Trump was just indicted for trying to steal the 2020 election
Former President Donald Trump was indicted for an unprecedented third time on August 1, adding another set of serious federal charges to the mounting legal issues he faces.
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When he is behind bars then I’ll celebrate. Until then. The battle for our democracy continues….
Even after he is behind bars. Crazy as it sounds, he can run for President from prison.
Not very effectively, but he can run.
One presidential candidate got 3.4% (more than all 3rd party candidates in 2020 combined) of the vote (over 1million votes) as a third party candidate while in prison in 1920.
Eugene V Debs. The best president the US never had.
o7
One of the few upsides of my living in Terre Haute, Indiana is that I can say I live in the same town Debs was from. They have a nice museum here dedicated to him in his former home. If you're passing through Indiana, I do recommend an hour or two to see it. Bernie Sanders made sure to stop there during his 2016 campaign, if you need an endorsement.
Who is this
Eugene V Debs, a communist that ran for US president from his prison cell, securing 3.4% of the vote. Also the former state representative of Indiana.
I kinda cried reading these.
man I want that as a tattoo now
Felons can’t vote, but they can run?
It makes sense though. Think about it like this, A politician that wanted to stay in power could disqualify his opponents by wielding the DOJ as a personal tool and nailing them with felony charges. Trump could have placed a more loyal attorney general, nailed Biden on some bullshit petty offense that technically qualifies as a felony, and have his name removed from the ballot shortly before the election. Allowing felons to run for president defangs that particular power move. To disqualify someone the 14th amendment would have to be invoked, and should be in Trump's case.
A politician that wanted to stay in power could disqualify his opponents by wielding the DOJ as a personal tool and nailing them with felony charges
It's how Putin and other despots have been doing it for a very long time.
While I do see the validity of this argument, it still feels like treating the symptoms rather than the cause. If the fear is a sitting president welding his personal power to imprison (and thus disqualify) a political rival, isn't the bigger problem that a sitting president has the power to do this in the first place?
The Justice Department has to be able to indict people, that's part of its function. And the DoJ is part of the executive branch. A good President will not use the DoJ for his personal political purposes, but the incentive to do so, if it was there, would be extremely powerful. I think it's probably a good idea to remove it. If the people can't be trusted not to vote for a criminal or a traitor, we have bigger problems.
The Government doesn’t want you to know about this one trick!
I've heard the logic is to prevent people from wanting to retroactively legalize shit to secure votes from felons, which doesn't make a lot of sense tbh
Weird. I've heard of Americans losing their right to vote when imprisoned and yet they could run for office?
Probably just an overlooked aspect, it woulf be too much of a pain to run for office while im prison. Even for a lot of the rich and powerful.
How does that work if he wins?
If he wins, he pardons himself from federal crimes then uses his powers as Commander in Chief to break himself out of prison for state crimes, thereby creating the ultimate constitutional crisis and tearing the country apart.
Whether or not he can pardon himself is up for debate. So if the founding fathers intended that you can assume office from prison there would be a more defined method.
Or we need to admit that the founding fathers may not have predicted literally every possible circumstance to arise in the future hundreds of years.
This isn't a new modern invention. The election process is pretty well defined.
It was intentional that you can run and be elected as president from prison. It's written about contemporaneously. They knew the risk of allowing a president, or administration, jailing their political opponents.
What's not clear is if it was meant for a president to be able to pardon themselves. I personally would think not, but many think it's permissable.
So what happens to the prison sentence?
Fuck the founding fathers, coming straight from the underground.
Hopfully the server running just crashes and reboots
Might depend on why he's there.
It’ll be ~5 years before all appeals are exhausted. I’d be shocked to see that he ever eats a final conviction, and any Republican president will pardon him, living or dead.
And, even if he is convicted and not pardoned, the functional challenges of managing Secret Service protection in a white-collar prison would be daunting, not to mention that his SS detail seems to have been easily corrupted to lie for him. The SS leadership, a locus of supreme bootlickers, would likely tell an inquiring judge that it’s too difficult to protect him in any penal institution for white-collar criminals, which will force the court to choose house arrest at most.
So, it’s probable that he’ll never serve a day in jail or prison.
Lots of rich people convince judges they aren't safe in prison without the help of the Secret Service. I wouldn't be surprised if Trump could get house arrest instead of prison even without being reelected.
Also there is a VERY high chance he just straight up dies before he goes to prison, or even before the court date. Which might be the worst possible scenario, as the right wing crazies will go fucking ballistic with conspiracy theories blaming the deep state or the clintons or whoever the current boogeyman is and we will literally never hear the end of it
What's the penalty for treason?
We’re not in a declared war.
No, maybe not a US declared war. That being said, North Korea seems pretty happy to shout death threats at you guys.
If I was living in the US, I don't think that I would want those guys to have any top-secret information that could effect the country I lived in.
It's ok, he was probably only selling info to the Saudis, not the North Koreans.
And it's not like Saudi Arabia ever attacked the U.S., right? Right?
To clarify: treason requires a declared war against an external entity. Sedition is what Trump did.
We were on Jan 6th.
Right, but that is sedition, not treason.
Agreed.
This will amount to nothing, just like all the rest.