How is former president of the US Donald Trump still free when a lot of the accomplices in things he has been indicted for are already in jail and or prison except him?
I am asking here because all the political subs don't allow a question, and US politics used to seemed so simple until to understand this man came along.
When you're a billionaire, you can do whatever the hell you want in Murica.
When you're a billionaire, you can do whatever the hell you want.
Nah, it does depend a bit on the country. Didn't several russian billionaires (aka oligarchs) ... erm.... have accidents last year? So I don't think money helps you a lot in a system like that. It gets them further, no question. But ultimately it didn't matter.
Unless you're a Chinese billionaire and say something bad about Winnie the Pooh
Part of it is because there are still looming constitutional questions about whether a president, current or former, can be indicted for his actions during his presidency. I think we've mostly resolved those, though. A substantial and powerful cadre of political thugs is still going to try to sue to throw every conceivable barrier in the way of a reasonable interpretation of the law, but that just takes time to wade through the bullshit.
Another big problem is that Trump captured a huge amount of the judiciary, at all federal levels, by putting cronies into high ranking judicial seats. It's the main thing Republicans have been doing for, like, 50 years. Putting a case in front of any one of those is a landmine, and that minefield has to be carefully navigated, and that also takes time. We're basically done with that part, now.
Almost 50% of the voting public voted for this motherfucker. His approval has dipped sharply since then, but still, a huge portion of the US public is willing to do just about anything to make sure "their guy" wins. They have proven nearly invulnerable to rational argument, emotional argument and any appeal to empathy or compassion. They will lie to get on that jury, and then they will vote for his acquittal if they don't get caught. Voir dire--the process of choosing that jury--is going to be one of the most harrowing things any prosecutor ever has to do. And it has to be done correctly because it's extremely important that once the wheels of justice start turning, that they reach the correct verdict.
Any thinking person knows what that verdict has to be. But there's no guarantee that we'll get it.
And if we don't get it, we see the rule of law start to collapse at all levels. Remember the 1992 riots after the cops that beat Rodney King got acquitted? Imagine a whole country of that. The prosecutors in these cases are thinking about that. And that's why they're being extremely meticulous about every detail of these proceedings, because their errors could cost us a lot more than Trump getting away.
It feels like, while in theory it might be possible to convict a former president, in practice it'll be literally impossible to find a jury who aren't biased in one way or another, because everyone has a strong opinion about the man. I'd bet my life savings that for virtually every potential juror, how they voted in 2020 has a bigger impact on their verdict than any evidence either side could possibly provide.
@starman2112 @xantoxis it's not about bias is about facts. If proved that something happens is not biased. It is called applying the law.
@xantoxis something must be very wrong when you have near 50% ppl voting for president someone like #mangomusollini after 4 years to comprove how unfit he is.
We knew something was very wrong when he even made it to the primary in 2015. The guy is a mockery of every aspect of what people traditionally considered to be decent.
💀
Do you have anything to say, or are you going to leave it at nothing?
What, in your opinion, is the reason why we're at where we are with regards to Trump?
Nice, a three sentence callout without any refutation or detail.
If you are so confident in their confident incorrectness, put at least a minimum of effort into furthering the discussion.
If you look at everything a politician does and think "How does this get them more money or power?" then things make more sense. There are a few exceptions but roll around with the pigs long enough and they get muddy too.
Well, aside from what others are saying...
Try to picture Trump on the phone with the Proud Boys, giving them explicit instructions or discussing strategy. Even if he did talk to them (which I doubt), surely it'd be his usual "We're going to do great things, great things, we're all great people, we're gonna turn this thing around, it's going to be beautiful!"
When Russia collaborated to help Trump get elected, do you figure they talked on the phone in person? Or emailed back and forth? Motherfucker couldn't make it through a one-page intelligence briefing, I'm not even sure he can write. Surely it was Trump's people working with Putin's people (several levels down in both cases).
You need to prove that Trump personally and intentionally violated the law. It's not enough to show that shady shit was going on around him. And that's hard to prove, since he generally was working at a remove. And this is a guy who's been in and out of courtrooms his entire adult life; surely he has some instinct for what kinds of things to avoid.
Except when he was clearly hear saying he wanted the Georgia officials to find exactly enough votes to win, on a phone call to them.
I think my personal favorite was when he said on tape that he had stolen classified documents, they were definitely classified, that he could have declassified them and definitely chose not to do that, and that the person he was showing them to 'shouldn't look too close' at them
Yes! He stepped right into that one.
