Republican friend:
The important thing isn't whether Trump is innocent or guilty of crimes.
What's important is that the prosecution, trial, and verdict are politically motivated and biased.
I received a letter from a Medford-area Republican of about my age. He is a well-respected CPA.
Good afternoon Pete,I wrote him saying there was lots of documentary evidence in this case. The signed checks. The handwritten note by Trump's financial advisor, Allen Weisselberg, that laid out the plan to "gross up" the reimbursement for the hush money expenses. And Trump wasn't an impoverished defendant without counsel. He had the best defense money could buy. The jurors weighed evidence, not political opinions, I said.
To be up front, I have no idea whether President Trump is innocent or guilty. I suspect that his conviction will be overturned on appeal. But that would not necessarily mean he is innocent. It would just mean that there were so many errors by the DA and the Judge, that it was impossible for President Trump to have received a fair trial.
I question the independence of the Jurors, the Judge and the District Attorney. I am certain that you will remember the multitude of trials in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia etc., whereby juries of supposed peers consistently found white people innocent of horrendous crimes against people of color and consistently found that people of color were guilty of crimes that they didn’t commit. If I understand what you are saying, the legal system found President Trump guilty and therefore he is. It would seem that you would also argue that these trials of the 50s and 60s declared innocence or guilt and therefore the legal system worked. I just can’t buy that.
The Judges in the Southern trials and in the Trump trial probably were not unbiased. The District Attorneys probably were not unbiased. The jurors probably were not unbiased. But, the legal system, as you so eloquently stated, declared their innocence or their guilt.
I hope that I would have the same feelings and beliefs if I were a Democrat.
But none of that changes the facts. The DA was not prosecuting Trump for his potential crimes but for political reasons only. He could have started the case three years ago. It sure appears that he was not independent in appearance as well as fact.
The Judge was not unbiased and should have recused himself. There are other Judges. But he would not allow this, probably for personal reasons. He does not appear to be independent in appearance as well as fact.
The make-up of the jurors were not unbiased and therefore could not come to a conclusion based upon the DA's case. They do not appear to be a jury of Trump's peers. 86% of Manhattan, I think, voted for Biden.
Would [Oregon's Democratic] Governor Kotek receive a fair trial if she were judged by only the people of [Republican-leaning] Central Point or Eagle Point? I really don’t think so.
Our discussion went on longer, without resolution, of course. We were talking past each other. I kept asserting that courts and the justice system got their legitimacy from processes that sought to know the truth independent of politics. My friend said the justice system was just another venue of political opinion.
I have higher trust in the legal system as a place where justice is determined than does my friend. I may be naive.
The media now routinely describe judges at every level by the president or governor who appointed them, as if that predicts and explains their rulings on the law. Democrats complain about the "stolen" Supreme Court seat, as if a judge appointed by President Obama would rule very differently on matters of political controversy from one appointed by Trump -- and indeed the justice would.
Trump is the loudest and clearest spokesperson for the idea that courts are corrupt and politically biased. Behind the scenes the Federalist Society has developed a farm-team system of recommendations, clerkships, and appointments to the federal bench that has been effective in credentialing future judges. Democrats don't disagree with the strategy; they complain that Republicans have done a better job of it.
I am disappointed that my friend thinks that the legal system is biased and corrupt, but I can see why my friend would think so. Democrats complain of the billionaire largesse given to Justices Alito and Thomas and say they are prejudiced. Biden pre-announced the gender and race of his appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson. Meanwhile senior Republican officeholders -- attorneys themselves -- who might offer some passing words of respect for the legal system after this jury verdict in New York, are instead doing the opposite and echoing Trump. When Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, and the spokespeople for the Republican National Committee say that juries cannot be trusted, why should my friend feel any differently?
16 comments:
Like ships talking past each other in the night, to mix a metaphor. Your friend is obviously an intelligent and respectable professional, not an uneducated dolt. Yet it is hard for you to understand his perspective. That’s because humans are primarily emotional, not rational as we like to think (pun intended). The core issue here is mistrust, which now is directed to formerly respected institutions: government, law, courts, medicine, journalism, the intelligence community. Your friend’s use of the word appear is telling. One definition: what things look like or seem to be rather than what they actually are. We are stuck in our beliefs and no amount of ‘facts’ will change them.
Ayn Rand’s Objectivism has won the day and there is no room for nuance or shades of gray. In a court case, the reasonable-person standard is an objective standard. It is no longer possible, because it is not possible to be reasonable about outcomes that we subjectively disagree with.
You're Republican friend, apparently not an idiot, ignores the fact that all those high priced lawyers defending Felon One had just as much input into Jury Selection as did the Prosecution, and IMHO, is parroting the same drivel as can be heard from Seditionists like Tucker Carlson on a daily basis....
In so doing he is no different than than the Rubes who keep sending Trump money, which then goes to his lawyers. I wonder , does your friend have some Gold Sneakers on order, or a Trump Bible ?
Perhaps it's true that all we judges do is just react emotionally. I spent a judicial career trying to be objective, but maybe I was kidding myself.
