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I don't know if it'd be considered legal under the constitution, but someone needs to issue a blanket gag order that basically says he's not allowed to say anything to the public, directly or indirectly, until after his trials are over. Otherwise he's going to keep finding loopholes that allow him to get past the gag order.
The question is this: Sometimes its pretty solid to issue repeated gag orders (in front of the watching jury), and everyday have to drag the defendant up and once again talk about how they violated the gag order in spirit and have to get even further sanctioned... while the whole jury sits and watches it.
Everytime it happens the jury becomes further pitted against the asshole who is wasting their time.
Yeah but there’s no jury in the New York civil fraud case. It’s just the judge, and he’s already ruled against Trump (on the most important claim, there are others), the remaining trial is just to see what the damages will be (and to determine the status of the other claims).
Ah, thats right.
Well, in that case its extra going to be a bad hand for Trump, I guess.
Everytime the Judge extends him an olive branch to shut the fuck up and Trump proceeds to double down on his rhetoric, I imagine the Judge is bumping up the amount owed he has in his head already as the trial continues.
Like it's absolutely wild when you have this judge as the sole delegate as to just how hard you are going to get dinged, and you decide "ah yeah lets talk shit about this person"
Thats... not going to go well at all... lol
He's likely hoping one of his nutjob followers kills the judge. It also lines up to imprison the judge if he gets back into the White House.
And then him and his lackeys cry “unfair trial”
"The judge doesn't like me" "The judge was very unfair to me."
Now you know why.
The judge is not in real estate, he's a judge. He didn't dream up figures to fry Trump. James would have gotten them from sources who are real estate experts, and at this level the sources must have been deemed independent and unbiased by the judge to use them.
As long as the case took to build, and as it all rests on these figures, the people who matter must have full confidence in them under scrutiny.
Any suggestion that the figures are flawed likely comes from Team Trump, and would be in line with their long list of dubious claims both in and out of court.
If those arguments have merit then they'll have to sort out the details of how much Trump overvalued his properties. As I understand it that is the purpose of the trial at this point.
The Florida-based real estate pros referenced in the article didn't throw out any estimated values of Mar a Lago, and they didn't suggest it hadn't been overvalued by Trump.
The lawyer in NYC quoted seems to have little concern over the whole thing.
| Cintron, the Harrington Ocko & Monk partner, doesn’t think the Mar-a-Lago valuation controversy moves the needle on the question of whether Trump committed fraud.
| “There is enough of a pattern of this practice that he’s engaged with in respect to his properties to support Judge Engoron’s conclusions that there was an intent to defraud,” Cintron said.
EDIT: Apologies for formatting, I haven't figured out quotes in Lemmy
Going by the events of recent history, I'm inclined to agree that they'll weasel out of appropriate consequences by arguing over anything except the main points.
It sure would be nice if the NY court proves us both wrong. I believe that if just one of the cases follows through holding his feet to the fire (including on appeal), the other courts will be much more inclined to follow suit.
Yeah, no, that is a direct violation of his 1st amendment rights. He knows he's playing catch me if you can with the court and his mouth because the court can only gag very narrowly defined speech. For instance the court could say he can't talk about pickles, so he talks about cucumbers soaked in a brine. The court tells him he cannot talk about cucumbers soaked in a brine. So he talks about a green vegetable roughly the size of a pickling cucumber that you then put into a mixture that contains seasonings, vinegar, etc. Will he eventually run out of ways to describe a pickle? Sure, but he'll have wasted shitloads of the judge's time and distracted from what was actually happening in court. And it's working. Do you know anything about what has been presented so far in the case? You probably don't because those articles don't bring the clicks and views like stories about his latest shenanigans on social media.
My blood boils a little bit just seeing this behaviour described. Probably because it's relatable kids behaviour.
Trump has said that his temperament hasn't changed since he was in the first grade so it tracks that he uses the same tactics that little kids use.
The difference, of course, is that the little kids will grow out of this behavior. Trump won't.
The judges in each case can issue a gag order against discussing anything and anyone pertaining to the case in public. That would be bulletproof and also constitutional.
That's what he and his cult already believe and will continue to believe no matter what happens or doesn't happen.
Nah, he has more or less reached his ceiling. He has a number of people who are members of the cult and would never abandon him without literal cult deprogramming and the majority of the population would never vote for him after what he's already said and done.
You mean like is already the case now that he's slandering and vilifying most of them with no consequences to himself?
True, but not the one you think.
