That is when you’re working up to getting a warrant to wiretap the boss or get a search warrant.
In this case it didn’t take guts and perseverance to slowly climb the ladder. It took a lack of guts and almost obscene amount of turning blind eyes to not directly end up with Trump.
In this case you got all the evidence you’ll ever need for any amount of probable cause from a congressional committee. The probable cause for the search warrant didn’t come from a careless remark of Mickey the Greek but from the goddamn government itself; they still had the receipts from the documents he said he didn’t have. In any other country that is not a dictatorship that search warrant would come with another warrant for his arrest (see Brazil).
I was on board with the idea that Garland’s DOJ was doing things the right way – until Smith came on board and shit started to happen a helluva lot faster. IM very poorly informed O, if Garland had assigned Smith (or someone like him) in Feb. '21, Trump would already be behind bars.
Now we’re looking at the very real possibility of him being re-elected while free on appeal for what should be slam-dunk convictions.
I know the point of seeking justice isn’t to prevent future events, but if those future events can undermine the justice you’re seeking, one should start seeking it ASAP.
You may be right. It might be like watching an episode of Voltron. First they try to fight with these little lion robots that look like chihuahuas attacking an elephant. Then when that doesn’t work, they form into a giant robot the same size as the big monster, and trade blows back and forth. And finally, they form a sword out of nowhere and cut the monster in half in one blow.
It’s like… Fellas, this happens every single time. Why the fuck don’t you just form into Voltron, make the sword, and cut it in half at the start of the fight?! I don’t recall any official rules of engagement being enacted by the Intergalactic Courts on how to deal with giant monster attacks based on treaties signed between the giant robot military and the evil space magician factions. Just fucking lead with the move that you resort to at the very end of every fight that works 100% of the time and immediately.
Now… My knowledge of Voltron far exceeds my knowledge of the Department of Justice. And we have a lot of established precedent on how to handle huge monsters that attack from outer space. On the other hand, the orange terrestrial monster was committing things with which there were no precedent. So my criticism comes with a great deal of ignorance, and is measured as a result.
Is Smith Voltron or the sword? Wait a minute, he’s not a chihuahua, is he?
He’s the sword. If Merrick Garland was a giant robot made from tinier robots shaped like lions, and Trump was a tentacled slime creature stomping on trees (not a stretch to imagine), then Smith is like pulling the sword out after unnecessarily fucking around for half an episode.
Now it all makes sense.
The Jan. 6 committee showed that this wasn’t the only strategy.
Not only was ‘waiting two years using the excuse that the little guys had to be prosecuted first’ not the only strategy, but it was a strategy that could only help the big guys claim that the passage of time invalidated investigation and prosecution.
As one small illustration: what was Mark Meadows burning in his fireplace in December 2020 and January 2021? If investigation of the big guys had started in February 2021, then there might have been quite a few people around who both knew, and would have been willing to talk (in exchange for whatever deals their lawyers could finagle).
Now that so much time has passed, finding out what ol’ Mark was up to is unlikely to happen.
Yes. Garland had to know this. He’s perfectly well aware of the length of time federal trials typically take to be completed.
I’ve long held the view that Garland’s errors stemmed from both his fundamental naivety and his natural timidity.
I am starting to wonder, though.
But Garland should despise Trump. Why on earth would he intentionally slow-walk his investigations? I’m going with naivety and timidity
Yeah, N and T do seem more likely than that Garland thinks he’d be better off with Trump gaining power.
I think Garland is so enthralled by this idea in his head that he will be hailed as the Ultimate in Integrity, that whatever common sense he might once have had has been drowned in his own self-absorption.
Yeah, there’s some real solid defense against hysterics, hyperbole, and misinformation as we’ve seen throughout this thread.
I have been, too.
Also not wanting to appear political doesn’t work when you’re leading a department that for decades has been routinely politicized from who gets appointed to work in it to the incentives and reputational consequences for people after they start working in it.
I have a factual question for the Garland apologists.
Can you point me to any publicly released written opinion or filing or press release by any US prosecutor - anywhere at any time - in which the prosecutor says he thinks the subject of the report is guilty of a crime but he’s declining to prosecute because he thinks the potential defendant would be acquitted by a jury?
