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I really wouldn’t nothing burger the alleged behavior, no matter how skeptical you should be about the authenticity/sourcing.
Hunter Biden was paid a very high salary to sit on the board of an Ukrainian energy company. Joe Biden can’t stop him from using his name to get these lucrative jobs. But if Hunter Biden later invited a Burisma associate over and set up a meeting between him and Joe, then that’s where Joe gets hit on corruption. Joe has claimed that he never discussed Hunter’s business.
For the cheap seats, I’ll repeat, that this is why the allegation is serious, while the story itself is pretty flimsy.
And yes, corruption won’t probably change a single vote, and Trump praises tinpot dictators and his family continues to run hotels with international clients. It still shouldn’t be too hard to see why voters don’t knock Trump so much on corruption allegations considering his opponents were Clinton and now Biden.
Twitter has now officially revised its position: it won’t ban stories and blacklist publishers. It will only censor hacked content posted by hackers, and label tweets that it thinks lacks context.
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On October 16 2020 12:58 Danglars wrote:
... It still shouldn’t be too hard to see why voters don’t knock Trump so much on corruption allegations considering his opponents were Clinton and now Biden...
As if his opponents matter in this case. No one cares about Trump corruption allegations because he is Trump and it's just expected of him at this point. He has the full blessing of his party and supporters to do any outrage and not be punished for it.
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On October 16 2020 13:34 Starlightsun wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2020 12:58 Danglars wrote:
... It still shouldn’t be too hard to see why voters don’t knock Trump so much on corruption allegations considering his opponents were Clinton and now Biden...
As if his opponents matter in this case. No one cares about Trump corruption allegations because he is Trump and it's just expected of him at this point. He has the full blessing of his party and supporters to do any outrage and not be punished for it.
That is a very dangerous slope bud.
His lawyers can say all the shit they want. 'He can shoot someone in the middle of a NYC street and get away with it.'
It's the most ridiculous bullshit.
His day will come and it's coming soon.
He cannot fucking avoid it.
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On October 16 2020 17:14 StarStruck wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2020 13:34 Starlightsun wrote:On October 16 2020 12:58 Danglars wrote:
... It still shouldn’t be too hard to see why voters don’t knock Trump so much on corruption allegations considering his opponents were Clinton and now Biden...
As if his opponents matter in this case. No one cares about Trump corruption allegations because he is Trump and it's just expected of him at this point. He has the full blessing of his party and supporters to do any outrage and not be punished for it. That is a very dangerous slope bud. His lawyers can say all the shit they want. 'He can shoot someone in the middle of a NYC street and get away with it.' It's the most ridiculous bullshit. His day will come and it's coming soon. He cannot fucking avoid it.
America does not hold it's white collar criminals accountable for their actions, I'd be EXTREMELY surprised if Trump faces any real consequences for anything hes done
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On October 16 2020 17:58 Zambrah wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2020 17:14 StarStruck wrote:On October 16 2020 13:34 Starlightsun wrote:On October 16 2020 12:58 Danglars wrote:
... It still shouldn’t be too hard to see why voters don’t knock Trump so much on corruption allegations considering his opponents were Clinton and now Biden...
As if his opponents matter in this case. No one cares about Trump corruption allegations because he is Trump and it's just expected of him at this point. He has the full blessing of his party and supporters to do any outrage and not be punished for it. That is a very dangerous slope bud. His lawyers can say all the shit they want. 'He can shoot someone in the middle of a NYC street and get away with it.' It's the most ridiculous bullshit. His day will come and it's coming soon. He cannot fucking avoid it. America does not hold it's white collar criminals accountable for their actions, I'd be EXTREMELY surprised if Trump faces any real consequences for anything hes done
I don't think that's totally true. It's just white collars criminal are usually quite good at not breaking the law too obviously. American prosecutors are relentless if they have a "big" target that they can successfully convinced.
Trump won't end up in jail because no one wants to divide the country even further and it's actually much less costly for the country as a whole to let it slide.
God knows he deserves it and I would love to see him punished for his crimes, but considering who his base is made of, it would only make him a martyr, prepare worse versions of himself and fracture the republic further.