The two indictments about Jan 6th and the plot to use fake electors offer a detailed look at a conspiracy. This isn't just mob talk about "it would be awesome if this happened" – there is evidence of a coordinated effort to create fake electors and attempt to steal an election. The act of creating fake electors is a crime. The conspiracy to create fake electors is a crime.
All of these things are a crime. The problem is, in America, people who have power are held to a higher standard. Trump will get all sorts of concessions, and slow this down like mad. What he also has is an entire network carrying water for him. Because of Fox News – which was started to avoid another Nixon, he gets to both sides this.
Right. So to start out you prove there was a conspiracy, and you convict some of the members, and then finally you have enough evidence to go after the leader.
Trump wasn't directly involved in illegal stuff (in most cases), he was doing it through underlings. So you need to start with the underlings, and roll him up last.
Look into RICO laws, it makes it much easier to convict people of those types of nebulous crimes. They were pretty much invented to take down mob bosses who "never personally did anything illegal."
The GA indictments include RICO charges.
Yeah. But RICO charges require that you've got cooperation and guilty pleas from lower-ranking members of the organization, and they're willing to point the finger at the leader and say "he's the one who told me to do it". So, yeah, that's part of the reason why he's the last one in the group to see the inside of a courtroom.
Surely it was Trump’s people working with Putin’s people (several levels down in both cases).
Surely you have information that contradicts the investigations then right?
no you have to make sure that he was involved with the conspiracy to break laws you don't have to prove that he actually did anything as long as he was involved with the conspiracy that's the whole point of Rico and conspiracy charges to begin with
You can go to jail for being head of a criminal organization or conspiracy. This requires that 1) prosecutors prove that the conspiracy was in fact illegal, and engaged in illegal activity, and 2) that you were in fact the head of that conspiracy. That all requires cooperation from other defendants. So it takes time to build a case like that.
Finally, some good fucking answers.
If you come for the King, you best not miss.
This is what it boils down to. All this time, I kept seeing all the shit he did and kept wondering the same question. But the flurry of indictments over the past little while has answered it: they were biding their time, making sure all their ducks were in a row, so they could all collectively take one giant, perfect, swing for the fences. We can only hope they don't miss.
It has been a taboo to go after previous politicians, so all prosecutors are trying their best to ensure that they've followed every procedure to the letter, which has taken a while.
We are also dealing with a person with a long history of doing whatever he can to stretch out court cases.
Wrong. Prosecutors always start at the bottom. Plea deals for future testimony is extremely standard. Don't let the reddit brigade convince you otherwise.
Trump has avoided legal trouble so far because there hasn't been enough evidence to guarantee charges would stick. With the latest few indictments, he either basically admitted to the charges or other new evidence came to light. It's taken so long because the prosecutors are making sure they built absolutely bulletproof cases, and because the nature of the trials (first time a former president has been charged), and because trump's lawyers are trying to delay as much as possible. It's basically a huge mess, but the general sentiment is that trump is screwed... Eventually.
He's committed many crimes with enough evidence against him. He announced on TV he was obstructing justice. The justice department refused to charge him cause he was president, hinting he could be impeached.
Because current US politics and justice system are a sham that only serves the rich.
How come there are still people who get the death penalty but later get found to be innocent, while when it comes to an ex-politician, they gotta drag the process out for years and years to find every single detail?
Not only that but we say corporations are people, yet when they are found to have knowingly caused actual human death, we punish them by making them pay a small fraction of the profits they earned through those same actions. Fuck capitalism.
It's a good question - all Constitutional scholars agree he has violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and is therefore ineligible to hold any political office (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/donald-trump-constitutionally-prohibited-presidency/675048/) but does America have the collective strength to admit it?
The laws for who goes on the ballot are set by the individual states.
I suppose the Federal Election Committee could deny his federal application, or the Attorney General of the U.S. could sue the FEC to force an injunction against his filing under the 14th? It's not clear.
In any case, regardless of how it got there, it would end up in court and be decided by the Supreme Court, which is ultra conservative right now.
“All”? If you can’t even get all dentists to agree you should use toothpaste, I doubt it. More importantly, he’s not convicted of anything yet
odds are he will be
This answer doesn't address the question. Did you comment on the wrong post or are you just generally always this confused?
I mean, I would never talk directly to them. And you would never talk directly to them. But neither one of us would go on the record on video saying we could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot somebody.
There have been plenty of cases where he's done some incredibly stupid things that he could easily have gotten away with simply by playing along. Hell look at the documents, he could have literally just made photocopies of them said my bad and It would never have even hit the press.
I think the legal system is just moving as slowly and carefully as possible to make sure he can't lawyer his way out of these things.
