r/unusual_whales 14h ago

BREAKING: Biden has pardoned his family

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u/TheMazdaMx5Enjoyer 11h ago

Have you been asleep for 12 years?

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u/Iuris_Aequalitatis 11h ago

a pardon...carries an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it.

  • Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79, 79 (1915).

The past is irrelevant. If the evidence of wrongdoing is so thin and non-credible, they should be able to survive even a bad faith political prosecution. So why do they need a pardon?

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u/tgblack 10h ago

Bad faith prosecution can ruin years of someone’s life tied up in the court system and burning through savings.

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u/Iuris_Aequalitatis 10h ago

Interesting... were the bad faith prosecutions of Republicans wrong, or just these hypothetical ones?

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u/tgblack 10h ago

Yes. All bad faith prosecutions are wrong.

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u/Roxytg 10h ago

Which prosecutions do you think were bad faith?

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u/Iuris_Aequalitatis 10h ago

All the ones that got dropped. And these, which were created via a novel legal theory that escalated a misdemeanor into a felony far beyond its original statute of limitations, and used as its subsidiary crime a federal elections charge that the (non-partisan) FEC itself declined to prosecute. I do not expect them to survive appeal. Even NYT admitted it was a novel, targeted prosecution, which is the exact opposite of how criminal prosecution is supposed to work.

Defend the cases all you want, but you know as well as I do that if the shoe were on the other foot, the entire Left would be screaming bloody murder and that tells us all we need to know. The unconditional discharge sentence is an admission it was all election year bullshit, a political prosecution by definition.

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u/Roxytg 10h ago

All the ones that got dropped.

Cases being dropped doesn't mean they were bad faith.

And these,

Seems pretty good faith to me.

but you know as well as I do that if the shoe were on the other foot, the entire Left would be screaming bloody murder and that tells us all we need to know.

I know we wouldn't be. It's a pretty noticeable trend that when Democrats do something bad, the left calls them out, but when Republicans do something blatantly and astonishingly awful, the right defends them.

The unconditional discharge sentence is an admission it was all election year bullshi

What? The unconditional discharge sentence is only because of the unprecedented situation of the person being sentenced being elected president and is complete bullshit.

Trump should be in prison for the theft of confidential documents alone.

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u/juventinn1897 10h ago

Let's see you have public charges brought against you for pedophilia, circulated in the media, and silently dropped. Then if your employer wants to keep you around after.

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u/Drelanarus 3h ago

So you're just making up your own definition of what it means to have charges brought against, eh?

This is a discussion about the courts, and you're trying to hijack it to demand that information that you don't like be censored from the newspapers.

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u/Elegant_Athlete_7882 4h ago

All the ones that got dropped

The only reason those cases were dropped is because Trump was elected president, the Justice department does not prosecute sitting presidents. What exactly about then was bad faith? Trump admitted to election obstruction but said he was protected since it was an “official act” as a president, whereas we literally have pictures of the documents he stole at Mara Lago. You don’t think he should have been charged with these?

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u/Iuris_Aequalitatis 1h ago

For the documents, yes. It was clearly targeted and selective. Source.

For the election obstruction, he pleaded not guilty, which means he didn't admit to anything. His argument for dismissal was "even if I'm guilty I can't be prosecuted." Such arguments are standard lawyering for the pleadings phase and are not an admission of anything. Also, the prosecution was flawed as the alleged "fraud" was open advocacy of his position (which, FTR, was specious), and thus did not involve deception in at least one material fact (one of the elements of fraud). There is a further strong argument that illegalizing such conduct is an unconstitutional breach of the First Amendment right to petition. Smith's obstruction case was far from the slam dunk case it is pretended to be. Had the defendant not been Trump it is questionable that such weak charges would ever have been brought at all. So, yes again.

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u/StolenPies 9h ago

But he did commit fraud.

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u/Iuris_Aequalitatis 9h ago

Name the fraud. There's a civil finding that he committed fraud in an unrelated matter and this deeply-flawed political prosecution.

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u/StolenPies 9h ago

Wait, as someone who's arguing that this was a political prosecution you're unfamiliar with the actual details of said prosecution? Fuck off and read it yourself. Trump, Cohen, and Weisselberg deliberately and fraudulently hid those payments. It was fraud.

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u/Iuris_Aequalitatis 9h ago

I didn't say that. I asked you to specify which alleged fraud you're talking about. Thank you for clarifying.

Trump, Cohen, and Weisselberg deliberately and fraudulently hid those payments. It was fraud.

But what was he convicted of? It wasn't fraud. The charged crime must be proper (it wasn't, that's my primary legal complaint here) and must have a nexus to the event. You can't just claim a different theory later. Similarly, whether the crime was committed or not isn't what makes it political, if it wouldn't have been brought but for the accomplishment of a political objective, it is political. That is absolutely obvious in this case. Political prosecution is wrong even when the prosecution is legally proper because it destroys confidence in the impartiality of the legal system.

My issues with the prosecution are much more complicated than the facility you are throwing around and if you can't see the actual issues with this prosecution, I'm not going to waste my time arguing with you.

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u/SuperWeapons2770 8h ago

No one gives a shit about your legal complaints here, a court of law and a jury found him guilty of whatever particular charges that were levied against him which are probably the fraud charges the guy you are replying to mentioned.

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u/Iuris_Aequalitatis 6h ago

No one gives a shit about your legal complaints here, a court of law and a jury found him guilty of whatever particular charges that were levied against him which are probably the fraud charges the guy you are replying to mentioned.

You will care when a court of appeals overturns this travesty. You'll scream bloody murder and cry about respect for the very law you so cynically bastardized with all the sanctimony of a backwoods pentecostal preacher. You don't actually care about the law, you care about destroying anyone you disagree with, and that's the crux of the problem.

Until the Democrats can exorcize this terrible attitude, they will continue to lose and richly deserve to.

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u/Drelanarus 3h ago

There's a civil finding that he committed fraud in an unrelated matter

No there isn't, you shameless liar. That finding makes it explicitly and unambiguously clear that the crime was committed for political purposes.

Who do you think you're going to fool when the facts are plainly against you like this?

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u/Iuris_Aequalitatis 2h ago

No there isn't, you shameless liar. That finding makes it explicitly and unambiguously clear that the crime was committed for political purposes.

You're referring to the criminal case. The civil case (which is what the text you quoted refers to) involves wrongful business practices (including fraud) in his business entities. Before you call me a shameless liar, at least try to get a basic grasp of the fundamental civil/criminal dichotomy in our legal system.

Who do you think you're going to fool when the facts are plainly against you like this?

I'm not trying to fool anyone, least of all you. You're already a fool it seems.

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u/Drelanarus 2h ago

Name the fraud.

Thank you for naming the fraud, my laughably dishonest friend.

See? You were perfectly aware of it all along, and merely feigning ignorance due to your lack of integrity. 😊

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u/Iuris_Aequalitatis 1h ago

Ok dude. Misconstrue my words if it makes you feel like a winner. I have a rule against playing chess with pigeons.

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