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On October 16 2020 20:04 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2020 17:58 Zambrah wrote:On October 16 2020 17:14 StarStruck wrote:On October 16 2020 13:34 Starlightsun wrote:On October 16 2020 12:58 Danglars wrote:
... It still shouldn’t be too hard to see why voters don’t knock Trump so much on corruption allegations considering his opponents were Clinton and now Biden...
As if his opponents matter in this case. No one cares about Trump corruption allegations because he is Trump and it's just expected of him at this point. He has the full blessing of his party and supporters to do any outrage and not be punished for it. That is a very dangerous slope bud. His lawyers can say all the shit they want. 'He can shoot someone in the middle of a NYC street and get away with it.' It's the most ridiculous bullshit. His day will come and it's coming soon. He cannot fucking avoid it. America does not hold it's white collar criminals accountable for their actions, I'd be EXTREMELY surprised if Trump faces any real consequences for anything hes done I don't think that's totally true. It's just white collars criminal are usually quite good at not breaking the law too obviously. American prosecutors are relentless if they have a "big" target that they can successfully convinced. Trump won't end up in jail because no one wants to divide the country even further and it's actually much less costly for the country as a whole to let it slide. God knows he deserves it and I would love to see him punished for his crimes, but considering who his base is made of, it would only make him a martyr, prepare worse versions of himself and fracture the republic further.
So win or lose, Trump will continue to destabilise the country for the foreseeable future. I just hope that the EU steps up to the plate and become the next world leader and not China/Russia...
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I don't think it's clear whether prosecuting Trump would split the country further, the Trump fans who love him will claim basically the same thing regardless and the Republicans who held their nose won't defend him any longer once he has no more political capital to spend. Among many differences, one big one here relative to Ford's pardon of Nixon is that the public already knew what Nixon had done. Here, Trump has used his office and trademark litigation tactics to keep tons of information under wraps, so there are good reasons to pursue him in court, if not for convictions then for getting evidence on a public judicially supervised record.
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On October 16 2020 20:04 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2020 17:58 Zambrah wrote:On October 16 2020 17:14 StarStruck wrote:On October 16 2020 13:34 Starlightsun wrote:On October 16 2020 12:58 Danglars wrote:
... It still shouldn’t be too hard to see why voters don’t knock Trump so much on corruption allegations considering his opponents were Clinton and now Biden...
As if his opponents matter in this case. No one cares about Trump corruption allegations because he is Trump and it's just expected of him at this point. He has the full blessing of his party and supporters to do any outrage and not be punished for it. That is a very dangerous slope bud. His lawyers can say all the shit they want. 'He can shoot someone in the middle of a NYC street and get away with it.' It's the most ridiculous bullshit. His day will come and it's coming soon. He cannot fucking avoid it. America does not hold it's white collar criminals accountable for their actions, I'd be EXTREMELY surprised if Trump faces any real consequences for anything hes done I don't think that's totally true. It's just white collars criminal are usually quite good at not breaking the law too obviously. American prosecutors are relentless if they have a "big" target that they can successfully convinced. Trump won't end up in jail because no one wants to divide the country even further and it's actually much less costly for the country as a whole to let it slide. God knows he deserves it and I would love to see him punished for his crimes, but considering who his base is made of, it would only make him a martyr, prepare worse versions of himself and fracture the republic further.
Almost nothing is TOTALLY true, but predominantly America doesn't give two shit about it's white collar criminal, and you've outlined some reasons in your post, white collar criminals in the US are often too important or costly to go after, so we just let them slide.
We shouldn't let people be above the law because some people won't like their hero being affected by it, Trump is a criminal and should face consequences for his actions, sadly we won't do shit about it once he's out of office, we'll all be chanting, "guys! lets move past it, we need UNITY now!" and it'll reaffirm that no matter HOW grotesque and flagrant and shitty lawbreaking rich people are they do have little or nothing to fear when it comes to breaking the law.
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What crimes are we speaking of here, tax fraud?
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On October 16 2020 12:24 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2020 12:07 Doodsmack wrote:
The question is whether you'd be calling for don Jr and sr to be investigated if jr did the same thing shortly before his dad pressed ukraine for action on something. Dems have been very quick to try to criminalize trump in recent years.
