So, just to be certain, when USA today keeps giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and uses words in this article like, riot, and alleged role, they’re carrying water for him right? The man has been found to have had a role andtaken part in an insurrection in multiple cases now. They should just say it.
Man is guilty as sin but just to play devil’s advocate for the press: they are subject to libel laws and cannot make definitive statements of guilt/non guilt or else risk being sued.
So on the one hand it’s dumb that they aren’t telling it like it is but on the other hand I sympathize that they don’t want to put their finances on the line to pay the Donald Trump legal fund if he decides to sue.
They can definitively state that he was found guilty for his hand in the insurrection, as per the multiple cases. There’s no room for libel there, it’s a fact. He was found guilty.
They don’t need to beat around the bushes about it.
Edit: it’s not libel, they’re afraid of. It’s being on the wrong end of politics, share holders, and a potential authoritarian anti-journalism president.
To my knowledge he hasn’t been found guilty in trial court yet, has he? Courts keep kicking the can down the road because the US justice system is a sham. If he was found guilty already, he’d be behind bars.
Basically, there are differences between the recommendations of investigation committees, eligibility to run for office, and a conviction. Just because some determination was made by a court or by a legal body doesn’t necessarily mean he was found guilty of the crime. Not yet at least.
Colorado trial and supreme Court found that he has “engaged in” an insurrection. I’ve got a link to the Supreme Court opinion in this thread.
They can definitively state that he was found guilty for his hand in the insurrection, as per the multiple cases. There’s no room for libel there, it’s a fact. He was found guilty.
Did I miss a case? AFAIK, to date he hasn’t been found guilty of anything because that would imply he’s been through a criminal trial to completion and we should be talking about his sentencing.
To the best of my knowledge he’s been found liable in a couple of civil cases and owes a buttload of damages as a consequence, but still hasn’t been found guilty of any crime, yet.
You would think journalism would be subject to libel laws, but after seeing Fox and company blast lies for decades, I don’t have that confidence.
Yes, Fox finally got hit with one major lawsuit for one massive lie, but given all the lies they’ve run, it shows how far past the line you need to go.
And only because they lied about a massive corporation who then turned around and sued them. Not everyone they lie about has a legal team on retainer ready to defend them. In this case, Trump can’t find lawyers willing to defend him at this point, but Fox News would never paint Trump in a bad light, it would alienate their viewer base
Yes and I would agree if he were before the court for the first time, but multiple judges have already made a determination in those things.
They don’t want to be on the bad side of the possible future dictator of America.
You mean their Republican donors?
alleged role,
Until he’s been criminally convicted for it, it’s “alleged” in order to avoid defamation and libel cases.
He was found by a trial and state supreme Court to have engaged in an insurrection. It’s not alleged.
He was found by a trial and state supreme Court to have engaged in an insurrection. It’s not alleged.
If you want to be safe from libel and defamation cases, it’s “alleged” until you’ve been found guilty/liable at trial, and that hasn’t happened to Trump yet.
I don’t think that’s true. The Colorado state supreme Court says he engaged in an insurrection. Truth is a defense.
The Colorado state supreme Court says he engaged in an insurrection. Truth is a defense
The truth is up to interpretation. You can say what you believe to be the truth, but somebody with a lot of money and access to experienced lawyers can cripple you with a lawsuit regardless.
Do you really want to engage in a trial that could theoretically take years? Spending untold sums of money in order to defend yourself? Even if you will probably win, you’re tying up a lot of capital and manpower to fight it. For what? The difference between an article that has the word “alleged” or not?
The risk-reward just isn’t there.
With that logic couldn’t you basically never tell the truth about anyone sufficiently rich and vindictive enough to pursue you in court? Like Trump could be sitting in jail, and we’d still be saying alleged because he might tie you up in court?
You simply refer to it as “alleged” until found guilty/liable when referencing someone doing something criminal or similar.
They could also get by with quoting that judges opinion, so long as they made it clear what they are quoting.
But a judge presenting an opinion regarding a ballot removal in which the accused was not entitled to a thorough defense and the standard being held was “whatever the judge personally felt best” rather than the more rigorous standards of a criminal trial was probably enough for their legal department to insist on the “alleged”.
and you just basically described why news organizations prefer to use alleged
That’s how these people are taking advantage of our open, democratic system. They’re acting in bad faith, but our system has to play along and treat them “fairly” to avoid giving them any potential out or ammunition for them say they’re being discriminated against or treated improperly. It’s such BS though, we’re having to bend over backwards to treat these people with kid gloves while they run roughshod over our democratic system and they will literally not treat others fairly when they get power. This man and all his enablers in Congress/Scotus need to be in shackles already, they’re a shit stain on history and they’re getting people killed in Ukraine by holding up US aid.
They are just pussies.
Greedy, don’t forget greedy
Just like the Democrats do for israel.
When was he convicted of insurrection or anything related to that?
I watched it on TV. Doesn’t take a genius to watch the days events of January 6th unfold, and the months prior to know he attempted a coup to stay in power. Why it failed, I don’t have any insider knowledge.
But it’s come out that it was a lot more coordinated behind the scenes than what we all witnessed on Jan. 6th. We don’t need a jury for that (although there is an ongoing criminal investigation for it)
Literally the FBI said it wasnt at all coordinated. But that is a separate question to if Trump was responsible for what happened in any way.
Judge Wallace in Colorado found that Trump engaged in insurrection. It’s now a legal fact.
I doubt USA Today is based in Colorado, other states might decide he didn’t engage in insurrection. There are still cases pending against him.
Donald Trump spent months telling people to come to the capital on January 6th, you really gonna try to say that wasn’t coordinated in anyway, hell?
But, that’s not even what I was talking about, Trump fired generals, and had a whole fake electorate scheme, and there was a behind the scenes coup attempt that the public didn’t really know about. That’s the part I was saying was coordinated. Jan. 6th was a distract if anything for the real coup plot.
And the only reason it failed is bcz there were a lot of high level officials in the government who wouldn’t go along with it.
What is wrong with telling people to come to the capitol? I understand your point, but he didnt do anything illegal or he would have been prosecuted already.
He IS being prosecuted for the fake electoral scheme. You also seem to think this country’s laws actually apply equally to everybody. You obviously haven’t been paying enough attention to what’s been happening.
Our system is pay to win.
So he has been convicted then? I agree, money and power talk; you ever wonder why this trial is happening now, not a couple years ago?
Cost of living where I’m at is getting fucking expensive… I’ve always had hesitations about it but about how much does a nice rock to live under cost these days?
Its too complicated of an insult, you need to be more direct and more clever.
You’d probably be able to more easily afford a place to live if a) the central bank didn’t print 50% of the money supply in recent years and b) if there weren’t millions of migrants competing with you for housing or c) people moving near you from places that are being overrun by migrants.
Its paywalled, but does it talk about him being convicted of insurrection?
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol outlined 17 specific findings on Monday in the executive summary of its final report. Here are the findings, with additional context.
- Beginning election night and continuing through Jan. 6 and thereafter, Donald Trump purposely disseminated false allegations of fraud related to the 2020 presidential election in order to aid his effort to overturn the election and for purposes of soliciting contributions. These false claims provoked his supporters to violence on Jan. 6.
Annotation: This reflects the committee’s finding that Mr. Trump’s repeated false claims that the election was rigged had both a political and financial motive. During its second hearing, the panel introduced evidence that Trump supporters donated nearly $100 million to Mr. Trump’s so-called Election Defense Fund but that the money flowed instead into a super PAC the president had created. It was not just “the big lie,” the committee said. It was also “the big rip-off.”
- Knowing that he and his supporters had lost dozens of election lawsuits, and despite his own senior advisers refuting his election fraud claims and urging him to concede his election loss, Donald Trump refused to accept the lawful result of the 2020 election. Rather than honor his constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” President Trump instead plotted to overturn the election outcome.
Annotation: Mr. Trump and his allies filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the results of the election and lost all but one of them. Many of the suits, the committee determined, were brought even after some of Mr. Trump’s closest aides — including his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and his attorney general, William P. Barr — told him that there was no fraud that could have changed the outcome of the race.
- Despite knowing that such an action would be illegal, and that no state had or would submit an altered electoral slate, Donald Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes during Congress’s joint session on Jan. 6.
I am aware of the facts, but again, there was no conviction of insurrection or anything related. Do you understand how the conviction is the important part, not what people claim?
Conviction is not the important part, at all.
The 14th Amendment was intended to keep former Confederates out of government. The people who wrote it had no intention of putting former Confederates on trial.
Right, but 14A has only ever been used to disqualify two categories of people - public officials of the Confederacy and people convicted of an appropriate crime (such as the Espionage Act or charges related to Jan 6).
Trump is neither, so he’s going to challenge being disqualified by anything less on due process grounds. 14A is vague on that. Which ends with SCOTUS essentially deciding what due process should be, likely by looking at how it’s been used historically.
I agree, that amendment was directly talking about confederates who had done a known and agreed on insurrection.
Can you do a text search and find the word “conviction” in the amendment?
Here’s the text:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
And, again, this has all gone through Congress. Trump did it. Everyone knows it. Even the Trumpists know it.
