The Mueller Report thread

[Dill]

(05-08-2020, 11:09 PM)Benton Wrote:
Eh, I still don't understand that line of thinking.

Duress of what? Jail? Nearly every plea deal would then be made under duress.

He cut a deal,admitting to a crime. Their verbage may change a bit, but in every court I've been in, a defendant is asked about a plea whenever it's entered, and it includes some language about not entering it under duress. So the guy, at some point, stood up in court, said he wasn't under duress.

This is a pretty solid example of why there should be even more separation of powers. Here's a guy who did illegal actions for the executive branch, got caught, and now gets off with a crime because of it. It's not like he killed anyone, but it's still people accepting illegal acts because of partisanship.

If you could be a little more partisan this would make more sense.  You are assuming there are still actions which, from some neutral perspective, everyone could agree are crimes, established by the relation of empirical, agreed-upon facts to an existing statute. Well there might be, but that is no longer the criterion. Now what is important is the relation of accused and his prosecutors to the president. Something called interpretation then adjusts facts and statutes around that. So the issue is not whether Flynn committed the acts in question, but whether it was the "Deep state"--duress or no--that exposed them. (It was ok when Trump accused Flynn of lying.)

This is probably confusing to a journalist accustomed to non-partisan prosecution and verdicts completely limited by evidence and law.

Regarding the second bolded--its an institution which is accepting illegal acts because of partisanship, or perhaps better said, an "independent" institution now captured and bent to partisan ends, with the blessing of millions of Americans who --their eyes on this false danger called the "deep state"--think this capture somehow a "defense" of their guy and therefore their rights.