There are two ways of looking at last nights exercise of the will to power masquerading as a speech by a senile old man:
The Ultimate Exercise of Berg‘s Seventh Law: Brandon, leader of a party whose acolytes have been dismantleing the rule of law nationwide, using administrative power to stifle opposition,and sending bands of thugs out to keep people in line,speaking from an SS-issue black and red stage flanked by Marines, painted half of America – his political opponents – as threats to democracy and domestic terrorists.
A Masterful Diversion: instead of talking about inflation, energy prices, a failing education system, unaffordable health care and education, catastrophic crime rates, the border crisis, national debt, the collapse of America’s foreign-policy, a nationwide mental health crisis, we are all now talking about Donald Trump.
And given how much extremism benefits from extremism, I don’t doubt for a moment that the Branden ministration is hoping last nights “Build back with Triumph of the Will“ address goads some less stable Trumpkin into doing something stupid, accompanied by lavish media coverage, to further deflect the nations attention.
I say, why not both?
Emery, probably best to ask yourself a simple question. Let’s imagine that a Democratic President had been hounded by the FBI for the past six years, with many of his friends and business associates not convicted of any crime, but rather “punished by the process” to the point of losing their homes and retirement accounts. Then the FBI abandons two centuries of precedent and raids that former President’s home.
Now, given that history, do you trust the FBI when they say they’ve carefully removed every document and item that might be protected under Presidential privilege.
Change the party of the President, and that’s exactly what we’ve got here. The court did correctly in light of what the FBI’s record is here.
So Al Capone’s biggest mistake in his career in crime was that he didn’t run for President?
Reading the decision quickly it appears to have a number of flaws. I would single out these:
It gives a remedy in equity. Normally you can only get equitable remedies where you come “with clean hands”.
The decision omits discussion of this important principle, but the sequence of events includes Trump refusing to hand over the documents (indicating he knew they were there) and claiming he had “declassified them” (indicating he knew they were secret government documents) and then handing some of them over in two successive incomplete instalments after each of which he said there were no more. That was why the FBI eventually has to get a search warrant. That doesn’t sound like clean hands.
The secret documents are by their nature secret documents produced by and for the government. It seems impossible that any of them should be subject to attorney-client privilege, which applies to documents created for the sole purpose of giving legal advice to Trump. They should have been carved out of the order. Executive privilege obviously cannot apply because the investigators are the executive branch of the US government and you cannot assert a privilege against the very entity that owns that privilege.
The injunction is especially egregious because it has been worded broadly. Has there ever been an injunction like this against investigating a suspected criminal?
Note that Emery defends the Clintons by insisting that because they were investigated so many, many times and never convicted of a crime, they must be innocent.
This is the opposite of what says about Trump, because he was investigated so many times and not convicted, Trump must be guilty.
Emery and Reason parted company long ago.
Emery, the clean hands also applies to the FBI. Now, given that the FBI spent years tracking down (including the Mueller investigation) bogus allegations against Trump, despite knowing full well that they’d not seriously checked the initial allegations, do they have clean hands?
Obviously not.
And since you mention the Clintons, obviously I’ve missed all those raids to get evidence from them. Tell me about them. Remember, for example, that Hilliary found those Rose Law film billing records in the White House the day after the statute of limitations expired. Clean hands? Really?
^^ Typical Trump blowhard response. Trumpers really don’t care about the rule of law at all.
So Woolly— you do not believe that the legal process to assess criminality should be judged on evidence. Why did Trump have all these papers in the 1st place. Why did he hide them and not return all of them? Then ask yourself whether any of this is a witch hunt.
If the American Constitution is to mean anything, criminality should be assessed on evidence only.
And all should be equal under law.
BB — my comment was directed to Woolly.
^^ I avoid foolish speculation, Emery. That’s how you avoid looking foolish. Maybe give it a try sometime? Just a thought.
Emery, understood you were addressing UMMP, but given that the Clintons had a large number of colleagues imprisoned for real crimes, and not just process crimes like Trump, one would argue that the Clintons also should have gotten that heightened scrutiny.
Unless, of course, that heightened scrutiny is inexplicably not applied to Democrats with far more evidence of wrongdoing.
^^ Obviously they should’ve moved for a special master.
And so we are at stage 3 Emery, the random statement that has nothing to do with, well, anything.
Emery has serious mental health issues.