Romney on Pardoning Trump

[Kishkumen]

Equality under the law is the way.

If you wanted equality under the law, Biden should be impeached for withholding aid to Israel to not lose votes in Dearborn, Michigan. Biden's age and senility should not be an excuse to avoid prosecution for 50 years of mishandling classified documents. Hillary Clinton should have been charged for mishandling classified documents. You don't want equality under the law. You want to bankrupt and throw people in jail because you disagree with their political platform. You don't want to democracy. You want to disenfranchise anyone who doesn't vote the way you do. You are on the side of the tyrannical majority. It is you who is the tyrant.

You are the crown prince of false equivalence, ajax. You think that allegations have the same weight as indictments. Clearly, you are in no position to judge. You just think that every time a charge is brought against a right wing lunatic, it must be brought against a centrist Democrat, regardless of the relative merits and evidence.

[Res Ipsa]

If you wanted equality under the law, Biden should be impeached for withholding aid to Israel to not lose votes in Dearborn, Michigan. Biden's age and senility should not be an excuse to avoid prosecution for 50 years of mishandling classified documents. Hillary Clinton should have been charged for mishandling classified documents. You don't want equality under the law. You want to bankrupt and throw people in jail because you disagree with their political platform. You don't want to democracy. You want to disenfranchise anyone who doesn't vote the way you do. You are on the side of the tyrannical majority. It is you who is the tyrant.

You are the crown prince of false equivalence, ajax. You think that allegations have the same weight as indictments. Clearly, you are in no position to judge. You just think that every time a charge is brought against a right wing lunatic, it must be brought against a centrist Democrat, regardless of the relative merits and evidence.

Everyday is opposite day in Ajaxland.

Remember when talked about structural racism in the justice system? Ajax's big argument was that the results don't matter because the rules are the same for everyone? What's his complaint now? That there isn't a 1-1 correspondence between impeachment's of Republican and Democratic presidents or criminal prosecutions of Trump and Hillary Clinton. When black folks make exactly the same complaints he's making now -- that the system isn't treating Rs and Ds unfairly, results don't count. Only when it's Rs that he thinks are getting unfair results.

Ajax, the House of Representatives can impeach Joe Biden any time they want. They appointed an impeachment investigation committee that announced at the beginning of the process that they would impeach Biden. They spent millions of dollars and countless hours trying to dig up something -- anything. And yet they didn't impeach Biden. Why? because they couldn't get enough votes in the House, which is controlled by the Republicans, to vote for articles of impeachment.

When it comes to impeachment, the process was the same for Trump as it was for Biden: they were equal under the law. At least as you use that phrase when comes to black folks.

Hillary Clinton was investigated by the Republican headed FBI, which is composed mostly of conservatives and republicans, as well as numerous Republican headed committees. She wasn't prosecuted because there wasn't sufficient evidence of a crime. Trump, who had used "lock her up" as a campaign slogan, didn't have her prosecuted.

Trump is being prosecuted because there is sufficient evidence that he committed multiple crimes. He's been indicted by at least three different grand juries.

The same system of charging suspects only when sufficient evidence exists that a crime has been committed applied to both. They both were treated equally under the law. What you are complying about is the outcome -- one charged and one not. Again, this is 180 degrees different from when the issue was how black and brown folks are treated by the criminal justice system.

You want law fare? Hunter Biden is the poster boy for an actual victim of law fare.

Do you know what Ds do when their fellow D politicians are charged with crimes? They let the justice system take care of it. Senator Robert Mendez is being vigorously prosecuted by the Democratic Biden administration. No Democrats are trying to whip up thugs to harass and intimidate the judge, prosecutors or jurors. No Democrats are threatening to interfere with the prosecution, as the speaker of the House treated to do with Trump's prosecution.

During Biden's term, federal prosecutors indicted indicted a democratic House member from Texas, Henry Cuellar, for Bribery. It also launched a probe into democratic representative Cori Bush for alleged campaign finance violations. The notion that the DOJ is prosecuting Rs while protecting Ds is made up BS.

What you are doing is the dishonest tactic that Rs have come to rely on in the last several years: Accuse the Ds of doing something they are not actually doing as reason for doing something they already plan to do.

[Dr Exiled]

These cases were brought based on political calculations, not on any real threat to democracy. I know that's a tough pill to swallow, that one side would use the judicial system politically, but that's what happened and it isnt working out. Romney's advice will prove wise. It would have allowed for people to continue to believe Trump is guilty of whatever without having to show any proof at trial.

Of course there is a political calculation in politics. What kind of truth bomb do you imagine you are dropping here? At the same time, Trump is a threat to democracy. If you see no evidence for that in all of his authoritarian posturing and behavior, then I don’t know what to say to you. You obviously refuse to accept reality, heaven knows why.

