NY Magazine: Trump conviction

The author of the commentary, Jonathan Chait, describes himself as a liberal hawk.  He is a committed anti-Trumper, but has criticized liberals and conservatives.

Chait talks about Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges.

The case was always marginal, the kind of charge you would never bring against a regular first-time offender. It was the sort of charge you’d concoct if the target is a bad guy and you want to nail him for something.

The Trump case is marginal.  At it’s heart, a rich guy paid of a hooker who wanted to go public about a one-night stand from 18 years ago.  It is less than a victim less crime because privately settling a dispute happens all the time.

Chait says it’s the sort of charge you concoct.  So, pull some trivial shit together to throw it at a wall.  Maybe it sticks. 

In the liberal view, Trump is a bad guy that liberals want to nail for something.  Does anyone actually believe that if Trump were a Democrat, any of this would be happening?  Consider that Senator Kennedy crashed a car into the water, and left a woman trapped inside to die.  He was not charged.

In Trump’s case, it’s likely that charges would have been dropped if he withdrew from the presidential election.  That sure sounds like the DA is tampering with the 2024 presidential election.

Trump is polling well, and has a very good chance of being elected president again.  Progressives are willing to go to any extreme to stop that from happening.  They see their actions as justified, no matter how much America is damaged, because they feel so strongly about their beliefs.  That’s dangerous.

The Trump conviction was a partisan hit job by a rogue prosecutor and a corrupt district attorney.  Every thing you need to know is in that headline.

We are expected to believe that 12 fair and impartial jury members came to a unanimous decision 34 times?  That isn’t even remotely plausible. 

You’ve seen courtroom dramas.  The jury deliberation is fraught with tension as they discuss a couple of days of testimony.  After 5 weeks of testimony, the Trump jury deliberated for 6 hours to talk about 34 charges.  That’s like 11 minutes per felony.

Pray you never get arrested.  The process is the punishment.  95% of criminal cases never go to trial because a plea bargain is reached.  When a person is arrested for a crime, the DA doesn’t file one charge, but as many as can be plausibly applied.  The avalanche of charges and potential for a long prison sentence are meant to intimidate the defendant into reaching a plea bargain. 

Prosecutors know that anything can happen in a trial, so it’s safer to take the easy win.  Getting a conviction on every single charge the DA could think up, is just not credible.  We are supposed to believe that the DA didn’t go overboard on any of the charges?