I watch the Legal Eagle videos on YouTube, and one thing I’ve learned is that on TV and in movies when they show a courtroom, they need to build suspense. You ask questions and then eagerly wait for the answer. But in a real trial you don’t have surprises where everyone scrambles over gasps of shock and the judge bangs a gavel for order. Perry Mason is a really terrible example of how a real trial works.
Witnesses and evidence are known in advance and you generally know what the answers are going to be before you ask them. The key is making your case before the judge and/or jury. There is a lot of work and research and planning for a trial, a lawyer isn’t skillfully improvising anything.
Another thing that sets bad expectations is when a person gets arrested then almost immediately goes to trial. That doesn’t generally happen. It usually takes months.
As a casual layman, I’ve been trying to dispel some of the myths I’ve fallen for thanks to Hollywood. Real life doesn’t work that way.
I’ve worked on serious criminal cases that take literally years to get to trial. And that’s with respect to one defendant. The prosecutors weren’t incompetent. It’s just how the process works.
What bugs me is that idea that you have time to prosecute each person who breeched the capitol before you can move up the food chain. I thought the whole point was that when you had enough leverage you moved up and didn’t waste time. We need to see not just lawyers get searched but actual lawmakers.
Why not? If you want to get dirt on Bob, but you don’t have the evidence, but Alice who worked for Bob is clearly guilty of a crime, why not charge Alice then reduce her sentence if she provides what you need to convict Bob? You don’t just let her go, she broke the law and the law says she also must face consequences. It doesn’t have to be an either-or.
Prosecuting criminals isn’t a waste of time, it’s the entire point of what they do.
Especially when it’s actually Frank that you are after, and Edward worked for him, and Denise worked for Edward, and Carson worked for Denise, and Bob worked for Carson.
Sometimes takes a bit to get people to roll up the ladder.
Which is why I think he’s been keeping it under wraps. If it is known where he is, who he is questioning and charging, what deals are being made, then it is easier for those being targeted to find ways of evasion.
My point is that it looks like they are trying to get every single one of them before they move to the next level. There were thousands of breechers, but only limited time to work your way up. Why not use judiciousness and move up while you move sideways?
So it seems to me they are moving up while they’re also moving sideways.
My understanding is that they have already farmed out a lot of the lesser players to field offices so they can concentrate on the bigger fish. It still takes a lot of work and a lot of time.
Most of the prosecutions have been low level people with nothing to say about the real criminals who are threatening the system. If they prosecute every breecher without judging their value for going up a food chain then democracy will run out before they get to half of them.
Forgive me for getting heated, but it is the Pit, after all, and goddammit, if the Smartest, Hippest People on the Planet (Plus a Few Total Dipsticks)™ are falling for the garbage that Merrick Garland is a befuddled idiot who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground or how to prosecute a big, important case, what hope is there for the citizenry at large?
Merrick Garland, a man so stupid he gave up one of the cushiest jobs in government as the best respected judge on the best respected federal bench in the country to rescue the DOJ and FBI from becoming a political arm of the presidency. A man so witless he hardly noticed when Mitch McConnell corrupted the process to select a SCOTUS justice to ensure he, Garland, would be done out of a well-earned and bipartisan-supported seat on the Supreme Court.
Let’s just shit all over him based on our own ignorance of the criminal justice system and how it is supposed to work.
I heard that Cassidy Hutchinson is talking to the DOJ. I doubt that she’s there providing information about random insurrectionists who carpooled in carrying sharpened flagpoles.
