Donald Trump on Wednesday launched fresh vitriol against the judge and prosecuting attorney in his New York business fraud trial, carefully skirting a gag order imposed on him just a day prior.
Trump tried Tuesday to bully a court clerk, sharing false conspiracies about her as well as her personal information. Presiding Judge Arthur Engoron issued a gag order later that day prohibiting all parties involved in the case from publicly discussing court staff.
While Trump avoided mentioning court staff on Wednesday, he went all out with attacks against Engoron and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“This is election interference. They made up a fake case, these fraudulent people,” Trump told reporters. “And the judge already knows what he’s gonna do. He’s a Democrat judge. In all fairness to him, he has no choice.… He’s run by the Democrats.”
Except for the fact that his “political speech” consists of threats and slander, both of which are illegal.
There’s a (ridiculous) law excempting lies told by politicians on the floor of Congress, but no such thing for someone who’s not even in public office committing stochastic terrorism almost every day
You mean the Constitution’s speech and debate clause?
Yes, that ridiculous exemption. If you can’t make your political point without literal slander and fraud, you shouldn’t get special treatment for making it where that kind of thing is at its most destructive to society and the population as a whole.
How would you change this protection in order to address your concerns while still serving the important purpose of protecting legislators from retaliation?
I would remove it.
You still have to prove intention and that it unfairly harms or enriches someone, which means that good faith errors and differences of opinion are already legally protected just like with everyone else.
As for politicians and their supporters using unwinnable lawsuits to harass and damage their opponents, that’s what anti-SLAPP laws are for.
Tl;Dr: there’s no valid justification for letting politicians say and do what would be against the law for regular people.
Historically, this protection was a necessary limit on the prosecutorial power of the executive/king.
Simply throwing it out seems like an over reaction that doesn’t take into account the actual justifications for its existence.
That’s not necessary now that there’s no king and a politically independent justice department. If either of THOSE things stop being the case, we have much bigger problems than politicians not being allowed to enrich themselves and destroy each other by lying.
Scrapping a rule that causes more harm than good in a modern country with weaponized media is just common sense.
The “actual justifications” are invalid as they don’t apply to current reality and in fact that exemption has played a big in enabling the kind of demagoguery that makes an octogenarian who entered politics before the invention of the pocket calculator and thinks the solution to police brutality is to throw money at cops by far the LEAST bad realistic option for president.
Ever hear of the Pentagon Papers?
In what ways does it cause more harm than good?
Yes. Pretty typical Pentagon and presidential behaviour that should come to no surprise to anyone who’s paying attention.
In what ways DOESN’T it? If I had a dollar for every American who died as a result of politics based on one or more politicians deliberate lying, I’d be able to buy the Eiffel tower. If you included every American trapped in avoidable poverty, I’d be able to put in a fair bid for all of France.
As for the protection of honest speech, everyone has that without giving the already powerful and notoriously dishonest special lie allowance privileges.