorded the call itself demonstrates this, he knew Trump was going to attack him if he said no, this is why the law works the way it does.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
Oh, so you can't look for 11,000 fraudulently tallied votes for Biden if your name starts with a T?
You have to demonstrate that there are fraudulently cast ballots before having a reason to look for them genius.
And looking for them is the job of the state officials who were in charge of administering the election, not of the candidates to declare the ballots fraudulent and then tell the Secretary of State that they needed to go find them.
Created: