> "was impeached, not convicted" you're being pedantic and you know I meant convicted. Yes, he was impeached... but not convicted so that's the end of it. A democrat house impeached and a republican senate found him not guilty.

Mostly true, but since we're discussing his second rather than first impeachment trial, it was not a Republican Senate that found him not guilty - it was a Democratic Senate, specifically one split 50-50 but with Democratic President of the Senate (VPOTUS) Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker. Also he was acquitted only due to the supermajority required - a majority of senators, including 7 Republicans, did vote to convict.

Plus, even though Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he voted to acquit based on his interpretation of the Constitution - I think this was about whether a former president could be impeached and convicted at all - he also said that Trump was "practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of" January 6.

> "his own lawyer" lawyers talk shit... we now know, per SCOTUS, the correc tpath.

We know the path that SCOTUS has made legally binding on lower courts, but it was not handled in a way that gives most Democrats faith that it was a fair ruling. In particular, I have zero confidence that they would have ruled the same way if the defendant had been a Democratic former president rather than Trump.

I'm going to use a word you used in your comment and say that most Democrats feel the judicial system is heavily weaponized by Republicans against Democrats, not by Democrats against Republicans.

> Remember... Trump said "lock her up". Then didn't. (and yes, she's not the POTUS - thankfully - but my point stands).

I have no idea what point this is supposed to represent.

> For example... he was charged with and became a "felon" for misdemeanor charges (no clue what those were) bumped up to felonies for "election interference".

You're referring to the NY case here, which is actually the least severe of his four cases. But sure, it's the only one where he's been convicted so far.

He was indicted by a NY state grand jury, at the request of a NY state district attorney, of falsifying 34 business records (about the hush money payments to Stormey Daniels) with intent to defraud, where the "intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof". Without that extra intent regarding another crime, this would just be a misdemeanor under NY law, but that extra intent makes it a felony.

The 12-member NY state trial jury could only convict Trump if they found unanimously that this was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

What "other crime" were they asked to find in this case that Trump had the intent to commit or to aid or conceal the commission thereof?

Again, the 12-member NY state trial jury could only convict Trump if they found unanimously that the intent to commit this "other crime" was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

The "other crime" in this case was NY state Election Law section 17-152, which is basically about two or more people conspiring to affecting the result of an election "through unlawful means".

What unlawful means? The prosecutor listed three possibilities: a tax crime, falsification of bank records, and a federal campaign finance violation. The jurors in this case all had to find unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that the intended conspiracy to affect the result of the election involved one of these unlawful means, but they did not all have to agree unanimously on which unlawful means was involved.

> Meanwhile: Hillary was charged with and actually convicted of those things - misdemeanor charges that she paid a $130k fine for (if I'm not mistaken). Doing stuff to influence an election. The exact thing that should have been turned into a "felony" per the law as being used by Democrats.

Not true. Hillary's campaign and the DNC paid civil penalties ($8k for the campaign and $113k for the DNC) to the Federal Election Commission to settle an investigation, with no criminal charges or convictions and no criminal fines, no involvement of the judiciary or the DOJ at all, no finding by any judge or jury that the FEC's allegations were true, and with Hillary's campaign and the DNC still denying the accuracy of the allegations.

Also, while the FEC is evenly divided between the parties and not especially partisan, these actions which you found serious enough to call charges and convictions happened under the current term of President Biden, after the underlying complaint had been received under the Trump administration. Seems pretty non-weaponized to me.

What's more, even if that had been a criminal investigation, there's no way a federal prosecutor can charge the same statutes as NY prosecutors can charge, and vice versa - two entirely separate criminal systems. So what works in NY state criminal law and what works in federal criminal law are not always the same. There are other examples of NY state law being stricter than federal law, such as in securities fraud.

> We are at this place, arguing about presidential immunity, which we haven't been to before because one side is actively persecuting a rival who they LITERALLY wouldn't be persecuting if he wasn't running for office again.

To be honest, the NY case would probably have gone forward even if Trump weren't running again, simply because it would still be good politics for the prosecutor involved. I am opposed to prosecutors being elected for exactly this reason, but that isn't specifically a Democratic problem: most US states elect their local prosecutors, including most Republican states.

