Even granting this hypothetical, which is unlikely given that the only reason he hasn’t been charged years ago was the shield of the Presidency, your argument is that because they would let him off easy incorrectly if he wasn’t running that prosecuting him correctly because he is running is somehow bad? Because hippocrazy?
Ah I see this has been addressed.
The funny part is that Trump has made “running for President and being President” a very overt part of his defense strategy! He’s told us this is what he is doing!
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Chris Hayes, for one.
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Sure
You lost me here. The DA knows if he would act differently on this prosecution if Trump were running for President or not.
I do. I’ve read both for over a decade and from my perspective they haven’t changed at all in their views and outlook on the world.
He actually doesn’t. Think about it this way. If you ask him the question, he’ll almost certainly say no. But someone like Taibbi (and you too, I suspect) would almost certainly not take that at face value. Why? He’d probably argue something like 1) The DA might know that it is a “political prosecution” but will lie to avoid admitting to a political prosecution. Or 2) The DA might genuinely want to believe that he is not the type of person who would engage in a “politcal prosecution” so he will use motivated reasoning to defend his decision and probably convince himself that he’s not politically motivated. If (2) is the case, even the DA can’t be 100% sure if he would prosecute Trump if he weren’t running because of the potential for motivated reasoning.
Also, as we’ve already discussed, if Trump wasn’t President for 4 years or a Presidential candidate now, many aspects of the case(s) would be different. On the one hand, some of Trump’s crimes may not have received as much public scrutiny b/c there might have been less incentive for the media/congressional committees/investigators to look into certain things. On the other hand, Trump’s power allowed him to delay or even prevent the disclosure of certain evidence by overseeing some investigations, using claims of Executive Privilege to block testimony, and having the ability to dangle pardons in front of potential witnesses.
“Trump was never President/isn’t running now” changes so much about Earth 2 that it is impossible for anyone to know for sure how this stuff plays out in that universe.
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All that can be true but political prosecutions are still a thing that can happen and are wrong and dangerous. Is there a better way of thinking about what makes a political prosecution a political prosecution?
In my mind the question is not a yes or no determination about whether something is “political.” Especially with Trump, but with almost any politician, an investigation/prosecution is going to have some political dimension. As I and others have said earlier, the fact that Trump is not already in jail is “political” in many ways.
I guess my analysis is more a broader question about whether the prosecution is legitimate vs not legitimate, and I view it as a spectrum between the two extremes.
And I consider some questions like:
- what was the basis for starting the investigation? On one extreme would be a situation where the DA or the Cops start investigation someone for no reason at all simply because of a political vendetta. Something, like, oh, I dunno, ordering the IRS to “randomly” audit a critic. On the other end of the spectrum, the investigation is initiated because some completely disinterested third party provides strong evidence of a potential crime or the crime is uncovered in the course of investigating something else where the new target was not a suspect when the case started.
My personal opinion based on what I have read is that the prosecutors didn’t actively set out to get Trump as much as they followed leads generated through public reporting and other investigations. Those investigations may have been influenced by politics, but they also uncovered what appear to be genuine crimes, so I’m cool with the DA looking into it. To hold otherwise would basically make prominent figures untouchable, and I think that’s a bad rule.
- the second question is how strong both factually and legally is the case? How novel are the charges? How credible is the evidence? It’s hard to evaluate the case at this point without seeing the evidence, but my personal opinion is that while the Trump case does have some unique features, it’s still within the normal boundaries of the types of cases this office routinely brings and that it will be based on evidence that is probably reasonably strong (at least strong enough to support charges and convictions in other cases).
I realize that these questions aren’t necessarily definitive either. I do think they are more useful than playing the metaverse game though because the argument can be based on things a bit more concrete. Playing the “but what if” game is having a debate where the only way for one side to win is by disproving something that is actually unfalsifiable.
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This is the logic that Keeed is attempting to bring forward:
This is a political prosecution
Political prosecutions are bad
Therefore this indictment is bad
Whereas mine and most people’s rationale is:
Trump is a horrible person that has committed a bunch of abhorrent crimes
He is finally getting busted for one of them
Therefore this is good
But color me skeptical that what we have here is an actual principled stance and not just another excuse for you, Taibbi, and Glenn to defend Trump at any opportunity. Could you imagine any of them having the same reaction if this was happening to Hillary instead?
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If trump was a poor black man, would he be charged?
I have repeatedly said I don’t know if this is a political prosecution or not. If it is a political prosecution, then it’s bad. Not sure if you’re consciously lying about what I’m writing or just not reading my posts.
And my point is that if the prosecutor started with the thought of “Trump is a horrible person who has committed a bunch of crimes” and then went looking for the crimes, then it’s a political prosecution. Like if he didn’t have any idea what the specific crimes were when he set out investigating Trump.
And so now you’re accusing me of Bad Faith and lying. Welcome to the mute list, talk to you never.
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Oh, okay, so you agree this isn’t a political prosecution.
I agree with everything you write there, but really all of those things would be ways of analyzing and supporting the question of would a political figure be charged with the same thing if he was a private citizen. One of which I’ve already mentioned: are they investigating the man or the crime? So your two bullet points are a good way of going about playing the metaverse game.
Many people seemingly don’t care about the details of any of this, they just want to “get” Trump. I’ll circle back to how this all started: if Taibbi is right that this investigation is political, and I’ll accept both of your bullet points on how you should measure political investigations, then it’s extremely harmful. No matter how bad Trump is or how much he deserves to be gotten.
There is no serious debate about whether Trump is a criminal. All this sophistry about if he’s being targeted is the dumbest fucking shit I’ve ever read.
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The thing that frustrates people is that you act like you’re uninterested in actually determining whether it is a political prosecution.
I think we should start with the assumption that it is not a political prosecution until proven otherwise. Has someone like Taibbi proven otherwise?
They haven’t released the indictment yet. How the fuck am I supposed to evaluate sealed charges?
Fair enough. And I guess my objection to Taibbi is that I don’t think he has actually genuinely wrestled with the possible strength of the case against Trump. Nor do I think he has fully considered the implications of a rule that would make Trump and others like him untouchable. I think he and a lot of othe folks in the IDW are so invested in the narrative that they are being silenced and persecuted for their views that they will believe this is a illegitimate political persecution no matter how strong the case turns out to be and despite the evidence that Bragg and others have actually bent over backwards to not charge Trump in certain cases precisely because the norms against “political prosecutions” are so strong.
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