And that was in reference to a particular known and agreed on insurrection that occurred. I think they were called the “reconstruction amendments”, and the reason was to get things back going after the civil war.
Here’s a non-paywalled link: https://archive.md/Zm8dk
Thank you!
Here you go happy reading: https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA300.pdf
You will find section G. Titled “President Trump engaged in an insurrection” to be of interest.
So a judge did an unjust thing and you want me to accept that as something that as okay?
Are you guys aware of what his happening right now with trump and all these cases and how its targeted prosecution? I am not even going to vote for him, but its pretty obvious what is happening, and I fear how this will end.
Prosecutions generally are targeted at criminals.
In corrupt countries does the government ever prosecute people for political reasons?
Gosh, as a citizen of the United States I just can’t imagine what goes on in a corrupt country. LOL
That was my point, its a targeting based on politics not on law.
If each and every one if these cases was not carefully and fully investigated over a course of several years, you might have an argument.
Were both of the impeachments careully and fully investigated?
Lol. Considering even I watched the events in one case happen live? Yeah. Some things are very easy to investigate.
What’s that got to do with the conversation? You’re not even any good at the what-a-bout-ism thing, dude. Feel free to overthink it so you can come up with another “zinger”; I don’t care, and won’t be responding anyway…
They were both obviously political and not well investigated. The one about Ukraine and Zelensky was obviously silly, but you guys dont realize that because you dont listen to good news sources.
Exactly, you guys want to removed about the orange man, but dont actually want to look at the dangerous things we have going on with the government right now.
You should recognize that your message to people here is simply, hey people obviously dumber than me, did you know you’re all dumber than me?
You’re assuming people that disagree with you know less or don’t know something that you do.
That’s not how you engage in effective, constructive discourse. You should first seek to understand, then to be understood.
I dont think they are dumber than me, they are just mislead by the media and dont have the ability to see beyond their own bias. And about this subject I do obviously know more about it than they do.
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Removed, keep it civil.
Just dumb. Did I miss the part he was convicted of insurrection?
You missed the part where he was found by a court to have engaged in insurrection.
So there was a trial and everything?
There was a legal finding of fact.
man, where’s that sealion gif when you need it?
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SCotUS: States are free to regulate their elections how they see fit.
States: Republicans are actually subject to the rule of law and responsible for the crimes they commit
SCotUS: No not like that
Here comes a ruling from Trump’s illegitimate SCOTUS in 3…2…
I am less concerned with the SCOTUS ruling that a national party nominee is disqualified from a ballot in a state he’ll almost certainly lose than I am with a ruling that some court in Florida or Arizona or Georgia can pull the same shit on Biden.
Very easy to see this become one more trick one-party states can pull to remove popular opponents from the ballot in close election years. And I would be very concerned if an Alito court authored an opinion in which this kind of thing was normalized.
I’m not afraid of bad faith attempts to ruin democracy as backlash from this decision because bad faith attempts to ruin democracy are coming regardless of the outcome of this particular case
Exactly. This constant handwringing is so tiresome.
They WILL try it, regardless of precedent.
Bush pulled a bullshit card in 2000 and it worked
And were still paying for it. So did Regan, and Nixon. Its just a pattern at this point
I think it’s important to point out that they had a riot in Florida to stop the recount. The RNC paid for it, and they bragged about using the threat of violence to stop the recount. Google Brooks Brothers riot. In the last 30 years Republicans have had more riots to try to ignore the vote than they’ve had popular vote winners. The end of democracy is their only chance going forward, they know it and they’re open about the fact that they’re trying to make it happen.
To rephrase the excellent point made: Its short sighted to think suffering no consequences for crimes will encourage the MAGA criminals to not do more bad faith crimes.
We either legitimize their actions by witholding consequences or we attempt to give them consequences and they claim their next scheme is retaliation for the consequences rather than retaliation for something entirely fabricated (ex: “stolen election” bullshit)
I have no doubt. But I’m not in a rush to open a new can of worms, when there’s no discernible benefit.
Let me know if a court in Michigan or Ohio or Pennsylvania yanks Trump off the ballot. Then we can talk.
Upholding the constitution is a discernable benefit.
The constitution itself contains no designation, description, or necessary admission of the existence of such a thing as slavery, servitude, or the right of property in man. We are obliged to go out of the instrument and grope among the records of oppression, lawlessness and crime – records unmentioned, and of course unsanctioned by the constitution – to find the thing, to which it is said that the words of the constitution apply. And when we have found this thing, which the constitution dare not name, we find that the constitution has sanctioned it (if at all) only by enigmatical words, by unnecessary implication and inference, by innuendo and double entendre, and under a name that entirely fails of describing the thing.
