Don’t Tear Down the Rule of Law to Indict the Trump Organization

[excalibur]

Even the NY Times admits what is going on is crap.

...

As Charlie Cooke notes, the latest leaks to the New York Times about the Manhattan District Attorney’s office’s investigation suggest that something quite unlike equal justice is going on in Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office if it is seriously considering an indictment of the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, over benefits paid to Weisselberg. As the Times admits:

It would be highly unusual to indict a company just for failing to pay taxes on fringe benefits, said several lawyers who specialize in tax rules. None of them could cite any recent example, noting that many companies provide their employees with perks like company cars.

That is the definition of unequal justice. A target was chosen — Trump — because of his political prominence, and an indictment is being considered in a case where a business without political prominence would face no such threat. This is doubly dangerous because it involves going after a former president of the United States, with the apparent goal of building a criminal case against him. Presidents are not above the law; while there are reasons why a sitting president should not be indicted while in office, the office endows its holder with no special immunity. If Trump — before, during, or after his presidency — unambiguously broke a clear law for which an ordinary person would be prosecuted, such as shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, Vance would have a duty to prosecute him. But trumped-up charges against former leaders are a familiar sight in banana republics, one that America has thus far avoided. Mounting a prosecution against a former president — especially a former president who was investigated extensively in office without the bringing of charges by the self-styled “Resistance” — is a grave step for the nation and its confidence in the rule of law. That Rubicon should be crossed only on the basis of a case that can be easily explained and shown to people outside of deep-blue Manhattan as a well-known and traditional crime.

Robert Jackson, when he was attorney general before going on to be a Supreme Court justice and Nuremberg prosecutor, famously warned:

There is a most important reason why the prosecutor should have, as nearly as possible, a detached and impartial view of all groups in his community. Law enforcement is not automatic. It isn’t blind. One of the greatest difficulties of the position of prosecutor is that he must pick his cases, because no prosecutor can even investigate all of the cases in which he receives complaints. If the Department of Justice were to make even a pretense of reaching every probable violation of federal law, ten times its present staff will be inadequate. We know that no local police force can strictly enforce the traffic laws, or it would arrest half the driving population on any given morning. What every prosecutor is practically required to do is to select the cases for prosecution and to select those in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain.

If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his case, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm — in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.

True in 1940, true today. As I have written many times (such as here, here, here, and here), don’t prosecute your enemies under rules you would not want used against your friends. Bringing a case against Trump or his business based on a strained or aggressive reading of the law, or its extension to situations rarely prosecuted, would not be a vindication of the rule of law but a grievous blow against it.​

Don’t Tear Down the Rule of Law to Indict the Trump Organization | National Review

To do so would not be a vindication of the rule of law but a grievous blow against it.

www.nationalreview.com

 

[Scottish_Brexiteer_UK]

Lefties and Democrats should really sit up, take notice and give their heads a right good wobble if they still think they're right to go after Trump - especially when someone like the New York Times prints something like that.

But as ever it won't subdue the blood lust where the looney left are concerned.

It never ceases to amaze me just how inhumane they are. They want their pound of flesh and their lust for blood. Even more remarkable as these folk represent themselves as righteous.

Even on a good day, when these types of folks are relaxed and comfortable in their own environments the passive-aggressiveness still rips right out of them. Sneering almost. Like they are on the edge, just casually waiting for something to happen any second that they can go after, cancel or pontificate to.

 

[theHawk]

Even the NY Times admits what is going on is crap.

...​

​

As Charlie Cooke notes, the latest leaks to the New York Times about the Manhattan District Attorney’s office’s investigation suggest that something quite unlike equal justice is going on in Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office if it is seriously considering an indictment of the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, over benefits paid to Weisselberg. As the Times admits:​

​

​

It would be highly unusual to indict a company just for failing to pay taxes on fringe benefits, said several lawyers who specialize in tax rules. None of them could cite any recent example, noting that many companies provide their employees with perks like company cars.