I realize such conversations are often part of the internal process, but I’ve never heard of such a thing being released publicly, because it seems to counter the basic legal principles regarding guilt and innocence.
If you can, I may walk back my opinion that Garland, a political appointee, was negligent in handing Trump the 2024 election wrapped up in a package with a big red bow on it.
I don’t have an actual cite, but that seems like it would be something that’s pretty common? I’d think, “We can’t win this case, so we’re not wasting time and money trying to prosecute it,” is a decision that happens pretty much daily.
Which is different from publicly stating “we think he’s guilty, but we don’t think we can convince a jury”. The issue isn’t the non- prosecution, it’s the implication of guilt.
I’ll settle for a cite that refers to the prosecutor speculating on “what I think the jury will think” that goes beyond the actual question of guilty or not guilty.
Because saying “we think the jury will find her “not guilty” is one thing, saying “we think the jury will find her not guilty because she’s attractive and, based on our interviews, is skilled at manipulation” is another, and analogous to what is happening here.
I found one here.
Nearly a year after an unarmed man experiencing a mental health crisis was shot and killed in a Yakima dog park, Yakima County Prosecutor Joe Brusic spoke to Apple Valley News Now’s Emily Goodell on why he decided not to file charges. Brusic said after looking at all of the evidence and the state’s self-defense laws, he came to the conclusion that, if it went to trial, a jury would accept an argument for self-defense and find him [the shooter] not guilty.
It wasn’t just a matter of evidence, but how the jury would feel about convicting.
“You also look at what in this particular case Mr. Telles looked at subjectively at the time that this incident unfolded before him with his child,” Brusic said.
So apparently it happens, though I still think that what was in this report was inappropriate. I mean, look at how that article I linked was worded. The language in the report seemed very unprofessional and was just the special prosecutor’s personal opinion of Biden.
This isn’t saying anything that the right wing has already been saying since 2019 with the “Sleepy Joe” BS. I don’t think it’s nearly as impactful as you think it is.
Hummmmm……
I’m not convinced that saying “we think the jury will believe his legal arguments and find him not guilty” is substantially different than saying “we think the jury will find him not guilty.
Now if he had said “we think the jury will find him sympathetic due to his small physical stature and his extreme distress around the incident and therefore find him not guilty”……that’s more what I was looking for.
And then there’s this from your cite
Brusic said he included all the information relevant to his charging decision in his letter to law enforcement, but it doesn’t say much about Ortega himself. He doesn’t explain what he was going through at the time, how his death impacted his family, or how, in the middle of a mental health crisis, he ended up at the park in the first place.
Because those things wouldn’t be relevant to a non-prosecution decision.
You are right that what was in the report was definitely more personal. Hence why the report still pisses me off. But prosecutors will consider whether or not the jury will convict based on subjective considerations and might decline to prosecute based on that, and will admit that publicly.
There’s definitely no direct equivalence between the cases though. I mean, everything else aside, the guy in the shooting isn’t an incumbent president facing an election later this year. Consider how careful Garland has treated Trump in the past to avoid the appearance that the DOJ could be influencing an election, and then this shit happens.
I’ll note that I’ve never been a 100% apologist for Garland in this thread, and I hope it’s clear I’m not one now. I’m not on the “fire him because he’s the worst ever” train either, but I absolutely don’t defend every decision or make every excuse for him.
Yes, and nothing like that was present in the example given–meaning we’re still looking for an answer to your challenge.
Again, you had said:
The Yakima County prosecutor said (according to the story) “after looking at all of the evidence and the state’s self-defense laws, he came to the conclusion that, if it went to trial, a jury would accept an argument for self-defense and find him [the shooter] not guilty.” So the evidence would not support a conclusion of ‘guilty.’
That’s very different from saying that the evidence would support a ‘guilty’ verdict but that other traits of the accused would lead a jury to fail to find the accused guilty.
As Atamasama said, this is likely a not-unusual sort of conversation for a prosecutor to have with staff. But what appears to be much more unusual is putting that conversation into a publicly-released written opinion. Which, I believe, is what you were asking for.
I’d also thought you were asking for such a written release coming from someone employed by the Justice Department–but maybe not:
(My bolding.)