And as much as I said it was the weakest and least important case of those being brought, keep in mind that the group of people who ended up convicting Trump was neither the elected prosecutor nor Judge Merchan: it was 12 ordinary New Yorkers, including at least some of whom (I forget how many) support Trump in the political or policy context, who unanimously decided after hearing the evidence that the criminal charges had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The case was still strong enough to convince them of that. Plus the entire 34-count indictment could only get brought in the first place after a NY state grand jury decided that the prosecutor had presented enough evidence to constitute probable cause for the indictment.

That isn't very weaponized. It wasn't a partisan or even elected judge convicting Trump, it was a jury of his peers. Note that Judge Merchan is not an elected official, unlike a few NY judges and unlike most judges in certain other states. He was first appointed to the bench by former NYC Mayor Bloomberg, who was registered and elected as a Republican at the time, and was appointed to his current position by an appointee of an appointee of a former Democratic NY governor.

Also, the just-as-elected NY statewide Attorney General Letitia James declined to bring certain criminal charges against Trump (I'm not sure exactly what they would have been), because she felt she couldn't prove them to the high criminal standard of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt. I think she did bring similar charges as a civil lawsuit with the usual "more likely than not" standard of proof, but that's a Democratic elected NY prosecutor responsibly avoiding an unjustified witch hunt even where it might be good partisan politics to go overboard.

Last thought - the classified documents case is one where Trump has gotten extreme leniency compared to what an ordinary defendant would get, not extreme weaponized prosecution. If a nonpolitical government employee with a security clearance had kept classified documents after leaving their employment and had refused to return them after the government had noticed the situation and requested their return, they would have been physically put in jail, and probably also convicted, long ago. There is no real way to call that one weaponized.

> So the "the president isn't presumed immune" was never tested because the Justice System was never weaponized before.

It wasn't tested before because Nixon was pardoned, period. A draft grand jury indictment against Nixon was unsealed in 2018, and Ford's pardon is very likely the only reason those charges didn't go forward - at the very least, a prosecutor thought the situation justified enough to present to a grand jury.

Besides Nixon and Trump, are you aware of any former presidents where a prosecutor concluded that criminal charges were warranted under the usual standards of evidence and proof underlying charging decisions? I'm not. All the other cases that get widely discussed either didn't involve former presidents, didn't involve violations of criminal law, or didn't involve the required evidence and proof for prosecutors to expect that they could successfully obtain a conviction.

You don't have faith it would have been handled the same but you have faith that a Democrat would have had these charges against them?

Just for comparison... Hillary committed misdemeanors that LITERALLY was money crimes to influence an election. The exact same "crimes" that Trump had turned into felonies (without actual evidence of the crimes).

The problem we are in today is that these cases (4 of them) are obviously, blatantly and undeniably political and everyone knows that if Trump wasn't running for reelection or if Trump wasn't a Republican? These charges wouldn't be brought.

> it wasn't tested because

exactly. It wasn't tested. A draft grand jury indictment isn't an indictment.

> you aware of any former presidents where a prosecutor concluded that criminal charges were warranted

Are you aware of any prosecutors that were illegally appointed and paid for? because if you want to talk details, stuff like that is important as well. Florida wasn't appointed properly.

And, lets be honest... a lot of the "proof" is suspect. IE: The J6 committee that hid and deleted evidence from Republicans or the Jean trial where character evidence wasn't allowed showing that she's crazy. (Oh... statute of limitations be damned as well for a he said-she said civil trial).

The end of the story the main problem is you can complain that SCOTUS would do differently if it was another party... but you can't do that and ignore the fact that these cases are getting to the SCOTUS because the lower courts are treating Trump differently because of party and politics.

Weaponization of the "Justice System".

> Last thought - the classified documents case is one where Trump has gotten extreme leniency compared to what an ordinary defendant would get

Really? I find it extremly lenient to not charge a Senator for keeping classified documents unsecured in his garage. I find it lenient for another Senator to not get charged for storing classified info on an illegal server then deleting the evidence that was under subpoena.

Yet somehow... it's lenient that a POTUS who's working with the "archive" gets raided without warning and a photo op happens? then the prosecutor admits to doctoring evidence?

Trump is being treated leniently?

We have a different definition of lenient, I think :)