​

That is the definition of unequal justice. A target was chosen — Trump — because of his political prominence, and an indictment is being considered in a case where a business without political prominence would face no such threat. This is doubly dangerous because it involves going after a former president of the United States, with the apparent goal of building a criminal case against him. Presidents are not above the law; while there are reasons why a sitting president should not be indicted while in office, the office endows its holder with no special immunity. If Trump — before, during, or after his presidency — unambiguously broke a clear law for which an ordinary person would be prosecuted, such as shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, Vance would have a duty to prosecute him. But trumped-up charges against former leaders are a familiar sight in banana republics, one that America has thus far avoided. Mounting a prosecution against a former president — especially a former president who was investigated extensively in office without the bringing of charges by the self-styled “Resistance” — is a grave step for the nation and its confidence in the rule of law. That Rubicon should be crossed only on the basis of a case that can be easily explained and shown to people outside of deep-blue Manhattan as a well-known and traditional crime.​

​

Robert Jackson, when he was attorney general before going on to be a Supreme Court justice and Nuremberg prosecutor, famously warned:​

​

​

There is a most important reason why the prosecutor should have, as nearly as possible, a detached and impartial view of all groups in his community. Law enforcement is not automatic. It isn’t blind. One of the greatest difficulties of the position of prosecutor is that he must pick his cases, because no prosecutor can even investigate all of the cases in which he receives complaints. If the Department of Justice were to make even a pretense of reaching every probable violation of federal law, ten times its present staff will be inadequate. We know that no local police force can strictly enforce the traffic laws, or it would arrest half the driving population on any given morning. What every prosecutor is practically required to do is to select the cases for prosecution and to select those in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain.

If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his case, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm — in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.

​

True in 1940, true today. As I have written many times (such as here, here, here, and here), don’t prosecute your enemies under rules you would not want used against your friends. Bringing a case against Trump or his business based on a strained or aggressive reading of the law, or its extension to situations rarely prosecuted, would not be a vindication of the rule of law but a grievous blow against it.​

Don’t Tear Down the Rule of Law to Indict the Trump Organization | National Review

To do so would not be a vindication of the rule of law but a grievous blow against it.

www.nationalreview.com

 

[CrusaderFrank]

The dems moved from their 1/6 Reichstag Fire right to the Cultural Revolution

 

[jknowgood]

They won't do anything, Trump has dirt on all of them. Politics as usual.

 

[Rambunctious]

NY is playing with fire....

 

[excalibur]

And from another article:

... that targeting people because they are unpopular, rather than targeting crimes and then prosecuting the people you can prove committed them, is a bad thing for prosecutors to do. It is, alas, not an unusual thing. Systems in which prosecutors are elected rather than appointed logically lend themselves to that sort of abuse. We see it empirically, as with New York State attorney general Letitia James, who unabashedly campaigned on a get-Trump platform and was elected by a mile.

I write only to add that the specific situation Charlie outlines is probably even worse than it appears to be.

According to the Times’ report, the target is Allen H. Weisselberg, the Trump organization’s CFO. The news that he is in the prosecutorial crosshairs is not new. As the Washington Post reported in early March, Manhattan DA Cy Vance’s minions have been squeezing Weisselberg for a long time. He has been Trump’s top financial exec for over 20 years, and two of his sons are also entangled — one works for the Trump organization, the other has extended it credit. The elder Weisselberg has described himself as Donald Trump’s “eyes and ears . . . from an economic standpoint,” and he is said to be intimately familiar with all the organization’s most important transactions.

As the Post elaborated, one formula for “flipping” a confidant of the main suspect is to make him worry about his own legal jeopardy — which is often peripheral — in order to pressure him to reveal everything he knows about the suspect. That is, the confidant and his crimes are beside the point — the point of threatening prosecution is not to enforce the law at issue for its own sake; it is to net the big fish; and not on anything in particular, just something that might stick. Paul Manafort, Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, was doggedly pursued not because Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors were particularly interested in him or his fishy consulting work in Ukraine, but because they wishfully theorized that he might be able to hand up Trump — on . . . something.