BTW people like Barb McQuade and outlets like salon and wapo are firmly in the "criminalize trump" camp. Just take a glance at their Twitter accounts. The insider trading accusation being only the latest example. What do you mean when you say "criminalize trump"? Do you mean... - Frame Trump for a crime he did not commit with the intent of legal repercussions.
- Frame Trump for a crime he did not commit with the intent of non-legal repercussion (i.e., lose the next election).
- Change the law to make Trump's previous behavior illegal, but with no intent on legal repercussions due to expost facto restrictions.
- Change the law to make Trump's previous behavior illegal, and aim for legal repercussions despite expost facto restrictions.
- Change the law to make Trump's previous behavior illegal with the expectation that Trump will continue that behavior after it becomes illegal.
- Draw attention to Trump's actual criminal behavior to effect legal repercussions.
- Lie with claims that Trump did something illegal to cause non-legal repercussions.
- Something else.
Id say 7 mainly, though I certainly hope 1 and 2 aren't implicated by the collusion investigation. I do believe there was fraud in how the trump family transferred fred trumps inheritance (using a shell company to transfer it in small chunks over time to evade the estate tax). But that's not even what people talk about when they try to criminalize trump.
Edit - in theory the fraud could have been a crime by Fred trump only, since he was still alive I believe.
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On October 16 2020 08:17 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2020 00:55 JimmiC wrote:On October 16 2020 00:36 Doodsmack wrote:
Given what happened with the collusion investigation, and the wrench it threw into the wheels of Trump's presidency for two years, it would be entirely just for any and all info on it to come out before the election. Transparency is good. The NYT is slow-rolling the release of Trump's illegally leaked tax returns, too, for election, I mean transparency purposes. There is no point for them to rush it, nothing is happening to Trump while he is president, so sooner won't start any earlier further investigations. There business does better with multiple bombshells not one. And finally, if you believe he is a tax cheat, and all the other reasons you have uncovered on why he should not be president, and especially if it rises to the level of where you believe he is a danger to the country and democracy, exactly why would you not release the info in the best way to harm his chances to win? Also, transparency is the job of the government. The job of the media is to try to hold them accountable when they are not being transparent or honest. There is no reason that the news should have to release everything all at once. This is clearly just sour grapes that they are getting your boy. When what you should be thinking is holy shit how bad is Trump that they could queue up bombshell after bombshell for weeks on end about his corruption and incompetence. With past candidates you would be lucky as a media organization to find one, with Trump you have so many you have to schedule them. This is incredibly messed up. Well half of what they are putting out, such as the insider trading accusation, is just spin/misinformation. They're not actual bombshells so I don't see a need to slow-roll. If they had actual bombshells from the tax returns, we'd have seen it in the first installment. More likely they are planning to use spin and innuendo to damage his election chances. And I say this as someone who believes their story from a year or two ago about Fred Trump's inheritance was an actual bombshell. For some reason that story doesn't seem to have stuck though.
The president being several hundred million dollars in debt on personally guaranteed loans to unknown lenders that are due in the next four years was not enough?
Paying Ivanka 750k as an 'external' consultant to the Trump organization so it can be written off as business expense? Trump getting 70000 dollars worth of haircuts as a tax write off?
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On October 16 2020 23:11 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2020 12:24 micronesia wrote:On October 16 2020 12:07 Doodsmack wrote:
The question is whether you'd be calling for don Jr and sr to be investigated if jr did the same thing shortly before his dad pressed ukraine for action on something. Dems have been very quick to try to criminalize trump in recent years.
BTW people like Barb McQuade and outlets like salon and wapo are firmly in the "criminalize trump" camp. Just take a glance at their Twitter accounts. The insider trading accusation being only the latest example. What do you mean when you say "criminalize trump"? Do you mean... - Frame Trump for a crime he did not commit with the intent of legal repercussions.
- Frame Trump for a crime he did not commit with the intent of non-legal repercussion (i.e., lose the next election).
- Change the law to make Trump's previous behavior illegal, but with no intent on legal repercussions due to expost facto restrictions.
- Change the law to make Trump's previous behavior illegal, and aim for legal repercussions despite expost facto restrictions.
- Change the law to make Trump's previous behavior illegal with the expectation that Trump will continue that behavior after it becomes illegal.
