Former President Donald Trump was indicted for an unprecedented third time on August 1, adding another set of serious federal charges to the mounting legal issues he faces.

    • Kinyutaka@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Even after he is behind bars. Crazy as it sounds, he can run for President from prison.

      Not very effectively, but he can run.

      • rollerbang@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Weird. I’ve heard of Americans losing their right to vote when imprisoned and yet they could run for office?

      • WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        One presidential candidate got 3.4% (more than all 3rd party candidates in 2020 combined) of the vote (over 1million votes) as a third party candidate while in prison in 1920.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            One of the few upsides of my living in Terre Haute, Indiana is that I can say I live in the same town Debs was from. They have a nice museum here dedicated to him in his former home. If you’re passing through Indiana, I do recommend an hour or two to see it. Bernie Sanders made sure to stop there during his 2016 campaign, if you need an endorsement.

            • treefrog@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              FDR gets all the credit but without actual leftists like Debs (and all the workers who fought in solidarity with him) we’d still be sending our kids to work instead of school.

              That’s who this is.

              Bernie has his picture hanging on his office wall and is basically Bernie’s hero.

              • CaptainBananaFish@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                we’d still be sending our kids to work instead of school.

                We are. They’re letting 14 year olds bar tend in Wisconsin and McDonalds in Arkansas has been busted for employing 12 year olds. Several states are actively bringing back child labor.

          • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It makes sense though. Think about it like this, A politician that wanted to stay in power could disqualify his opponents by wielding the DOJ as a personal tool and nailing them with felony charges. Trump could have placed a more loyal attorney general, nailed Biden on some bullshit petty offense that technically qualifies as a felony, and have his name removed from the ballot shortly before the election. Allowing felons to run for president defangs that particular power move. To disqualify someone the 14th amendment would have to be invoked, and should be in Trump’s case.

            • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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              1 year ago

              While I do see the validity of this argument, it still feels like treating the symptoms rather than the cause. If the fear is a sitting president welding his personal power to imprison (and thus disqualify) a political rival, isn’t the bigger problem that a sitting president has the power to do this in the first place?

              • BlinkAndItsGone@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                The Justice Department has to be able to indict people, that’s its function. And the DoJ is part of the executive branch. A good President will not use the DoJ for his personal political purposes, but the incentive to do so, if it was there, would be extremely powerful. I think it’s probably a good idea to remove it. If the people can’t be trusted not to vote for a criminal or a traitor, we have bigger problems than this rule (and that is definitely the case now).

            • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              A politician that wanted to stay in power could disqualify his opponents by wielding the DOJ as a personal tool and nailing them with felony charges

              It’s how Putin and other despots have been doing it for a very long time.

        • FarceMultiplier@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          If he wins, he pardons himself from federal crimes then uses his powers as Commander in Chief to break himself out of prison for state crimes, thereby creating the ultimate constitutional crisis and tearing the country apart.

          • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Whether or not he can pardon himself is up for debate. So if the founding fathers intended that you can assume office from prison there would be a more defined method.

            • Neoncamouflage@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Or we need to admit that the founding fathers may not have predicted literally every possible circumstance to arise in the future hundreds of years.

            • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              It was intentional that you can run and be elected as president from prison. It’s written about contemporaneously. They knew the risk of allowing a president, or administration, jailing their political opponents.

              What’s not clear is if it was meant for a president to be able to pardon themselves. I personally would think not, but many think it’s permissable.

    • ChrisLicht@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’ll be ~5 years before all appeals are exhausted. I’d be shocked to see that he ever eats a final conviction, and any Republican president will pardon him, living or dead.

      And, even if he is convicted and not pardoned, the functional challenges of managing Secret Service protection in a white-collar prison would be daunting, not to mention that his SS detail seems to have been easily corrupted to lie for him. The SS leadership, a locus of supreme bootlickers, would likely tell an inquiring judge that it’s too difficult to protect him in any penal institution for white-collar criminals, which will force the court to choose house arrest at most.

      So, it’s probable that he’ll never serve a day in jail or prison.

          • ANGRY_MAPLE@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            No, maybe not a US declared war. That being said, North Korea seems pretty happy to shout death threats at you guys.

            If I was living in the US, I don’t think that I would want those guys to have any top-secret information that could effect the country I lived in.

            One could definitely argue that exposing certain types information could be considered an attack on the US, because it’s not like bad actors would follow the US constitution to the letter. I’m going to go out on a limb, and say that anyone who buys that type of secretive information probably isn’t very US-friendly.

            Spreading certain types of information could also cause massive security breaches. Anyone who is a protected witness would be at a massive risk. Who’s to say that a bad actor wouldn’t try to mess with your currency sytem, or expose a secret military location? People generally don’t like that stuff happening either, and for good reason imo.

            • ChrisLicht@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              To clarify: treason requires a declared war against an external entity. Sedition is what Trump did.