The Situation: Were the Trump Trials Pointless?
The Situation: Were the Trump Trials Pointless?
What good is a criminal justice system that can’t do justice, protect democracy, or persuade voters?
Yet while the process failed, it was not entirely pointless. It served at least three functions that partially, though only partially, redeem it.
The first and most visible of the three is that the cases created a record. The record is substantially bigger than the portion of it that is public. Eventually, more of it may become public. But even the record we have now across three of the four cases (the Georgia case did not advance far enough to produce much of a record) offers a great deal of clarity and precision about what Trump did, about how he did it, and about what prosecutors were prepared to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury—and in one case actually did so.
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The second benefit is subtler, but it is one I witnessed with my own eyes. Whatever else Trump may have gotten away with, he did have a moment of accountability in New York. That moment lasted for six weeks this past spring, when Trump was forced to sit in a courtroom, day after day, as witness after witness came up and testified in his presence about his conduct before a judge to whose authority he was forced to submit. Trump then had to sit there while 12 nobodies deliberated about his conduct and judged him. And he had to sit there as they delivered that judgment on dozens of counts—against him.
I do not want to overstate the importance of this moment of accountability. I don’t believe for a second that the experience of watching that process and being judged changed him or will alter his future behavior. I merely want to suggest that it visibly disquieted him and that this process of being judged was unlike anything he had been through before. .
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... that moment of his conduct being subject to human judgment that he cannot persuade, cajole, or terrorize has, I believe, real value.
So too does a third aspect of the criminal justice process with respect to Trump’s conduct: the impact on those who aided him. While it’s clear that the cases against Trump are going away, and likely that Trump will pardon many or all of the Jan. 6 defendants, those facing charges in state court for 2020 election misconduct are not quite so lucky. They cannot be pardoned by the president, and freezing the Georgia case against him doesn’t necessarily freeze it against others. There are other state cases in a variety of jurisdictions. It’s hard to be a lawless president without the assistance of others. And these cases remain important because they may deter others from helping Trump in future lawlessness. And that has real value too.
The trouble is that none of it has enough value.
In the end, the process failed. If the Trump trials stand for one thing, they stand for the proposition that John Adams was wrong when he wrote that inspiring nonsense about having “a government of laws, not men.” The moral of the story of the Trump trials is that the criminal justice system will not ultimately rein in the tyrant if the people don’t want it to.
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Yep. Next question, please.
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They did provide the illusion of hope and a little bit of justice for the naïve for a limited time.
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Just another case of running out the clock. That's about all America does on anything now.
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What it proved is that the super rich have too much power. A power that shouldn't exist in a democratic society.
Right wing media has been given far too much leeway in spreading disinformation and misinformation. Every show, podcast, and news article that spreads easily disproven falsehoods should be prosecuted. Fuck "corrections". If an organization has to issue a correction that should be all they're allowed to say for at least a 24 hour period (basically, put them in timeout).
Basically, they need to be held to account for not doing due diligence on what they're reporting as fact. Unverified claims? It's simple: Don't publish that. Don't even bring it up as news at all until you feel safe defending your statements in a court of law.
We already have standards for defamation of individuals. What we need are standards of defamation of reality.
We can't rely on the civil court system to protect society from total bullshit. It's too expensive and there's so many ways to spout dangerous bullshit without defaming anyone.
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Basically, they need to be held to account for not doing due diligence on what they’re reporting as fact.
Here's the problem with your theory: Who decides what's "Fact"? Because as of January 20, 2025, the answer to that question is going to be "Donald Trump."
Your suggestion would just lead to Trump making an official proclamation that the 2020 election was stolen, Biden is secretly the leader of a powerful crime family, and Hatian people eat dogs. Anyone who tries to say otherwise would be facing jail time.
Be careful of what you wish for. You might get it.
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If an organization has to issue a correction that should be all they’re allowed to say for at least a 24 hour period (basically, put them in timeout).
When I was a kid and I lived in a flawed but mostly functional democracy, I remember that sometimes even the biggest TV channels would air a black screen with a single sentence for hours of primetime:
"We have falsely claimed that [...]. The truth is that [...]. As per law [...], normal programming is on hiatus for 2 hours. Programming will resume at [...]."
This is how it should work.
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That was clear pretty early on. The options are vigilante justice or no justice; the law is a joke.
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Yes.
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It was a dog and pony (bread and circuses) show for the masses. The oligarchy will never charge one of their own. While voters were consumed with Jan 6 and other shit their entire party made a hard swing to the right and no one noticed it cared. As long as their Boogeyman remains to the right of them they will continue moving to the right.
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Yup it absolutely served a purpose. It proved Trump is immune to any legal consequences.
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Worse than nothing. His fans are already pointing out he's innocent because he's going to stop the trials or pardon himself. They don't care what the pardon entails...
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Let's wait out the next couple of months, but I am almost convinced that at this point a billionare can shoot 10 random people in the head in Time Square with 100 cameras pointed at him, and the victims families are the ones that are going to end up in jail.
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A primary purpose of the injustice system is to violently enforce privilege by attacking the poor.
This is completely normal.
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Of course the criminal justice system is not just. Ask any poor person who's gone through the process and they'll tell you the same thing. Ask defense lawyers how often prosecutors, cops, and judges either lie or bend the law to work in their favor. This is old news.
What's more specific about this case is that the attorney general could have proceeded rapidly following January 6th and he didn't, and that's disgusting. Because it's not like nobody saw this coming.
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You should phone up Mueller and ask him.
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If their goal was further eroding people’s faith in institutions I’d say they worked pretty well.
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City on the Hill ElegyElegy for The Shining City on A Hill
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Really didn’t help their case that Biden was found to be in possession of classified documents right after they decided to go after Trump for it. And Biden never had legal clearance to remove them. Just immediately highlighted that it was political.
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Yeah refusing to hand them over, obscuring the locations of the documents and losing them had nothing to do with it/s
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What's funny is that your comment doesn't even make sense. I think most Democrat voters would honestly happily say that if you think Biden broke the law too, then go prosecute him.
For people who plan on following the law, there is no double standard, there is no hypocrisy. And when people focus on hypocrisy it typically means that they endorse criminal activity, and they're just upset that someone else might get away with it when they can't.
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