- Draw attention to Trump's actual criminal behavior to effect legal repercussions.
- Lie with claims that Trump did something illegal to cause non-legal repercussions.
- Something else.
Id say 7 mainly, though I certainly hope 1 and 2 aren't implicated by the collusion investigation. I do believe there was fraud in how the trump family transferred fred trumps inheritance (using a shell company to transfer it in small chunks over time to evade the estate tax). But that's not even what people talk about when they try to criminalize trump. Edit - in theory the fraud could have been a crime by Fred trump only, since he was still alive I believe. So if they are lies, why hasn't trump sued the wapo for defamation yet?
Could it possibly be that they are not lies?
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I don't think Trump gets out of being charged with crimes after he leaves office. He's under criminal investigation by NY state (this is why his taxes kept being in the news even before NYT leaked them), which are crimes that cannot be pardoned by any president.
On October 16 2020 23:03 Doodsmack wrote:
What crimes are we speaking of here, tax fraud?
Yes. He's also named as having violated NY election law in Michael Cohen's case due to the Stormy Daniels payment.
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Northern Ireland27464 Posts
I still think it’s plausible that Trump has a fair few grenades with his name on it when he leaves office.
Not because the ‘system works’, but he’s pissed off so, so many people across so many different spheres. To an almost staggering degree.
If he was less abrasive in how he did things I’d share your skepticism Zambrah.
Just being a piece of shit by our regular folk standards isn’t enough, but hey annoy the wrong people and good luck with that. Bernie Madoff dies in jail for the noob mistake of defrauding the rich, the entire financial sector skates for 2008 for not ruffling those feathers.
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On October 16 2020 23:29 Nevuk wrote:I don't think Trump gets out of being charged with crimes after he leaves office. He's under criminal investigation by NY state (this is why his taxes kept being in the news even before NYT leaked them), which are crimes that cannot be pardoned by any president. Show nested quote +On October 16 2020 23:03 Doodsmack wrote:
What crimes are we speaking of here, tax fraud? Yes. He's also named as having violated NY election law in Michael Cohen's case due to the Stormy Daniels payment.
The election law thing is an abstract, made up theory. Cohen pled guilty to it for some odd reason, but John Edwards was acquitted of basically the same theory.
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If there are no repercussions, the next democrat president can be as corrupt. Which i'm sure conservatives would loathe.
It's all about setting a precedent to me.
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On October 17 2020 00:13 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2020 23:29 Nevuk wrote:I don't think Trump gets out of being charged with crimes after he leaves office. He's under criminal investigation by NY state (this is why his taxes kept being in the news even before NYT leaked them), which are crimes that cannot be pardoned by any president. On October 16 2020 23:03 Doodsmack wrote:
What crimes are we speaking of here, tax fraud? Yes. He's also named as having violated NY election law in Michael Cohen's case due to the Stormy Daniels payment. The election law thing is an abstract, made up theory. Cohen pled guilty to it for some odd reason, but John Edwards was acquitted of basically the same theory.
Regardless of anything election related, his tax crimes should 1000000% put him in prison. People in positions of power need to be extra accountable. If the laws don't apply to Trump, we don't have laws.
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Theory: big tech is coming down hard on disinformation and leak stuff because their internal data, when compared to 2016, shows an extremely likely actual “blue wave”, as mirrored by these fundraising numbers. They hope they’ll be able to avoid the wide scale regulation clearly rapidly approaching by throwing democrats a few bones to make it seem like a smaller fish to try and appear as a lower priority
Democrats running in the most competitive Senate races saw cash flood into their campaigns at unprecedented levels over the past three months.
Filings with the Federal Election Commission posted on Thursday show the extent to which Democrats have overwhelmed their Republican rivals in the money race. In 13 of the closest-watched Senate contests in which Democrats are seeking to flip GOP-held seats, challengers raised a combined $347 million and outspent Republicans by about $150 million.