THAT'S the actual reason.
"Like it or not" is an awfully casual reaction to the powerful getting blatant special treatment, which is in itself against the law
The question is literally answered already. Letting him get away with constantly and blatantly breaking the law is in itself negligent bordering on being criminal.
That's not really how the law works, and judges generally take a dim view when someone is trying to circumvent their order.
Of all the types of speech protected by the courts, none is more highly valued than political speech. So there's no way in hell a court would try to impose blanket silence on a political candidate.
Except for the fact that his "political speech" consists of threats and slander, both of which are illegal.
There's a (ridiculous) law excempting lies told by politicians on the floor of Congress, but no such thing for someone who's not even in public office committing stochastic terrorism almost every day
You mean the Constitution's speech and debate clause?
Yes, that ridiculous exemption. If you can't make your political point without literal slander and fraud, you shouldn't get special treatment for making it where that kind of thing is at its most destructive to society and the population as a whole.
How would you change this protection in order to address your concerns while still serving the important purpose of protecting legislators from retaliation?
I would remove it.
You still have to prove intention and that it unfairly harms or enriches someone, which means that good faith errors and differences of opinion are already legally protected just like with everyone else.
As for politicians and their supporters using unwinnable lawsuits to harass and damage their opponents, that's what anti-SLAPP laws are for.
Tl;Dr: there's no valid justification for letting politicians say and do what would be against the law for regular people.
Historically, this protection was a necessary limit on the prosecutorial power of the executive/king.
Simply throwing it out seems like an over reaction that doesn't take into account the actual justifications for its existence.
That's not necessary now that there's no king and a politically independent justice department. If either of THOSE things stop being the case, we have much bigger problems than politicians not being allowed to enrich themselves and destroy each other by lying.
Scrapping a rule that causes more harm than good in a modern country with weaponized media is just common sense.
The "actual justifications" are invalid as they don't apply to current reality and in fact that exemption has played a big in enabling the kind of demagoguery that makes an octogenarian who entered politics before the invention of the pocket calculator and thinks the solution to police brutality is to throw money at cops by far the LEAST bad realistic option for president.
Ever hear of the Pentagon Papers?
In what ways does it cause more harm than good?
Yes. Pretty typical Pentagon and presidential behaviour that should come to no surprise to anyone who's paying attention.
In what ways DOESN'T it? If I had a dollar for every American who died as a result of politics based on one or more politicians deliberate lying, I'd be able to buy the Eiffel tower. If you included every American trapped in avoidable poverty, I'd be able to put in a fair bid for all of France.
As for the protection of honest speech, everyone has that without giving the already powerful and notoriously dishonest special lie allowance privileges.
...exposed by a Senator reading classified documents into the Congressional record, thus entering them into the public record and being immune from prosecution.
Also, that's not how Americans spell "behavior" ;)
There's already whistle-blower protections for that. Granted, the exceedingly authoritative government shits all over such laws when it's not one of their fellow rich and/or powerful people doing it, but that's not the fault of the law.
Also, it's no secret that I'm not an American and I will spell words however the fuck I want.
Congress isn't covered by whistle-blower protection laws, and such laws generally only protect disclosure to the proper authorities rather than to the public. This also ignores the case when the "proper authorities" may be the very people being reported on.
I'm still interested in knowing what actual harms you're alleging the speech and debate clause causes. You pointed to lying, but that's generally legal anyway and not really enabled by the S&D clause.
Willfully and maliciously lying to harm the reputation of someone else and/or to exploit others financially is called slander and fraud. Both are usually illegal and this is the last time I'll try to get it through to you that demagogues having carte blanche to slander and defraud people took the point of passing legislation based on said fraud ans slander is a bad thing with often catastrophic consequences.
I really don't understand how that isn't obvious to you. Unless you've been wasting my time arguing in bad faith this entire time, of course..
I'm actually being sincere. Something that you clearly don't understand or appreciate.
You're right. I don't understand nor appreciate how someone could fail to see the problem with some of the most powerful people in the world, the ones that shape the rules of an entire country, just being allowed to make shit up as they go along out of spite and greed.
Especially not when living in a country with only two major parties, one of which has lied their way into inspiring a global resurgence of fascism and the leadership of BOTH parties continue to pretend that a bribe isn't a bribe unless you specifically annonce that you're bribing someone and for which specific purpose!
That's mind-boggingly obtuse and evidence of some SERIOUS propaganda and/or unearned trust in authority figures. Extremely fucked up either way.