I’m not so sure he didn’t commit any crimes, but IANAL. Further, there are plenty of more severe sanctions than resigning - lawsuits being the most obvious. Now he has to live as a wealthy white man with a loving family. If he realized how good he had it, he’d be a happy man.
Oh, you aren’t a lawyer? Then what are you basing “The most severe sanctions would be criminal prosecution” on? If a kid is expelled from school for cheating, would you say “well, at least he wasn’t criminally charged”? If you can’t show how he could have been reasonably charged with a crime, it is a not part of the story.
And a lawsuit isn’t a sanction, unless it’s successful.
That’s all good and well, but it doesn’t answer my question. It seems that you don’t think he deserved an ethics investigation and if so I’m just curious as to why not. I don’t think it’s a good precedent to set that if there are credible reasons that a senator or whomever may be innocent of accusations against him that they will simply be ignored.
What you have is a goofy metric for determining the justice of a punishment. Say you are Bill Gates. Would losing 20 billion dollars over something like the Franken photo be something to be happy about even if you have 60 billion left?
In a way what you are saying is that a punishment meted to an individual be calibrated based upon the totality of life’s circumstances.
I’m not sure what you’re arguing with here. IANAL, so I’m not certain about that stuff. I’m just giving my opinion.
Sure he deserved an investigation. He chose to resign instead (though that doesn’t preclude an investigation, but he or someone else would have to pay for it). I’m glad he did - that was better for the party and the country, IMO.
I hold senators to very high standards. I’d consider every situation on its own merits, and every person on the totality of their circumstances.
So we’re sure here, is your opinion that he could have been prosecuted? Or is it that you have no idea but you still want to keep saying that criminal prosecution was the most severe sanction Franken could have faced?
I don’t know. I have an idea, but I don’t know how informed it is - if I had to guess, I’d say that some of the instances described by his accusers might be misdemeanors.
Yes, but you said
Then since he deserved an investigation, was it not unfair of Schumer to tell Franken he wanted his resignation by 5 pm? Which, btw, is a bit different from Franken just choosing to resign. Just being completely honest here, it seems to me you don’t really give a damn about Franken and what happened to him, you just want to put party above everything. This is just my impression of course, so please correct me if I’m wrong. But that seems, to put it mildly, a bit of a dangerous path to start down.
Ok, so your best guess is that these might be misdemeanors that occurred 10-15 years ago. I know you’re not a lawyer, but would you guess that a misdemeanor can be realistically or legally prosecuted after that amount of time?
Because that’s what you’re saying every time you say “The most severe sanctions would be criminal prosecution”. You’re saying that 10 year old (possible) misdemeanors can be prosecuted.
I certainly do put my country and my party above Franken’s senate career. That’s a trivially easy comparison. I put those things above any single person’s political career.
And I think he was treated fairly. Being asked to resign is a fair response to strong evidence of inappropriate behavior, IMO.
I don’t know, and this is not even close to central to my argument, so I’m happy to drop it.
One of the fundamental disagreements here is about our overall view of society, perhaps. I think we’re in dire straits - we live in a society that generally excuses sexual assault and rape by powerful men, and generally treats victims and survivors like garbage. This is just barely starting to change.
I want abusers and rapists to be utterly terrified. I want them shitting their pants every single day. On this issue, I see us as a society in a continuous trauma emergency situation, and I intend to act with this in mind until the emergency is over (i.e. until victims and survivors are treated decently, and no powerful men are mostly immune to consequences for sexual assault and rape).
If I thought we lived in a remotely fair society, I’d probably act differently.
Well of course, but I didn’t mean putting country and party over one person’s career. I mean getting rid of a senator without an investigation to determine if he could very well be innocent and the implications of that if it became the norm. Now, that won’t happen overnight, but as I’ve said it’s a dangerous precedent what Schumer did to Franken. I’m simply saying that it ought to be in the hands of the voters to decide who they want for their senator unless among other legitimate reasons that person has committed crimes or there is credible evidence of them. Of course, since you think everything was fair and there was sufficient evidence of something, then you see no issue here. Fair enough.
I know it’s not central but you do seem to like to trot it out so you can pretend Franken got a fair deal. Just like him being allowed to keep his money and family. And pretend that the pressure he faced to resign wasn’t much of a factor in his totally voluntary decision.
I did the Google for you. Misdemeanors in New York and California generally have a one year statute of limitations, Minnesota is three.
Another Google for you shows that no Senator has been expelled since the civil war, those Senators being ousted for supporting the rebellion.
So I don’t just want you to drop it. What I think would be more honest is for you to acknowledge that Franken, by being forced out by his caucus, did indeed recieve the severest sanction possible.
I’m sure the pressure was a factor (and probably the primary factor), but that doesn’t make it any less voluntary. “Voluntary” doesn’t imply a lack of consequences – I think he made the correct decision, for both the country/party and for himself. He just seems in denial right now, according to that article.
I don’t believe he did receive “the severest sanction possible”. A giant lawsuit that succeeded, or even one that failed but further embarrassed him, would have been more severe than mere resignation (which is not expulsion – many, many senators have resigned). Being expelled would have been more severe than being pressured to resign, IMO.
The picture is certainly evidence. If he wasn’t a Senator, the picture would be evidence of a severe case of sexual harassment in the workplace. Furthermore, the Democratic Party is entirely within its rights to ask for a Senator’s resignation for any reason. In this case, the optics of an ethics case would have been uncomfortable at best AND led by Republicans to boot.
What is the statute of limitations on federal offenses? In any case, I agree with iiandyiiii. Franken left office, so there was no investigation. Who know what the investigation would have revealed? I don’t think a statement that criminal penalties are more severe than resignation is out of line.
It is amazing to me that a group of you have managed to change this thread from a discussion of his unacceptable conduct, to a discussion of the consequences for HIM. Oh no, his life is ruined (it’s not). Oh no, women are always believed over men (no, they’re not - this case needed that damning picture). Congratulations gang. You have embodied in one thread virtually all of the stereotypical behavior that men are accused of following an accusation.
I’m sure Al Franken will be fine, just fine. He earned his current exile, and his comeback tour has started.
True no way to know for sure. Personally I highly doubt it had any impact on Doug Jones. And of more impact I think it fueled the backlash that led to Kavanaugh getting approved.
In any case from that political expediency perspective our bottom line is having lost a powerful brilliant liberal voice, and gotten Judge Kavanaugh. Maybe we would have won with Franken still around and no fuel to that backlash narrative. Maybe not. But we do have Kavanaugh.
In any case I suspect I am not the only one here with quality improvement experience. Zero tolerance for any mistake with severe punishments is not the approach that leads to systemic improvements. If sexual harassment is a problem you actually want to impact this is a counterproductive approach.
I’m not surprised you think that because you are pretty unreasonable on this subject. You think pretending to grab someone’s breasts is the same as actually grabbing. You and iiandyiiii are both creating pure fantasies about what could possibly have happened but it is rather straightforward that under the circumstances, Franken got punished as much as he possibly could have been.