Donald Trump is a fucking moron. But you didn't answer the question asked, did you? Perhaps you and Donny T have a bit more in common than you'd like to admit?
Did you read the last part of the comment?
If they arrest him, there is a major concern of right-wing terrorism.
Police departments don't want that to happen because they'll have to arrest their own.
Government departments will also start to point fingers at one another, as loyal maga fucks deep inside places may refuse to act or do their job.
The legal way is the most non-violent way to handle this, even if it does drag on and on.
I know this may be pedantic, but he was “arrested” the same day he was arraigned for the first three indictments (he will surrender later this week for the fourth one in Georgia). He just wasn’t handcuffed and isn’t being detained while he awaits trial. He was also booked at the courthouse instead of the police station.
and isn’t being detained while he awaits trial
I expect his secret service detail will act as an assurance that he won't skip the country.
All true. Arresting him would also make the Secret Service’s job enormously more difficult.
Only if he is in GenPop which won't happen.
Or easier, because they can just stand guard on his cell.
Money and power. He has (or claims to have) alot of money and alot of people on the Right still seem to follow him, but I think that's more just based on momentum, there's really nobody else on the Right that they have that's as "charismatic" as Trump. The closest they have is DeSantis, and he's just some wannabe fanboy with no personality. I personally think Trump is pretty much done and washed up, the GOP just doesn't know what else to do at this point (certainly he still has a shot at the presidency, but I doubt it'll work out). The Right had one really good shot at a violent coup on January 6, and the only reason they really managed to pull anything off was because Trump himself was in charge at the time and he was able to subdue the Federal response to it.
I think one of the main reasons he's being treated with kid gloves is out too much caution of it appearing political. I think the DOJ is afraid of appearing partisan if the Democrat's #1 political opponent were to be locked up (regardless of how slam dunk the evidence is). In any other country, we'd assume that it was a dictator trying to tighten their control of the political system by locking up their opponents, and that's exactly what Biden/DOJ/Democrats are being accused of. Personally I think there's going to be some amount of protest or violence if/when he gets locked up/sentenced/found guilty/whatever, they may as well just do it now to get it out of the way. The longer we wait and the closer we get to the election, the worse it's going to get. It honestly won't matter how much evidence is trotted out during the multiple trials, or how many judges/juries find him guilty, Republicans are still going to bitch and whine about it. He's obviously guilty though, there's more than enough evidence.
The rich and powerful are exempt from the rules
The rich and powerful are exempt from the rules
Close. They have the resources (money and connections with money) to fight back.
Nah they're just exempted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShellyMiscavige
Most of their crimes are never even investigated.
They always get away with it.
I don't think Trump will spend a day in prison. Simply because they don't want to set a precedent, that a u.s. president can go to jail.
Worst that might happen, is that he's barred from running again.
You would think. The reasoning is that you don't want presidents being afraid of political opponents going after them for decisions they making while they're president. Not that I agree with that logic. Trump needs to be made an example of.
State cases will definitely put him in jail. They don't care about any of the political nonsense and honestly I'm not seeing the DoJ backing down either.
Honestly if they dont put him away i think it will only embolden his group to make them feel they all are untouchable.
Wouldn't he have to be convicted of something in order to be barred? What criteria other than a conviction in a court of law could be used to disqualify him?
Not all crimes will keep him from being president. Any guilty verdict from Georgia will send him to jail for a minimum of 5 years, no probation, no home detention. The only charges that if found guilty that would disqualify Trump from being president are with Jack Smith. Essentially, Georgia will send him to jail if he lives long enough and it will be possible for Trump to set another first, the first president to serve from jail because he could not pardon himself for state crimes and the governor has very limited pardon powers in Georgia.
The only good thing about trump is that I've learned a lot about how gov't, justice, and red states are. Good is probably the wrong world.
Have faith. Coming from a country that jails our ex prime minister, I’ll say that it takes quite a lot of time.
Law is very different for rich people.
It's very political, because of course it is!
As the president, and now ex-president, of the United States there are a significant number of political factions at play. If you're going to go for the king you better not miss, definitely applies to the politics of the president.
People in his orbit, don't have the same political protections, they won't create as much trouble when they go down. So they go down. They simply don't have the protection the leader has.
It's very political, because of course it is!
The fact that the political is influencing the judicial is a thing should warrant a "very unfortunately", being an utter travesty of the very concept of separation of powers. That it gets an "of course" says a lot about the state of the system itself.
You sit through seasons of the Sopranos wondering the same thing about Tony.
