Mandalore76 said:
I think the Trump Derangement Syndrome that pervades this thread requires being ignorant of the fact that this is actually the weakest case against Trump for him to be indicted on. Which may only ultimately strengthen his later defenses of being the victim of a political witch-hunt. The DA would need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sole reason Trump allegedly paid "hush" money to Stormy Daniels was on the basis of protecting his 2016 presidential campaign. That would require throwing out all considerations of protecting his celebrity status, business image, family, etc. That is the only way possible to categorize said hush money specifically as an illegal campaign contribution. Without that, there is no case. Which is exactly what the Justice Department failed to prove against Democratic Presidential Candidate John Edwards in 2012, as cited in the below article. It doesn't require any "hypocrisy", "virtue signaling", "mental gymnastics", "brainwashing", or "conspiracy" theories to see these are not air-"tight charges". "If former President Donald Trump is indicted, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would be prosecuting a case that has been widely criticized as long on politics and short on the law. The courts would have to address a controversial case in which a city prosecutor attempts to prove a federal crime long ago declined by the U.S. Department of Justice. They also would have to deal with a charge brought seven years after the alleged offense, despite a two-year statute of limitations for the underlying misdemeanors (or a five-year period for a felony). In John Edwards' prosecution in 2012, the Justice Department used the same theory to charge the former Democratic presidential candidate after a disclosure that he not only had an affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter but also sired a child with her. Edwards denied the affair, and it was later revealed that Fred Baron, Edwards' campaign finance chairman, gave money to Hunter. Andrew Young, an Edwards campaign aide, also obtained funds from heiress Rachel "Bunny" Mellon to pay to Hunter. The Justice Department spent a king's ransom on the case to show that the third-party payments were a circumvention of campaign finance laws, because the payments were designed to bury an election scandal. Edwards was ultimately found not guilty on one count while the jury deadlocked on the other five. The jury clearly believed there were ample reasons to hush up the affair beyond the election itself. Ironically, Trump also could come out ahead politically. Of all the possible charges he could face, this is the one he would likely invite. Bragg would give Trump strong evidence that Democrats have politically weaponized the criminal justice system against him." Will Trump get arrested? Between sketchy witnesses and the law, case comes up short. |
I'm always curious about who writes these opinion pieces that are regularly pumped out of the supposed liberal media, so lets see what we can find on "Jonathan Turley".
So, it seems like politically, he has largely been in the libertarian camp for a while, particularly in the '00's (though, he was essentially playing the role of a dissavowed liberal for years). He has spoken against many of the US' military entanglements, special treatment for the church and the death penalty, and come out in favor of the legalization of polygamy and broad interpretations of the Second Amendment. Libertarian weirdo Gary Johnson was also a big fan and said that Turley would be one of his picks for the Supreme Court.
Seems like he gained a decent amount of traction on the right during Obama's term when he spoke against the constitutionality of Obamacare and generally criticized most of the power wielded by the administration at the time. More and more over time he got in bed with the Republican party, from representing John Boehner and the Republican party in aforementioned Obamacare fights to defending Trump against impeachment in front of Congress.
At this point, there's little separating him from your typical Fox contributor (and unsurprisingly, he does go on Fox now and again). Following the 2020 election, he commented that the election machines in Michigan switched thousands of votes from Trump to Biden, a claim that even the Fox hosts pushed back on at the time. Since then, he has mainly been relegated to opinion contributor/Twitter user (he is also a big Elon fan).
Interestingly, this path of his from fairly respected libertarian legal scholar to bland conservative talking head apparently didn't go unnoticed by those with more of an ear towards the legal world, with a Slate article titled "What happened to Jonathan Turley, really?" claiming that this lament "eventually became a kind of trope".
That is all to say, Turley is a mess, and I wouldn't trust his "legal analysis" any more than the takes I could get from the opinion contributors on Fox News.