324 Comments

Frankly, the way you write it's hard to tell sometimes. But your points seem to be that it's not really important whether Trump goes to prison, and even if he does it might not be a deterrent. I disagree with both ideas. If Nixon had gone to jail, that might have scared people like Dick Cheney and Roger Stone into walking the straight and narrow. Now we need to make an example of Trump to prove to the world (and ourselves) that no American is above the law and we don't tolerate insurrections. It'll reduce the odds of another tyrant trying to force fascism down our throats.

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if he does it might not be a deterrent

I 150% believe this. If prison were a deterrent crime would have been eliminated no later than 1950.

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it's not really important whether Trump goes to prison

Depends. If in the final accounting imprisioning Trump and passing the rest of Biden's agenda are mutually exclusive, Trump can live out his days on a tropical island for all I care.

I hope they aren't mutually exclusive, and I see no reason why they would be. But if the choice is one or the other, I'll take option B in a nanosecond.

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Fundamentally, I think we have no business basing our activities on "if" and "might have". Fundamentally, I think anyone who wants to argue that punitive measures have ever "deterred" any fucking body should be prepared to cite a single believable example in history.

I don't even need two. Give me one.

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IANAL, so I don’t know what the precedent is for the doctrine of “because I say so.”

Do you think Dearie will buy it?

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if you're interested, the last couple podcasts from 'daily beans' or 'stay tuned with preet' or even nicolle wallace (she usually has great legal guests) are riveting.

in a nutshell, DOJ is being very conservative so they don't get adverse rulings from random wingnuts that permanently affect the exec branch. and they've been courteous and minimalist to that end. it seems they know the trump 'arguments' are going to run out soon and are banking on either the special master or the 11th circuit (in spite of conservative bent) to reverse this nonsense. (even wingnuts don't want to live in a world with 2 presidents at any given moment).

all they really want is to maintain custody of the 100 (or whatever) highly secret/classified/important docs and not allow them to GO TO THE TRUMP LEGAL TEAM (FFS) and allow the damage assessment to proceed without worrying they violated some (wingnut, unqualified) judge's order.

at least that's how my actor brain understands all of the experts.

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thank you!

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However, if you DO go with the 48 hours jokes, you can make fun of Nick Nolte a la MST3K.

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Who was Blossom Rock when she played Grandmama on the original 1960s Addams Family TV series.

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i still think these are just the ones he's already monetized, and the rest are in a vault somewhere

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Dearie seems to be actually into following the law, so "no".

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Well, national security is at stake!

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I kind of lean the other way. I think these are the scraps. He had four years to sell all the good stuff to the highest bidders. I get the impression that this is stuff that someone *coughKushnercough* told him might be worth something, but wasn't top tier.

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You would waste pie?!

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It was a courtroom smash...

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