It's as simple as this: -Politician does something illegal -Politician is caught -Politician tells their party members they didn't do -Party members believe politician because they're of the same party -Politician now has millions of supporters vouching for them not to get convicted -Politician doesn't get convicted
It's happened before, it's happening now, it'll happen again.
This is one of the worst answers you can find in this post.
great way to gloss over all the detail
The most practical answer is because he’s watched by the Secret Service 24/7, which isn’t the case with a lot of people.
Maybe because he hasn't been convicted of anything yet?
The actual answer is because every judge so far has deemed him trustworthy enough to not try and run from the law while he awaits trial.
Question the wisdom of those judges for yourself, but there are plenty of people in jail that haven't been convicted of anything.
That's the point of "jails" compared to "prisons" btw.
You go to a jail while awaiting trial. You go to a prison after conviction.
He's a Honeypot /s
I assume they're being quadruply careful with trump. The last thing they want is to take him to court and lose.
Because the oligarchy will never charge one of their own. No matter how loud they scream it and deny, he is one of them
Because he's the right's main leader and he is a former president. That's all, really.
They need to do it properly, in such a way they won't hamstring themselves in the future. Remember, theyre just as bad, just not as public.
No they aren't just as bad.
there's very little likelihood that he goes to jail. he has lifetime secret service protection. do the secret service go to jail with him? it's more likely that they will make some sort of weird agreement that has nothing to do with jail. he's immune to criminal law basically
Because this needs to be done 1000% right, there is no margin for error, everything has to be done in an iron clad manner that cannot be dismantled by half-assing it. Indicting a former president is a first in the history of this country, and this former president is nothing short of a cult leader with millions of unshakable followers, many of whom are armed to the teeth and ready to burn this country to the ground for him. So this has to be done very friggin carefully.
Like Mueller half-assed it and the end result was nearly a fucking coup. Can’t let that happen again.
Mueller didn’t half ass anything. He conducted his investigation and determined that crimes were likely committed, but that he didn’t have the power to bring charges in his position as special counsel and it would be up to the AG.
Which is true. A DOJ special counsel is not the same thing as the independent counsel that used to exist, which was what Ken Starr was when he investigated Clinton.
A DOJ special counsel is completely beholden to the AG and DOJ policies and can’t bring charges without the AG signing off on them.
If you actually read the mueller report, it’s extremely damning and he turned it over to the AG and Congress to do something about it. The AG declined to bring any charges based on a DOJ memorandum that says a sitting POTUS cannot be charged. The House impeached Trump over the findings and the Senate failed to convict and remove him.
The current AG could still bring criminal charges over the conclusion of the report, but at this point it’s been so highly politicized that it would be impossible to get a conviction on.
Muller half assed the investigation, on top of that corrupt Barr hid all the important findings, and Bitch McConnell swept the whole treason under the rug - that all lead Orange Man to be even bolder with his treason and rise of blatant lawlessness within the Republican Party.
I don’t disagree with what you said but I just wanted to point out how entire republican machinery is responsible for the imminent death of democracy in this country. Not just Muller’s half assed investigation.
I wonder if that’s a typo and a maga webmaster meant to slip in a sneaky “fuck Biden”?
You spelled ignorant morons wrong
Holy shit you're in a pickle with this one America.
So why do we have to be so afraid of his followers that we are giving him special treatment to dissuade their violence? Instead of, you know, fighting back or having them jailed too. 🤦
Nearly 63,000,000 people voted for trump in '16.
If even 1% of them are crazy fucks, that's 630,000 people to deal with. That's not something to take lightly.
Doesn't make it right, but it's another layer of complexity.
In addition to being done right, he has to be pampered. I hate him passionately, but I really mean that. Subjecting him to the indignities of stuff like handcuffs, a mugshot, an orange suit, etc will turn him into a martyr in the eyes of his cult followers. And while the rest of us would enjoy seeing it, that’s not necessarily bringing out the best in us either. Donald Trump is an enormous pot-stirrer and unless you really want the pot to boil over you need to tiptoe around him, as unfair as that is.
they're gonna continue to be terrorists no matter what we do and I'm sick of bowing to their terrorism
How is it that different from indicting a sitting president...
I admire your optimism.
If it was really that bad the cia would have him killed. It’s just because he had a good team of lawyers to make sure that when he did anything he did it was either defendable or on someone else so it’s hard to get him.
Haha you think they would martyr him? Not likely
The CIA really isn’t going to assasinate a prominent politician, let alone a former president. It would have massive consequences from delegitimizing the democratic system to causing riots all around the country.