Higgenbotham wrote: ↑Sat Aug 10, 2024 9:22 pm
That is the point. I don't see a poll offhand for the one conviction but the numbers are probably similar.
OK. Let’s look at individual motivation. I don’t think Biden thought he had to tell Garland to do his job. Perhaps he did need to. Garland went after everybody but Trump in the early days. The cases against the foot soldiers and plotters of Jan 6 proceeded fairly quickly, except against Trump. Only after Congress and the people become driven was the Special Prosecutor assigned. Smith is a pro. You tell him to prosecute somebody and he will it to the best of his ability. That isn’t political either. Those three people are those who matter.
Now the state prosecutors? Another question. In Georgia, you make state officials look bad, the people get behind the prosecution. In New York, if you forbid the federal prosecution from proceeding in spite of the evidence, you will tick off the state people. In other places where you try to subvert the will of the people, nullify their votes, yes, you get someone after you. Thus, fake electoral cases are bubbling up in a few places.
Still, there is political motivation too. It should not be looked at as law or politics, but both forces are in play. As I said before, if you are a habitual criminal it is a bad idea to run for office in a region where the other partisan side controls the relevant justice department. It was a good idea for Trump to move from New York to Florida, but the Covid laws made the move too late. If anything, Trump avoided prosecution with Bill Barr and others firing prosecutors and aborting investigations, with the Supreme Court and Eileen Cannon issuing obviously partisan judgements. Both sides are into the partisan persecution game.
The key question remains whether you habitually violated the norms of society, if you regularly broke the law. Did the 60 to 0 cases evaluating the Big Lie count? Did the various convictions and indictments vetted by juries? Suppose on this size problem it becomes inevitable that the opposition will control part of the justice system, that neither side controls enough of it to block or advance everything. That seems to be the case here. Trump managed to delay things beyond the election, but it is not looking like he will be able to block it entirely. With how Kamala is going, that does not look like enough.
So, yes, the games are being played, but it is not clear that they were played at the highest level, excepting the Supreme Court.
But the key is that if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. The country is divided, and so is the justice system. Republicans did the crimes and are going to jail for it. This does not make them “better”. The Republican attempts to find similar crimes by Democrats fell flat. Oh, there is that state representative in Texas that got himself in trouble, and Hunter is one of many who messed up with drugs. Still, there seem to be none of these games of manipulating the justice system in either case.
Will extreme partisans perceive the meddling is worse than it looks and lopsided agains them? Yes. Sure. They believe what they feel like believing. This isn’t the sort of question answered by polls. You want evidence, which is lacking.
