Prosecuting offenders is not "weaponizing criminal and civil law";
It is when prosecutions are targeted at political opponents.
Let me ask you a question. If a Republican AG or DA invented "novel legal theories" to go after Kamala Harris for example even though the crime she is being prosecuted for is a misdemeanor past the statute of limitations, would that be "weaponizing of criminal law"? If somebody alleged that Kamala Harris inappropriately touched him sometime in the mid 2000s (accuser can't quite remember what year, much less day), would going after her for millions in a solidly red county (and thus a majority of the jury pool is inclined against her) be "weaponizing civil law"?
And the law is supposed to go after offenders.
Without bias or favor. Instead Alvin Bragg downgrades clear felonies like armed robberies while upgrading a misdemeanor like misclassifying a campaign expenditure to a felony because the defendant is a political opponent. Note that both the federal prosecutors and the former Manhattan DA Cy Vance decided not to pursue charges in this case.
And Alvin Bragg jumping the gun with this rather weak case probably made Trump more popular and also soured the public opinion about the other, far more legitimate, cases.
Trump was given special treatment, in that he was treated less harshly than most defendants would have been.
No, other than Trump nobody else would have been prosecuted given these facts.
Certainly no Democrat would have been.
And again, this is Manhattan DA's office under Trump. It's the county where you can hold up a bodega with a knife and only face petit larceny charges.
Knife-wielding suspect has felony charge reduced under Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s policies
And yet you sincerely believe that upgrading a non-violent misdemeanor to 34 felony counts had nothing to do with politics? Really?
I think Dems' efforts to destroy Trump by legal means actually made him more popular and contributed to his victory.
I think you are right. But that shouldn't persuade us to abandon rule of law.
Not finding loopholes to get around a statute of limitations and not targeting prosecutions against political opponents is not "abandoning the rule of law".
Trump is often accused of wanting to prosecute political opponents. He may do so, but that accusation was blunted a lot by Dems like Bragg prosecuting him on charges like this one.
Well, if that was the weakest case, then the fact that he was found guilty provides good reason to expedite those even stronger cases, which if they are less weak, will surely lead to further convictions.
It's not going to happen now that he won the reelection. The Fulton County case could theoretically proceed, but most likely won't. The federal cases will be kiboshed.
But it probably wasn't the weakest case; Rather, it was the case most difficult for the voting public to comprehend, so the convictions could be spun by the convict as unjust bullying, when in fact they were a perfectly just and normal response to his having committed crimes.
It is not difficult to comprehend that there are rules about classifying campaign expenses, and that it is a misdemeanor. It is hard to comprehend how a misdemeanor past the statute of limitations can be upgraded to 34 felonies based on a connection with a federal law Trump was not even charged with, much less convicted of.
And it was not difficult to comprehend that Bragg's motivation was political.
The double standard from the "Party of Law and Order", and from law and order advocates such as yourself, is glaring, if unsurprising.
Being for law and order does not mean that law should be misused to target political opponents. Whether that is being done by Gaetz (should he become AG) or Bragg.
It is certainly a double standard to downgrade clear and violent felonies to misdemeanors and at the same time upgrade clear misdemeanors to felonies based on "novel legal theories" just because the target is a political opponent.
Trump has committed crimes that would typically result in jail time.
Most likely, but this wasn't one of them.
What's the protocol for inaugaurating a President who is in jail?
I don't know. We had a presidential candidate who campaigned from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, but he was a Socialist and never came close to actually winning.
