Apologies - rereading that I'm being pedantic rather than disagreeing!

A better way of putting it might be "least cut and dried", mainly because we still don't know what the charges actually are. What we do know is that Trump listed a $130,000 payment to a porn-star as a legal/business expense and there's a paper trail to prove it. A jury may well decide that that's OK (now there's an interesting legal precedent) due to the "mitigating circumstances" of him being white and wealthy, but I'm struggling to think of any justification for paying off porn-stars as a business expense, unless you are in the business of producing porn films. At this point I'd be unsurprised if Trump were indeed involved in that.

The elephant in the room though is the way the GOP continues to stand behind a man who at best could be described as "sleazy" and avoids being described as criminal only for the lack of a conviction on a host of pending charges that have been staved off by an army of lawyers. The publicly available evidence leaves no doubt that he's as guilty as hell of election tampering and inciting insurrection if nothing else.

No problem, I agree that's better wording because there's no question he did what's alleged publicly.
He's definitely guilty of those and who knows how many more crimes just while in office or since leaving. In his business career his company was recently found guilty of lying about values of property to scam banks and the IRS. I call him a career criminal.

Trump has been indicted with more than 30 counts in the Manhattan case, so that sounds like the prosecutors are pretty confident about their case!

Twice-impeached indicted loser ex-president Donald Jessica Trump.

We've been through this before:



"Say good-night, Dick."

[Famous anagram of Spiro Agnew's name: "Grow a penis."]

Its frankly unbelievable how long it's taken the U.S. to address this domestic danger.

Spearthrower wrote:Its frankly unbelievable how long it's taken the U.S. to address this domestic danger.

It shouldn't be unbelievable. The US legal system operates on an almost zero accountability basis for the wealthy and powerful. Even if Trump is the person who shows where the line is drawn for tolerance of the ability of the wealthy to operate outside of the law, it only highlights how much the line is very much in the wrong place.

Sendraks wrote:The US legal system operates on an almost zero accountability basis for the wealthy and powerful.

The more countries I've lived in, the more widespread this factor seems to be. It shouldn't be surprising in a nation with high corruption like Thailand (it's extremely prevalent here), but it seems to be the case everywhere: UK included. If you're rich, you live in an entirely different world to the common folk, not just in terms of material possessions, but in more abstract quantities like freedoms.

Spearthrower wrote:If you're rich, you live in an entirely different world to the common folk, not just in terms of material possessions, but in more abstract quantities like freedoms.

It's always been thus though. The difference now is that it's to some extent better than it used to be. Actual codification of the elite - as aristocrats - is no longer the norm in most countries. There are also fewer places where such elites can get away with literal murder.

There are still plenty of places where the elites can get away with murder mind.

No co-incidence that the main tensions in the world are between the forces of authoritarianism (MAGA, illiberal democracy, old Etonians, etc) who basically want to set themselves up as or support an aristocracy and "liberals" who want to hold everyone to the same rule of law.

Hence the tear-jerking when people like Trump and Boris Johnson are held to account.

Hence also the way in which Putin and his cronies are being put under pressure by having their "kill anyone and get away with it" cards pulled by the ICC.

(I'm getting more left-wing in my dotage in that more and more I'm automatically regarding members of such "elites" as criminals on the assumption that because they can, they will have broken the laws to which us plebs are held to account.)

I guess he's not paying for his own defence?

Just a hunch.

As I think I posted before, a nice quote I came across that it bears repetition...

There are two classes of people in this neo-feudalism. Those whom the law protects but does not constrain, and those whom the law constrains but does not protect.

I've just finished reading an interesting book...

The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous- Joseph Henrich

https://www.amazon.co.jp/Weirdest-Peopl ... 075&sr=8-1

Among many interesting ideas in this book was that the gradual bringing to heel of elites, the establishment of a system of equitable laws and the holding to account of the powerful was a strange and uniquely western phenomenon with its roots way back in the early middle ages. This underpinned much of the mindset that allowed the creation of our modern, western thinking about how the world should be. (Even though it was applied differential to our colonial subjects..ahem).

It seems that this fundamental principle is now being put to the test in broad daylight and in a fairly shameless fashion.
"I should not be held to any account whatesoever..." a basic truth for elites in places outside the west. Now being more or less openly stated in the west itself.

Now this should be interesting.

From the BBC News feed in regard to the spate of Pentagon leaks:

We now know that Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, has been arrested in connection with the leaked documents.

However, we still don't know exactly what he will be charged with.

A short while ago, Attorney General Merrick Garland shared a short statement saying only that Teixeira was arrested in connection with alleged "unauthorised removal, retention and transmission" of classified defence information.

At the Pentagon briefing earlier, General Pat Ryder said that the leak was a "deliberate criminal act" and violation of protocols governing the handling of classified materials.

We'll learn more once Teixeira makes his initial court appearance.

I've posted this here as opposed to on the Ukraine thread since, well, compare and contrast this chumps treatment with Trump's for stealing mishandling far more sensitive classified documents.

Good gawd I hope that they are correct.

I'm a little skeptical that it was a brilliant chess move by Bragg, as opposed to a happy accident. Because this chess move depended on Trump not pleading the 5th in his second deposition in a civil case. Because he did plead the 5th in the first deposition, something like 400 times.

Fox admits to lying about Dominion and settles for USD 787.5 million... but of course, ringleader Trump once again just waltzes off without paying for his self-serving deceit.

Spearthrower wrote:Fox admits to lying about Dominion and settles for USD 787.5 million... but of course, ringleader Trump once again just waltzes off without paying for his self-serving deceit.

is that (legally) as good as „guilty“ verdict?

Well, common sense tells us that Fox thought they had a fair chance of losing this and that the settlement is a tacit admission of wrongdoing on their part. But the problem is, common sense and Fox news are not the two most collocated terms in the language. The acritical thinkers who lap up Fox nonsense (and I use the word 'thinkers' in a very general sense here) will just keep on keeping on.

It's bizarre to me that there isn't 'some kind of mechanism to deal with this. Yeah, yeah, free speech, but a convicted child rapist cannot work in a school. Convicted fraudsters should not be allowed to work in financial services. Convicted murderers should not be able to amass a collection of firearms, proven plagiarists should not be given tenure at universities and so on. So proven liars should not be allowed to continue in broadcast news. Or...perhaps they should be required to bookend every segment of the show
with some statement..."Hello, I'm proven liar Tucker Carlson and tonight I'll be .... blah bla ...So that ends tonight's show. Just remember that I am a proven liar." Make them state this every time they go on air.

For most of the rest of us, in addition to the general laws that we are subject to, there are specific standards that are connected to our employment. Certain things that we should not do which are particular to our professional status. A factory worker wants to date a university student...well, if it's consensual, go ahead. A university professor wants to date his/her student...nah...

It seems that repeated, provable and egregious lying should have serious consequences for any broadcast media that self-describes as 'news'.