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Comment on 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?

yiliu@informis.land ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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.

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nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- reverendsteveii@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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
  
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- yiliu@informis.land ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes! He stepped right into that one.
  
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Arsenal4ever@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- yiliu@informis.land ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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prole@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- yiliu@informis.land ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - reverendsteveii@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    lower-ranking members of the organization
    
    the preferred term nowadays seems to be “unindicted co-conspirators”
    
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  - prole@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Are you joking? Numerous people have already turned on him, and those are only the ones we know about so far. You’re a fool if you think all of he people involved (many of whom Trump simply never paid, or immediately threw under the bus at his first convenience are going to stick by him till the end.
    
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    yiliu@informis.land ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Oh, they’re not going to stick with him! He’s finished, IMHO. But the question was why it took so long. It’s because the other conspirators had to go first to build the case.
    
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aidan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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?

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- EndlessApollo@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That’s bc collusion was made up by democrats as a way to deflect from why Clinton lost on 2016. It’s not that she’s an old corrupt fucker that nobody likes, it’s bc the ruskies came in and sabotaged her so drumpf could win (according to dems at least)
  
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  - CCDKP@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You act like the two options are mutually exclusive.
    
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    EndlessApollo@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They’re not, at least not inherently. But afaik there’s no evidence of Trump or his administration working with Russia. Russia did interfere through social media ads and troll farms spreading disinformation, but unless there’s something I’m missing, the idea of collusion between them and Trump is just speculation
    
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  - themajesticdodo@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Russia directly helped Trump. Hillary is a piece of shit who no one wants to vote for.
    
    Both are true. Try and cope with it.
    
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sturmblast@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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

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- yiliu@informis.land ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - sturmblast@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    what do you think they’ve been doing the last few years?
    
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    yiliu@informis.land ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I, uh…I think they’ve been building the case against Trump by getting convictions, confessions, and plea deals from his underlings. Which is what I said in response to the initial question: why isn’t Trump in prison, even though a lot of his underlings are? Because that was a necessary prerequisite to making the case against him, since he probably wasn’t involved in the day-to-day activities.
    
    I never said anything like “these are things they aren’t doing”. I’m just explaining the timing.
    
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themajesticdodo@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Finally, some good fucking answers.

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