These pressure tactics include putting the accomplice in a state of anxiety over not only his own wrongdoing but also that of his loved ones. Weisselberg, it is reported, was closely questioned about his sons’ activities (and the Times report Charlie refers to says school tuition for one of Weisselberg’s grandchildren is in the mix, too). It is reminiscent of the Mueller probe’s pressuring of Michael Flynn to plead guilty to a charge of lying to the FBI that even the agents who questioned him didn’t think he committed; part of prosecutors’ dance withFlynn included floating the possibility of prosecuting his son for failure to register as a foreign agent — a charge that the Justice Department rarely invokes.

Understand, the DA is not interested in Weisselberg’s sons, or the perks that he may have received, which would ordinarily not be worth a prosecutor’s time. The DA is not even interested in Weisselberg himself. The objective is Donald Trump, and Weisselberg is of importance only as a potential means to that end.

To paraphrase Lavrentiy Beria, show me the man and I’ll show you his friend’s crimes.​

More on NY Prosecutors Squeezing Trump’s Financial Guy | National Review

To paraphrase Lavrentiy Beria, show me the man and I’ll show you his friend’s crimes.

www.nationalreview.com

 

[Esdraelon]

NY is playing with fire....

It's almost like they know they won't be surrendering power, regardless of votes. Otherwise, it makes no sense to behave tyrannically when an election is less than 2 years away. They WILL find a figleaf in media complicity and they will go so far as to refuse to allow elections because they believe their opponents are "too dangerous" for the Republic.

 

[TroglocratsRdumb]

The Democrats are using our government agencies as their political tools just like it is done in banana republics.
They are attacking anyone who is associated with Trump.
They are acting like a dangerous political cult.

 

[Penelope]

the whole org is guilty of tax fraud.

well since everybody is guilty:

Why does this matter? Well, because almost everyone in America has done something illegal at some point — yes, including you — and if the government were to spend enough time and money looking into them, it would almost always find something.
-------------------------------------------------
they just got caught.

 

[WTF19]

FUCK CUOMO THE MASS MURDERER....this is what the law should be going after...hatred is not a reason to harass people....PUT CUOMO THE HOMO IN JAIL...
FUCK THE SCUM DEMONRATS---SHIT STAINS FULL OF HATE

 

[colfax_m]

So people are just cool with tax fraud now, huh?

 

[Care4all]

Michael Cohen ratted Trump org, out. They found truth in his statements.

you are not talking about lying on your taxes and gaining a buck or two....

it was a systematic effort over years, of fraudulently avoiding taxes of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, in unpaid taxes.

If you go after the little guys for the earned income credit fraud, then the rich guys committing fraud, should be gone after. Fair, is fair.

 

[excalibur]

Michael Cohen ratted Trump org, out. They found truth in his statements.

you are not talking about lying on your taxes and gaining a buck or two....

it was a systematic effort over years, of fraudulently avoiding taxes of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, in unpaid taxes.

If you go after the little guys for the earned income credit fraud, then the rich guys committing fraud, should be gone after. Fair, is fair.

As the Times admits:

It would be highly unusual to indict a company just for failing to pay taxes on fringe benefits, said several lawyers who specialize in tax rules. None of them could cite any recent example, noting that many companies provide their employees with perks like company cars.​

 

[toobfreak]

It would be highly unusual to indict a company just for failing to pay taxes on fringe benefits, said several lawyers who specialize in tax rules. None of them could cite any recent example, noting that many companies provide their employees with perks like company cars. A target was chosen — Trump — because of his political prominence, and an indictment is being considered in a case where a business without political prominence would face no such threat. This is doubly dangerous because it involves going after a former president of the United States, with the apparent goal of building a criminal case against him.

Yes, the Left is so desperate, they are trying to prosecute him for things which are never prosecuted, JUST AS WITH HIS TWO IMPEACHMENTS where the Left impeached him just because they could, then drummed up specious excuses to try to justify it.

THAT'S DESPERATION.

The Left know fully well that Trump remains their strongest, worst enemy and threat even out of office and that is all this is about: tying to build and maintain talking points for yet more lies should he run again.