I remember one time when a well respected couple in the community appeared in court on a landlord/tenant case. I respected them and I disclosed that. About half way through the bench trial I began to realize that their legal theory was going to lose and that my emotional reaction was that I did not want to rule against them. However, my job was to rule on the law and I found in favor of the other side.
I remember the case in which the father had been abusive towards his child and I had curtailed contact between them. Afterwards, the police informed me that he was telling co-workers he was going to kill me and they gave me pictures of him and his cars for me and my wife. The police determined he had not committed a crime, but, it feels bad to know that someone is saying they are going to kill you. Later, there was a hearing about whether he had received his share of the property division and, while I emotionally identified with the mother who had done most of the parenting for the son, I ruled for the father because he was right on the law.
I had many other experiences in which I considered my rulings to be in favor of the law and not just reached by emotion. Don't we all do this in daily life? Doesn't a doctor treat a criminal patient with the same good medical practices as they use on me? My teacher daughter talks to me about the challenges of being fair to students who are difficult and unpleasant. I dealt with many jurors who told me about how they struggled to be fair and apply the law.
Maybe we are all kidding ourselves about what we perceive as efforts to be fair and objective. I expect my accountant has seen me do things with which she disagreed. I know she treats me fairly.
I will try to be objective. I think our legal system and our democracy depend on this effort.
The Republican Peter quotes made an interesting point: In the 50s and 60s, White racists were routinely exonerated of crimes committed against Blacks, so why shouldn’t the same courtesy be extended to Trump for the crimes he committed against the entire country?
Trump’s crimes, personality disorders and character flaws are well documented, the worst being his attempt to overthrow the government of the United States. Republicans idolize him and feel he should be above the law.
Peter’s correspondent probably also believes Trump won the 2020 election. You can’t reason with people who won’t accept reality. Nor can you appeal to their moral values; they have no shame. When the GOP embraced Trump and his White nationalist base, it abandoned any vestige of the moral compass that may have once guided it. Today’s Republicans are of the same mentality as the White supremacists who created the “Lost Cause” myth of the Confederacy – totally delusional and proud of it.
A good judge recognizes his/her emotional biases and rules to contrary, if that is what the law requires. You were a good judge, Phil. My fear is that most people won’t believe that in this current atmosphere of mistrust. -JC
The source of a significant proportion of this pervasive mistrust is that the system is not working for so many people.
Too many industrial jobs got exported. Too many people had their cultural beliefs disrespected and rolled over by people with other cultural beliefs. Too many rural people had their way of life disrespected and destroyed by urban people with a different way of life.
Oregon used to have prosperous logging communities; what do those people have now? The opportunity to be obsequious hosts and tour guides when their urban overlords visit on vacation.
And now, the chickens raised in those rural areas are coming home to roost.
Wow, throwing some shade on the good folks in Central Point!
Comparing the racially biased trials in the South to Trump's is a stretch. The larger issue is the Republican position that "everyone is crooked, everything is rigged" and therefore any tactic is fair game.
Donald Trump is a convicted criminal. Some are finding it hard to accept.
I can be friendly towards your Republican friend, but not as a friend. Back in the 50s and 60 s when I was a kid in Medford, I had the same criteria for those who used the n word.
If there was equal justice in New York, sleazy con artist crooked businessman Trump would have been taken down years ago. Instead, Trump was allowed to drive his own contractors into bankruptcy by refusing to pay their bills, getting them to put money upfront into the building of his properties, then losing everything including their own home. Over and over again.
Of course all the prosecutions of Trump now are pure politics.
We were told we had to vote against Trump to 'save democracy,' but the Democrats have not saved democracy yet. Wish they'd get to it.
It was interesting seeing those logging communities embrace the strip mining of the Forest surrounding them, believing that there was no end to the prosperity, that the forest would magically reappear and imported timber would never cause their overlords to shut down the mills and leave town, for good.
Offered reeducation opportunities, too many preferred to refuse those opportunities, so they could stay "victims" and piss and moan about how unfair Life is, and refuse to to anything about changing their circumstances.
Some folks make it sound as if jobs and the economy justify voting for a lying criminal who tried to overthrow the government, and whine about the culture wars as if that were a good excuse for an insurrection. The economy is far better than Trump left it, and democracy is far more important than other people's sex life. Those who vote for Trump are as crazy as he is, and those who make lame excuses for them aren’t any better.
Seems like your buddy is just another low information Trump apologist and proves it well when he says ‘He (Bragg) could have started the case three years ago’; unfortunately this piss poor analogy doesn’t work well when you invoke the fact that Bragg didn’t inherit the DA’s office until Jan 1,’22.
I stopped reading at "I have no idea whether President Trump is innocent or guilty."
TFG was found guilty in court.
I guess we can add jurisprudence-denial to the growing list of facts (science, climate change, elections) that republicans ignore.
BTW, the law doesn't assess innocence.
Michael,
The system doesn't work because of greedy self-serving people like TFG.
Peter, I cannot see how you would understand your guest poster's premise that the legal system is corrupt.
I'm confident your friend wouldn't have felt that way had TFG been acquitted.
Please do not post any more of his uninformed partisan BS.
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