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| The "good guys." |
Donald Trump is doing something good for criminal defendants.
He is making the point that investigators and prosecutors cannot be trusted and that sometimes defendants are the good guys.
What a switch.
Typically juries in southern Oregon believe the police. Juries assume that policemen are telling the truth and that criminal defendants are self-interested and untrustworthy. Same with District Attorney prosecutors. They are the good guys.
Conservative voters are inclined to support established authority. Trump is changing all that. He may be opening their minds to the idea that a criminal defendant is supposed to have the presumption of innocence. (Trump isn't innocent, of course, but he is a president making the point that prosecutors are not infallible.) He had a fascinating interview with Fox and Friends where he repeatedly made exactly the opposite points.
***The people being investigated are innocent and they are being falsely accused.
***The investigation is corrupt, and you cannot trust the investigators or the prosecution.
***The investigation is corrupt, and you cannot trust the investigators or the prosecution.
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| Bumper Sticker |
***The investigators and prosecution are targeting the wrong people. They have the wrong guy. Hillary is the guilty party.
***The investigators and prosecution are "fixed" and carrying out a political agenda.
***The prosecution is making a mountain out of a molehill.
***The investigators are jack-booted thugs who got their information improperly, having staged early morning raids.
***The investigators ignored the protection of attorney-client privilege, an important safeguard of our rights.
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| Click Here |
***His accusers are being bullied by the police into lying to save their own skin. You cannot trust witnesses who cooperate with the police.
***It is an abuse of power to get testimony to bully a person into "flipping."
***Testimony given as part of a plea deal shouldn't be allowed, and certainly shouldn't be trusted. It produces lies in reaction to government extortion.
***Trump says he doesn't want to testify and should not be required to. He says that prosecutors set up "perjury traps" and it is wrong of them, and smart for him not to cooperate with the police.
***Support for "omertà ," the mafia code of silence, in the form of respect for Manafort, who has kept quiet so far, and contempt for Cohen, the "rat.
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| Click: Trump blasts FBI raid |
Trump is saying the kinds of things that criminal defendants have been saying for years. Trump is saying the prosecutors are corrupt and the defendant is the good guy.
The public has been quite content to allow prosecutors to "squeeze" low level criminal actors in the hope of getting them to testify against others. It is common prosecutorial practice.
Trump made the practice visible and says it is extortionate and wrong. Many liberals, and particularly people who object to the mass incarceration that is a result of the drug war, feel exactly the same way--at least when the defendant is someone other than Trump.
Trump has switched the polarity on distrust of prosecution.
The Trump supporters, the guys with a bumper strip that says "Support your police," are hearing their president say that defendant have rights, that prosecutors sometimes can be wrong, and that civil rights are precious.
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| Click. Abuse of power. |
Trump finds himself in the same position that people caught up in the War on Drugs had found themselves--a guy in the cross hairs of government prosecution.
Maybe people who figure the prosecutor is always right, of course, will have second thoughts, and figure that defendants are, after all, supposed to be given the presumption of innocence.
2 comments:
Trump has been "sounding like a defendant" for some time, since around February.
This is exploiting the victimhood theme enjoyed by his cult. They are the oppressed (reasons vary) and under attack by the establishment. As this unravels I find myself wondering why it has taken this long to unearth the truth. I can't help but think that all this corruption has been going on for some time, well before his candidacy, but apparently of little interest to journalists and the SDNY.
If they'd been a bit more probative we might not be in this mess and enjoying our first woman President.
Scene: A hollywood movie pitch. "So a reality TV star who was a developer with multiple business failures, questionable character, and longstanding financial ties to the Russian mob runs for President...and here's the twist...he wins!
Movie Exec: "Naw...too farfetched"...
Here's my take...After he gets out of jail they do the movie and Trump plays himself.
Defendant on the stand referring to the police: "Your Honor, how come when he says it, it's "evidence"? "When I say it, it's a "story"?
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