 

[Care4all]

Michael Cohen ratted Trump org, out. They found truth in his statements.

you are not talking about lying on your taxes and gaining a buck or two....

it was a systematic effort over years, of fraudulently avoiding taxes of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, in unpaid taxes.

If you go after the little guys for the earned income credit fraud, then the rich guys committing fraud, should be gone after. Fair, is fair.

As the Times admits:

It would be highly unusual to indict a company just for failing to pay taxes on fringe benefits, said several lawyers who specialize in tax rules. None of them could cite any recent example, noting that many companies provide their employees with perks like company cars.​

I don't expect anyone to be indicted if it is simply a company car where taxes aren't paid...pay the back taxes, and wha la, just a slap on the wrist!

If it is yearly private school tuition for your grand child or a new York city apartment for your son, then someone like weisselberg, the accountant for the firm accepting those perks who knows better, without counting it as income each year....it could be a much bigger deal for him.

 

[AZrailwhale]

If they are guilty of tax fraud, why isn't the IRS and whatever the tax department of NY called going after them? That's normally how it works, you cheat on your taxes and you wind up in tax court.

 

[Mustang]

Conservatives main problem seems to be all about evidence.

Even the NY Times admits what is going on is crap.

...​

​

As Charlie Cooke notes, the latest leaks to the New York Times about the Manhattan District Attorney’s office’s investigation suggest that something quite unlike equal justice is going on in Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office if it is seriously considering an indictment of the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, over benefits paid to Weisselberg. As the Times admits:​

​

​

It would be highly unusual to indict a company just for failing to pay taxes on fringe benefits, said several lawyers who specialize in tax rules. None of them could cite any recent example, noting that many companies provide their employees with perks like company cars.

​

That is the definition of unequal justice. A target was chosen — Trump — because of his political prominence, and an indictment is being considered in a case where a business without political prominence would face no such threat. This is doubly dangerous because it involves going after a former president of the United States, with the apparent goal of building a criminal case against him. Presidents are not above the law; while there are reasons why a sitting president should not be indicted while in office, the office endows its holder with no special immunity. If Trump — before, during, or after his presidency — unambiguously broke a clear law for which an ordinary person would be prosecuted, such as shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, Vance would have a duty to prosecute him. But trumped-up charges against former leaders are a familiar sight in banana republics, one that America has thus far avoided. Mounting a prosecution against a former president — especially a former president who was investigated extensively in office without the bringing of charges by the self-styled “Resistance” — is a grave step for the nation and its confidence in the rule of law. That Rubicon should be crossed only on the basis of a case that can be easily explained and shown to people outside of deep-blue Manhattan as a well-known and traditional crime.​

​

Robert Jackson, when he was attorney general before going on to be a Supreme Court justice and Nuremberg prosecutor, famously warned:​

​

​

There is a most important reason why the prosecutor should have, as nearly as possible, a detached and impartial view of all groups in his community. Law enforcement is not automatic. It isn’t blind. One of the greatest difficulties of the position of prosecutor is that he must pick his cases, because no prosecutor can even investigate all of the cases in which he receives complaints. If the Department of Justice were to make even a pretense of reaching every probable violation of federal law, ten times its present staff will be inadequate. We know that no local police force can strictly enforce the traffic laws, or it would arrest half the driving population on any given morning. What every prosecutor is practically required to do is to select the cases for prosecution and to select those in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain.

If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his case, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm — in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.

​

True in 1940, true today. As I have written many times (such as here, here, here, and here), don’t prosecute your enemies under rules you would not want used against your friends. Bringing a case against Trump or his business based on a strained or aggressive reading of the law, or its extension to situations rarely prosecuted, would not be a vindication of the rule of law but a grievous blow against it.​

Don’t Tear Down the Rule of Law to Indict the Trump Organization | National Review

To do so would not be a vindication of the rule of law but a grievous blow against it.

www.nationalreview.com

My overwhelming concern when it comes to court cases, regardless of whether they're criminal cases or a civil cases, has to do with the evidence presented.

If you can show me compelling evidence in favor of a conviction, whether it's a preponderance of the evidence in a civil trial, or the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal trial, I don't have a problem with convicting someone, anyone, regardless of their political views.