By comparison, the Republicans in those races pulled in a combined $132.6 million and, on average, burned through money at a much faster rate. While some GOP incumbents started October with more cash on hand than their rivals, they failed to outpace Democratic fundraising in all 13 races.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/521362-democrats-see-cash-floodgates-open-ahead-of-election-day
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Northern Ireland27464 Posts
On October 17 2020 00:31 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2020 00:13 Doodsmack wrote:On October 16 2020 23:29 Nevuk wrote:I don't think Trump gets out of being charged with crimes after he leaves office. He's under criminal investigation by NY state (this is why his taxes kept being in the news even before NYT leaked them), which are crimes that cannot be pardoned by any president. On October 16 2020 23:03 Doodsmack wrote:
What crimes are we speaking of here, tax fraud? Yes. He's also named as having violated NY election law in Michael Cohen's case due to the Stormy Daniels payment. The election law thing is an abstract, made up theory. Cohen pled guilty to it for some odd reason, but John Edwards was acquitted of basically the same theory. Regardless of anything election related, his tax crimes should 1000000% put him in prison. People in positions of power need to be extra accountable. If the laws don't apply to Trump, we don't have laws.
What laws has he actually broken? From going over the articles it seems far more morally egregious than illegal.
Iirc there were a few that potentially could have transgressed from morally heinous into actual illegality, but the IRS is somewhat neutered into actually prosecuting.
Richer you are the more lawyers you have and the more expensive it is to try and nail you.
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On October 17 2020 00:13 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2020 23:29 Nevuk wrote:I don't think Trump gets out of being charged with crimes after he leaves office. He's under criminal investigation by NY state (this is why his taxes kept being in the news even before NYT leaked them), which are crimes that cannot be pardoned by any president. On October 16 2020 23:03 Doodsmack wrote:
What crimes are we speaking of here, tax fraud? Yes. He's also named as having violated NY election law in Michael Cohen's case due to the Stormy Daniels payment. The election law thing is an abstract, made up theory. Cohen pled guilty to it for some odd reason, but John Edwards was acquitted of basically the same theory.
All laws are abstract, made up theories. I'm not sure what your point is.
Edwards is a likable guy who also happens to be a lawyer. His chances at a jury trial were good, and even then he was only found not guilty on 1 of the four counts (the other 3 were mis-trials). I don't believe that Trump stands a reasonable chance at a jury trial, outside of blatant jury nullification. His chances are also quite shitty at jury trial since it'd be in NYC.
Realistically, he should only be tried by judges, as there's no way for him to have a fair trial by jury.
A more apt comparison would be Duncan Hunter, who declared he was going to fight it in court and then changed to plea guilty after the evidence wound being mountainous and the trial would have been in a location that loathed him.
This isn't the hatch act. There's an entire manual devoted to prosecuting these types of crimes at the DoJ. People have definitely been found guilty at trial for these crimes in the past.
https://www.justice.gov/criminal/file/1029066/download
FECA contains its own criminal sanctions, whichprovide that, to be a crime, a FECA violation must have beencommitted knowingly and willfully and, except for campaignmisrepresentations and certain coerced contributions, must haveinvolved at least $2,000 in a calendar year. 52 U.S.C. § 30109(d).FECA crimes aggregating $25,000 or more are five-year felonies,and those that involve illegalconduit contributions andaggregate over $10,000 are two-year felonies. 52 U.S.C. § 30109(d)(1)(A), (D). Moreover, all criminal violations of FECAare subject to U.S. Sentencing Guideline § 2C1.8, that theUnited States Sentencing Commission promulgated in response to a specific Congressional directive.FECA violations that either: (1) do not present knowing and willful violations, or (2) involve sums below the statutoryminimums for criminal prosecution, are handled non-criminallyby the Federal Election Commission (FEC) under the statute’scivil enforcement provisions. 52 U.S.C. § 30109(a).
5Finally, FECA violations that result in false informationbeing provided to the FEC may present violations of 18 U.S.C.§ 371 (conspiracy to disrupt and impede a federal agency), 18U.S.C. § 1001 (false statements within the jurisdiction of a federalagency), 18 U.S.C. § 1505 (obstruction of agency proceedings), or 18 U.S.C. § 1519 (creation of false records in relation to or contemplation of federal matters).
The only reason Trump wasn't charged with this is that the DOJ has a policy that the president is immune from prosecution while in office. (Or alternatively, that the attorney general declined to prosecute). He's named in Cohen's indictment as "Individual One".
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