Yet Trump left office in Jan 2021 like he was supposed to do. I'm not voting for him and am going to vote for Kennedy, however, reality is something that was lost with all of the exaggerations surrounding Trump and how the Russians supposedly stole the election for him. It's continued since.

[Gadianton]

Pardoning Trump would be a great political move. It would cement Trump's guilt with a lot of the population without having to go through trials that could have bad results for those pursuing them.

We used to have a contributor on this forum with the moniker Dark Helmet. He had a sig line perfect for times like these:

"Evil always triumphs because good is dumb."

[ajax18]

Trump is being prosecuted because there is sufficient evidence that he committed multiple crimes. He's been indicted by at least three different grand juries.

In blue states, blue inner cities, with partisan left wing judges, juries, and prosecutors. If you think this isn't about politics, then why don't you move to have Trump tried in rural red America and see if you get the same result? After all, it's the same system, is it not? All that matters is the evidence, right? What we need to stop this from ever happening again is to add political party to race, gender, sexual orientation, and every other minority protected status. If you think Trump is a threat to democracy, then vote him out. When you use lawfare to accomplish what you can't in a free and fair election, that's when you become the very threat to democracy that you're railing against.

[Gadianton]

Do you think Michael Cohen deserved to go to prison, Ajax?

[Moksha]

Trump is one bad hombre who does not deserve a pardon. Romney should have mentioned deportation to Russia.

[Gunnar]

Trump is being prosecuted because there is sufficient evidence that he committed multiple crimes. He's been indicted by at least three different grand juries.

In blue states, blue inner cities, with partisan left wing judges, juries, and prosecutors. If you think this isn't about politics, then why don't you move to have Trump tried in rural red America and see if you get the same result? After all, it's the same system, is it not? All that matters is the evidence, right? What we need to stop this from ever happening again is to add political party to race, gender, sexual orientation, and every other minority protected status. If you think Trump is a threat to democracy, then vote him out. When you use lawfare to accomplish what you can't in a free and fair election, that's when you become the very threat to democracy that you're railing against.

Nonsense! RI has already demonstrated to you that Democrat lawbreakers will get prosecuted even in blue states with the approval of their Democrat led administrations. Meanwhile, Republican politicians repeatedly demonstrate that they will adamantly oppose accusing or prosecution Trump no matter how compelling the evidence against him. In fairness, though, I must add though that even Republican Judges (including many who were Trump appointees) ruled against every one of the 60 some odd legal challenges Trump and his minions filed against the legitimacy of his loss to Biden in 2020. He is being prosecuted now in a Red State for illegal election fraud and interference based on very credible evidence against him. We have yet to see how that will turn out.

The relevant point that you seem incapable of accepting is that there is very damning and compelling evidence that Trump did indeed try to overturn a fair and legal election result. Had there been no compelling evidence of that, it is virtually certain that he would not be on trial for it. Even William Barr, Trump's chosen Attorney General, conceded that there was no credible evidence of election fraud that would have changed the election results.

[Gunnar]

These cases were brought based on political calculations, not on any real threat to democracy. I know that's a tough pill to swallow, that one side would use the judicial system politically, but that's what happened and it isnt working out. Romney's advice will prove wise. It would have allowed for people to continue to believe Trump is guilty of whatever without having to show any proof at trial.

I don't agree. I know of no cases when Democrats have used the judicial system politically against their opponents when there was no credible evidence of lawbreaking by them. If and when such cases exist, they deserve to be opposed and condemned every bit as vigorously as when Republicans do it! Some Trump's actions were so obviously wrong and illegal, it would have been a great miscarriage of justice were he not prosecuted and held to account for them! If you really believe Trump and his openly stated intentions and agenda, should he be elected, are no threat to democracy, you are either hopelessly naïve or badly misinformed (assuming, of course, that you are not yourself fundamentally opposed to the very idea of democracy).

[Kishkumen]

Yet Trump left office in Jan 2021 like he was supposed to do. I'm not voting for him and am going to vote for Kennedy, however, reality is something that was lost with all of the exaggerations surrounding Trump and how the Russians supposedly stole the election for him. It's continued since.

The upshot with the Russians and their puppet Donald Trump is not that they didn’t attempt to interfere in the election at the public request of Trump himself, but that Clinton was such a weak candidate and should in no way have been threatened by such interference. Only a supremely poor politician would lose to Trump, and Hillary Clinton is a great administrator who sucks as a politician.

To assume that all of the same factors are at play here is, sorry to say, stupid. Trump’s continuing and increasingly serious assaults on the Constitution and democracy make the accusation of Russian interference at Trump’s public request look like Kinderspiel.