However, evidence seems to be the last thing in the world that conservatives care about. They stand up and cry voter fraud even when Giuliani goes to court without the evidence to support his claims. And now, apparently, the Trump Organization is facing the possibility of criminal charges, and my firm conviction (pun intended) is that it won't matter to conservatives how much evidence is presented and how compelling it is. They'll simply say that the case has no merit and that it's politically motivated.

This is why it's best for America and the rule of law to prevent conservatives from having the reins of power because I don't want to live in a country where acquittal or conviction hinges on ideology while evidence is ignored.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Even the NY Times admits what is going on is crap.

...​

​

As Charlie Cooke notes, the latest leaks to the New York Times about the Manhattan District Attorney’s office’s investigation suggest that something quite unlike equal justice is going on in Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office if it is seriously considering an indictment of the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, over benefits paid to Weisselberg. As the Times admits:​

​

​

It would be highly unusual to indict a company just for failing to pay taxes on fringe benefits, said several lawyers who specialize in tax rules. None of them could cite any recent example, noting that many companies provide their employees with perks like company cars.

​

That is the definition of unequal justice. A target was chosen — Trump — because of his political prominence, and an indictment is being considered in a case where a business without political prominence would face no such threat. This is doubly dangerous because it involves going after a former president of the United States, with the apparent goal of building a criminal case against him. Presidents are not above the law; while there are reasons why a sitting president should not be indicted while in office, the office endows its holder with no special immunity. If Trump — before, during, or after his presidency — unambiguously broke a clear law for which an ordinary person would be prosecuted, such as shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, Vance would have a duty to prosecute him. But trumped-up charges against former leaders are a familiar sight in banana republics, one that America has thus far avoided. Mounting a prosecution against a former president — especially a former president who was investigated extensively in office without the bringing of charges by the self-styled “Resistance” — is a grave step for the nation and its confidence in the rule of law. That Rubicon should be crossed only on the basis of a case that can be easily explained and shown to people outside of deep-blue Manhattan as a well-known and traditional crime.​

​

Robert Jackson, when he was attorney general before going on to be a Supreme Court justice and Nuremberg prosecutor, famously warned:​

​

​

There is a most important reason why the prosecutor should have, as nearly as possible, a detached and impartial view of all groups in his community. Law enforcement is not automatic. It isn’t blind. One of the greatest difficulties of the position of prosecutor is that he must pick his cases, because no prosecutor can even investigate all of the cases in which he receives complaints. If the Department of Justice were to make even a pretense of reaching every probable violation of federal law, ten times its present staff will be inadequate. We know that no local police force can strictly enforce the traffic laws, or it would arrest half the driving population on any given morning. What every prosecutor is practically required to do is to select the cases for prosecution and to select those in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain.

If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his case, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm — in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.

​

True in 1940, true today. As I have written many times (such as here, here, here, and here), don’t prosecute your enemies under rules you would not want used against your friends. Bringing a case against Trump or his business based on a strained or aggressive reading of the law, or its extension to situations rarely prosecuted, would not be a vindication of the rule of law but a grievous blow against it.​

Don’t Tear Down the Rule of Law to Indict the Trump Organization | National Review

To do so would not be a vindication of the rule of law but a grievous blow against it.

www.nationalreview.com

This is a lie.

There is no evidence that the criminal investigation of Trump’s organization is being conducted in bad-faith or outside of the law.

The thread premise is also a lie.

This is not the NYT; this is subjective opinion from a rightwing columnist.

“Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online. He was formerly an attorney practicing securities and commercial litigation in New York City, a contributing editor of RedState, columnist at the Federalist and the New Ledger, a baseball blogger at BaseballCrank.com, BostonSportsGuy.com, the Providence Journal Online, and a contributor to the Command Post. His writings on politics, baseball, and law have appeared in numerous other newspapers, magazines, websites, and legal journals.”

Dan McLaughlin

Recent and archived work by Dan McLaughlin for National Review.

www.nationalreview.com

 

[Turtlesoup]

jknowgood We need to build wall around New York City...and call SNAKE in to deal with the issues.