From “No Treason, The Constitution of No Authority” by Lyndard Spooner, discussing the fundamental failures of the document when confronting the horror of the antebellum South.
There’s always a new can of worms.
And so we decide to let tyrants through so that their party doesn’t have made up and twisted precedent to try to disqualify qualified candidates? It’s not like the GOP need or care about precedent anyway. If they want to try and do it they’ll try and do it. Booting someone like trump who has done what trump has done is a legitimate implementation of the law and the right thing to do.
And so we decide to let tyrants through
We don’t decide. A few Ivy League JDs in robes get to decide. The decision on whether to list a particular candidate on the ballot is, inherently, undemocratic.
If they want to try and do it they’ll try and do it.
State governments don’t need any more tools in the chest to decide who can and cannot appear on a ballot.
Booting someone like trump who has done what trump has done is a legitimate implementation of the law and the right thing to do.
I agree. But he’s not the only one who will get booted off under this rule. We both know it.
‘This rule’ being the 14th amendment? The one in the constitution? We should just ignore it so that the bad guys don’t try to use it illegitimately when we know they will anyway?
‘This rule’ being the 14th amendment?
“This rule” being the judicial decision that invokes the 14th amendment.
We should just ignore it
You’re free to do as you please, but it won’t matter unless you’re one of the Big Nine.
What are you doing to do if the SCOTUS rules in Trump’s favor, other than pounding sand?
What would the argument be for eliminating Biden though? Biden hasn’t committed insurrection. Trump has.
They don’t need facts. They’ll say failing to secure the border is equivalent to an insurrection, or some such bullshit
The point is, I think, to try and falsely equivocate the two things so they appear similar enough that people won’t raise too big of a fuss if Biden is removed for illegitimate reasons, because they somehow believe the same thing happened with trump.
It might be prudent to require an actual conviction of one of a specific lists of crimes, but that leaves Trump in for a bit longer
I don’t know what grounds they used but I don’t think Trump has been convicted yet
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1 ½… 1 ⅓… 1 ¼…
They’re gonna slow walk all the appeals responses so it doesn’t matter which way they rule.
Err - republican primary ballot. This isn’t reddit, I know that’s what the site’s clickbait headline says but can we not adopt their bait tactics?
Damn straight. The unfortunate thing about Lemmy growing is that the click bait fuckwits are appearing every now and then. Hopefully it doesn’t continue or a majority of people just downvote this shit.
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This is another big win, but Illinois was always unlikely to go Trump thanks to Chicago being hella blue and 90% of the state’s population. The interesting moment is going to be when a key battleground state bars him.
Most importantly this contributes to established case law to make it easier to keep insurrectionists off the ballot
Most importantly this contributes to established case law to make it easier to keep insurrectionists off the ballot
This will inevitably be challenged, probably along due process lines. And they’ll have a point: Who determines if a candidate is disqualified under the 14th Amendment, what process of law makes that determination and who is involved? 14A is unfortunately vague on that front.
To date, everyone excluded under 14A Section 3 other than Trump has fallen under one of two groups: They’ve either been a public official of the Confederacy or they’ve been convicted in criminal court of doing something that definitely falls afoul of 14A Section 3 (including one Jan 6 participant, with the last person before that being charged under the Espionage Act about a hundred years ago). Being found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt unanimously by a jury after being given an opportunity to defend himself as well as possible is a much higher bar than has been applied to Trump.
And remember, this isn’t about Trump, specifically - whatever is decided will apply going forward, and the GOP will try to wield it against any Democrat they can make a plausible case for. If the opinion of a judge that a candidate should be disqualified is all it requires, well there are plenty of right wing judges out there.
If it holds up, and it’s a longshot, it probably changes down-ticket races if people can’t turn out for Trump.
If it were only Illinois, they’d come out to write in Trump’s name.
However, I don’t see any way Illinois will fare differently than Colorado.
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Uhg. Why is this even a question? WE ALL SAW WHAT HE DID JAN 6TH
But it was the FBI and ANTIFA and George Soros is the architect of the whole thing. They took a beautiful peaceful walk through the Capital and turned it into violence. Free the J6 hostages, they didn’t do anything wrong.
I’m tired of all the double speak bullshit defending that attack on the Constitution.
A single term president has caused long term harm to the Republic that will likely last for decades until it does crumble under the fist of a fascist.
Narcissistic word salad is how Donnie used to win lawsuits, and he’s hoping it’ll work with the Jan 6th thing.
I’m from IL and it’s always nice to see the system work for a change. Of course he was never gonna win IL anyway so whatever.
Fuck this orange fuckwit forever and always.
How many states till we can stop pretending a vote not for Biden is a vote for Trump?
At least 11 but no more than 40
