meanwhile in the senate, moscow mitch and his GOP goons keep blocking election security bills, after the (bipartisan) senate intelligence committee and FBI warned about continued disinformation campaigns and meddling efforts by russia and others ahead of the 2020 elections...

#just republican things

https://www.axios.com/gop-senator-election-security-blocks-3f432161-42f4-4fa2-9207-d281ec857058.html

This whole thing with both Michael Flynn and Roger Stone really exposes how the FBI is capable of making a criminal out of someone who wasn't doing anything illegal.

Both had significant political and/or personal reasons to lie, based on Flynn's sensitive backdoor diplomatic channels that the FBI was not privy to, and based on Stone's fraudulent pretense of Wikileaks insider information.

Comey & friends knew that Flynn was conducting secret talks with the Russians for Trump to deescalate the standoff, which is absolutely within the powers of the president to conduct foreign policy, but couldn't be 'official' because Trump was still the president-elect, not sworn in- but such channels are normal and every president initiates them before being sworn in. So they intentionally ambushed Flynn and entrapped him, knowing he couldn't tell them the truth, and did a ridiculous Le Carre style spy move where they lured him in under pretense of interdepartmental cooperation, then asked him about it casually and jumped in a van with a laptop to immediately write down official accounts to use against him afterwards.

In Stone's case, his problem was that he was a charlatan and fraudster who was pretending to have insider access to Wikileaks, because that's what made him valuable to the Trump campaign, who only bothered keeping him around in hopes he could give them an inside scoop on the next Wikileaks bombshell before it happened. In reality, he was as desperate for access and incapable of getting any as all the journalists and internet personalities trying to contact Assange, all he could do is reach out to people he hoped could get him in contact, who didn't. He was publicly tweeting that he had insider knowledge, telling the Trump campaign he had insider knowledge, but in reality he had jack shit. When Mueller's team questioned him, telling the truth would have meant admitting he was a worthless fraud. His lies were both to avoid political fallout for Trump and moreso his own self-serving interest, and the judge at trial excoriated him for the latter. But while his lies were criminal, and his vague threats and attempts to sway witnesses also criminal, the actual fraud about wikileaks access was not. Exaggerating your access isn't a crime.

In a reasonable world, Flynn would be found innocent because the investigators clearly set him up for political reasons in a blatantly compromised investigation tainted by misconduct, greatly harming the trust between departments and endangering our national security. He simply didn't do anything wrong. But Roger Stone deserves his guilty verdict because his crimes were of his own making, and even if there would have been no crimes committed but-for-the-investigation, it was his own choice to protect him fraud by lying. And that's worthy of a fair slap on the wrist and punishment befitting a misdemeanor, not an egregious felony.

bill clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob that wasn't illegal. even in the #metoo era its legal. this has been exposed for a long time.

I think a good thought experiment is this:

Say a man is arrested for jaywalking or whatever minor crime. Rather than plead out, he foolishly takes it to trial. While clearly guilty of the minor crime, he tries to coerce witnesses against him and tweets about the trial in violation of a gag order, and posts a vaguely, possibly threatening message about the judge in the case. He then gets convicted of jaywalking, witness intimidation and obstruction.

For an underlying minor crime that shouldn't even result in a jail sentence normally, does it reasonably escalate it to a decade of imprisonment on par with manslaughter / rape / etc for all the obstruction?
Should attempts to interfere in law enforcement be treated so severely even if the underlying conduct wasn't heinous?
If a man steals a loaf of bread, then tries to escape prison four times and resists capture, should he get 19 years in prison?

I think Roger Stone could pass for an unrepentant valjean. All the bad and none of the good, and he stole the loaf for himself when he was already fat.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Feb 12 2020 10:56am

What's your proposed alternative?

I have no issues with high punishments for intentionally obstructing the legal system. Especially when it's a government official doing it who knows the laws, the consequences, and why they are in place in the first place.

Maybe implement a system where every count of obstructing the trial, indimidating witnesses, etc. instead of carrying a large flat sentence results in a multiple of the minimum or maximum years you could have been given if you were found guilty. That way the obstruction scales with the underlying crime.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Feb 12 2020 10:59am

My friend went to jail for 9 days for jaywalking. He rode a bike across the street. He was also a rasta.

This post was edited by Skinned on Feb 12 2020 11:06am

Proportionate penalties, yeah. Multipliers instead of flat increases is a fine way of doing it, scaling with the crime
Obstructing a murder trial by having your MS13 gang members threaten to kill jurors should carry a much steeper penalty than obstructing a vandalism trial by DMing a friend and asking him to give you a fake alibi

If Roger Stone actually had been covering for a massive Russian geopolitical conspiracy to corrupt the election, and he was colluding with the FSB to obstruct justice and coerce witnesses, then 9 years might be a fair sentence, because the facts of the underlying crime would be so much more serious. But given that all he did was mislead the FBI over a completely inconsequential date in order to protect his own bogus claim of Wikileaks access to prop up his feigned value to Trump, the penalties for obstructing the trial should be similarly minor.


Lets say thought experiment, we found out that Johnnie Cochran stole OJ's glove from the evidence locker and replaced it with a smaller sized glove and carefully replicated the bloodstains to obstruct the trial with a big dramatic must-acquit moment. That would be a very serious crime. Now lets say a guy on trial for petty vandalism had his lawyer steal a glove with spray-paint on it from the evidence locker and replace it with a glove that didn't fit. Exact same crime of tampering with evidence and obstructing justice. Is it as serious?

This post was edited by Goomshill on Feb 12 2020 11:11am

2 issues with your thought experiment.

1. neither Stone nor Clinton were violating a law. one was a horndog the other a career liar and clout chaser. so there wasn't exactly an option to take the jaywalking ticket. Clinton could have admitted to the affair, and Stone could have admitted to being a liar. Clinton would have been lambasted, but not been impeached. Stone's career would be over but he'd be free. so the option was kinda there, and both should have taken the option. Stone specifically seems to have been counting on a POTUS pardon, very silly of him.

2. impeding an investigation isnt on par with lying to congressional investigators. in a jaywalking case the number of people affected are small, with respect to congress impeding affects the nation. only minorly, but it adds up when its lying to the governing body of 400 million americans. lying to congress holds harsher punishments for this reason.


as to the last part it's not as serious because of what you're covering up, but both should be prosecuted as the same crime and the severity should be handled in sentencing. Cochran gets max, vandal gets min.

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/hope-hicks-returning-trump-white-house-senior-adviser/story?id=68961123&__twitter_impression=true

its a season 4 surprise! look whos back after rowing that boat for 2 years