The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: retweets WHITE POWER, condemns Black Lives Matter, regrets criminal justice reform

https://mobile.twitter.com/business/status/1276131822666240001

It’s a two horse race and anything can happen and all that, but it’s getting difficult to see scenarios where Trump wins. COVID is going to get worse and so is the economy. Showmanship and bluster, which is all Trump knows how to do, aren’t very effective against tangible domestic crises like the pandemic and civil unrest, besides which Trump isn’t even managing to strike the correct tone on either. Neither CHINA VIRUS! nor LAW AND ORDER! really seem to be getting anywhere. The attack ads featuring Trump’s early attempts to treat COVID as a PR problem write themselves. Even if those polls are wrong by like 7 points they’re very strong for Biden and it’s just hard to see how it gets better.

I think Trump needs Biden’s brain to implode in a big way, but it’s going to really need to be a big way. I’ve posted before about how scandals and gaffes and such matter to the extent voters want them to matter, which is why a nothing scandal like the Clinton email server became such a big deal. And people like Biden. They don’t want to discuss how his brain is pudding, it’s mean. You saw that in the debates when people tried to attack him.

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Cheating. No methods are off the table.

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Withdrawing a guilty plea before sentencing is generally a thing that’s allowed though, right? Which is what I understand he has been trying to do for at least a year.

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Haha yes he’s been doing it at least as long as Bill Barr has been AG I believe

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Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32(e), a defendant does not have an absolute right to withdraw his or her guilty plea prior to sentencing. Instead, a court will permit adefendant to withdraw a guilty plea prior to sentencing only “if the defendant shows any fair and just reason.”

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7096&context=jclc

No, it’s generally not allowed and is normally fought fiercely by the prosecution.

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Yea but we getting to the point where cheating is the only way he wins. It’s pretty clear the virus isn’t going away in the summer heat. Trump’s campaign probably figured the numbers would die down like the flu. They could claim victory and gamble numbers wouldn’t rise until after the election. But it’s clear that ain’t happening.

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OK. So it’s possible but difficult to withdraw a guilty plea before sentencing, and basically impossible after sentencing?

Are all the FBI notes and texts that have come to light in past months that apparently Flynn didn’t know about relevant to the question of should Flynn be allowed to withdraw his plea?

Basically my position on this is that innocent defendants get pressured to accept pleas all the time and in principle if the defendant says this is what happened and now wants to fight the case I’m generally going to be sympathetic to him. And the underlying investigation of Flynn seems like horseshit (the fucking Logan act? gmafb) so what are we even doing here.

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keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed

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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1276165243849388032
( twitter | raw text )

Vonnegut blows my mind. Reading him, I find myself starting to write in a similar style. I haven’t read this and I’m not sure I want to.

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and so it goes.

It’s not like it’s a tutorial in how to write like a Nazi propagandist.

Most underrated Vonnegut: Galapagos

I hope you’ve read that one!

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Fully agree. Yet, this doesn’t make me feel great.

Even in this forum, I think people are underestimating the level of shenanigans that are possible with this election.

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https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1276166493613547520

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I mean, you might be sympathetic to the defendant as a dispassionate third party, but that doesn’t mean the prosecutor or even the judge would be.

Addressing Iron’s point, in order for it to be a “slam dunk” sign off for the judge, there has to be more to it. Like the prosecution and defense and judge all get together and the prosecutor goes, “Look your honor, it has come to our attention that some exculpatory evidence exists that strongly suggests that defendant did not in fact do these crimes. In light of this, not only do we not object to him dropping his guilty plea, we’d also like to drop the charges.” Or the prosecution admits to the court that some kind of prosecutorial shenanigans/misconduct went on. Or something along those lines.

I’m not seeing anything like that here. As best I can tell, sometime after our boy Barr got the AG gig, Flynn coincidentally decided to stop cooperating…then he decided to withdraw his guilty plea…then the prosecution magically decided they were cool with it for no particular reason. So, no, a sane judge should absolutely not rubber stamp that nonsense. It is his duty to ensure the integrity of the prosecution especially given the nature of the case. And if the DOJ was on the level here they would have no problem with that but instead they appealed to the DC circuit because BILL BARR IS FUCKING CORRUPT JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST STOP BEING SO OBTUSE LITERALLY ALL THE FUCKING TIME!!!

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I think you mean ”“free.”"

Bill Barr is corrupt but the investigation of Flynn was also corrupt and wrong. They were investigating him for a Logan Act violation (look up the successful prosecutions of that law) and said he lied about a conversation that they taped and had a transcript of, and that Flynn knew that they taped and had a transcript of.

https://twitter.com/tooningout/status/1275990850938388480?s=20

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And Capone went to prison for tax evasion.