I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

Justice is bifurcated, if you haven't seen the statue. It's a woman with a blindfold that's pulled down on one eye giving a wink to rich people.

New York's Attorney General is investigating Trump University, that's ongoing. There may be others.
The federal US Attorneys may have cases in the wings, like going after the Trump Foundation for the alleged bribe of the Florida AG.
While calling for a grand jury against a candidate and/or his or her family during the lead up to an election isn't strictly prohibited (at least as far as I know), it does seem like something that ought to be avoided for the sake of democracy. Plenty of time after November to determine whether crimes have been committed and if the state wants to bring a case.

Tomobot, that's so myopic. After November, Trump might well be the face of the State. We all saw how well that worked with Berlusconi. Delaying justice, or even allowing electoral considerations to get in the way, is actually anti-democratic. Avoiding prosecuting Trump 'for the sake of democracy' is a bizarre stance to take. Why should anyone who has the power/money/name-recognition to get on a party ticket be granted a stay of justice? If anything, they should be more heavily scrutinized.

It's not like I don't understand that indicting Trump could be seen as political. It's just that viewing it as such reflects a disbelief in the legitimacy of the state (which Trump supporters definitely have). Reinforcing that view is a terrible idea.

If the incumbent admin was Republican, you think it would be valuable for them to start holding grand juries and pressing charges against the Clinton camp? Let's think about that for eight seconds or so.

State AGs can press on at will. For the federal Attorney General, who is appointed by the sitting President, to start pressing cases on one candidate or the other sets a terrible precedent.

Just because Trump is the nominee of our other political party doesn't make him the exact equivalent of the other... he can go as low as he wants and no matter what he's always equal to the person on the other side. That type-of thinking shows an incredibly serious flaw in our political system.

It doesn't set a bad precedent. Like have a basic understanding of legal fictions for a second (or eight): the whole system is legitimized by its supposed impartiality. And frankly, it mostly works that way as well. Also, nobody's talking about the federal AG: it's NY state where he's violated charity laws, Florida where he bribed Pam Bondi. Sure I'd advise the federal gov to be careful if they pursued charges, but I'm also not concerned with what's necessarily a good idea politically -- I can say with certain that not pursuing legal action because someone is a candidate is not healthy vis-a-vis the interests or perceptions of democracy, which is what you said. Like, does it get easier if he's elected? It doesn't.

To wit: if there's a breach of the law the feds should pursue it. Nobody except a bunch of useless people that already decry federal power/legitimacy (i.e. Trump voters) are going to give a shit.

All I'm saying is that the federal case in Florida is probably going to be delayed until after the election and that's for a good reason.
Nobody is taking the position that the laws shouldn't be enforced. JFC.

well 'after November' rankled me. that's exactly the potential problem.

The opposite of that is the potential problem I'm trying to get you to understand. The USAG has tremendous latitude to bring cases, including completely frivolous bullshit. They don't want to have that power unnecessarily curtailed by Congress, so they don't exercise it in ways that could be construed as partisan, and anything you do in at this point in an election is going to be construed as partisan. It's all game theory shit, really, and it's not unreasonable.

It's weird to me that he has gotten away with not paying his bills in full.

That's all about creditors not having the resources or the inclination to go after him for it. It's worked for him for decades.
Matters of contract are for the civil justice system, mostly, not criminal.

I know but still -- it's essentially stealing. A family friend knew someone who built bookshelves at one of his properties in the 90s and was paid a fraction of what they agreed on. He does this all the time, often to independent contractors who would never have agreed to these lower rates he pays.

Ppl could have literally lost their businesses due to this lost income. Maybe some have.

a rich business person not honoring the terms of a contract and banking on the victim not being able to afford or muster the energy to fight it, you don't say....

people have definitely lost their small businesses because they got ripped off by Trump. That's been reported on. It just hasn't had a lot of legs, because again, dog bites man.

instead of suing him, they should just spraypaint dicks on all of his properties

I don't know, to me the precedential concern isn't being seen as being political even though you're prosecuting for a legitimate reason (and obviously they'd be careful) it's the chilling effect of not pursuing charges due to fears re: public perception or congress. In the three possible scenarios: 1) trump gets hit with charges now; 2) trump wins; 3) trump loses, it's more political to hit him once Clinton's in power (i.e. revenge) and not going to happen if he wins. It used to be being elected protected you from prosecution -- you're arguing that immunity should extend to candidates as well.

Again, never said anything about immunity from prosecution. And for having called me myopic I think you may have lost sight of the fact that we have one of these things every four years and the incumbent isn't always on the same side as you.

I'm struck with the parallels between Berlusconi and Trump (down to allegations of sexual misconduct with minors). Small solace that our legal system is somewhat less corrupt, Berlusconi was able to weather charges for 9 years as Prime Minister.

On the Carson rerun tonight on Antenna TV, they just had this Op-Ed bit with Floyd R. Turbo protesting the idea of Puerto Rico getting statehood. If you added multiple pauses and constant restatements of the statements made, it would work as a Trump speech.

"The AG needs to press a case now because Trump might win" is saying precisely that the case should be politicized to keep Trump from being elected. It's not like a federal case is going to be past a few meetings in the office to decide staffing in eight weeks.

So tonight I was talking about Trump with a friend at a bar and "Ignition (remix)" started and I realized Trump is like R. Kelly for undecided voters: either he works on you in a way that lets you dissociate, or the disgust keeps you from considering him. But it's not a rational decision.

because it's 2:46am and this is the best possible thing i could be doing, i want to point out a small lol to be had at this little doodledoo on digby:

The NY Times endorsed Clinton but actually they're heavily promoting Trump for president. How heavily? Literally by a 2:1 margin.

Put another way, the Times believes that what Trump says and does is twice as important as what his closest rival says and does.

Think I'm kidding? If you go now (now being September 24, 2016 at 2:18 EST) to the NY Times Web site and do a word search, you will come up with

Trump: 16 mentions
Clinton: 8 mentions

2 Pictures of Trump
1 picture of Clinton

It's no wonder he's pulled even.

then you do a quick ctrl+F on digby's front page and find:

119 mentions of trump
65 mentions of clinton

grifters are good for business

identify with the aggressor

this election season, people will cast votes by jiggling in the direction of mirrors while gnawing at their elbows and swallowing salt water. election observers hump the machines and every vote requires you to pull down a lever, hard, five to eight times

meanwhile this guy gets paid to be on tv and occasionally asks questions to presidential nominees

http://i.imgur.com/LrYZnSu.jpg

"I think he's unqualified, has poor judgement, can't manage things very well, isn't particularly likeable, and doesn't care about me, but I am going to vote for him."

I can see a lefty in a swing state saying the exact same thing about HRC. (Let's not start w/ the "qualified" generality, DT's kindergarten qualities notwithstanding)

Tomboto and Lion's arguement has me thinking that its actually a great idea to have the president Inaugurated nearly two months after the election. The AG could start an investigation right after election night and the new prez might be getting subpoenas while (s)he's unpacking boxes, while issues of partisan pressure had been avoided.

http://time.com/4506963/donald-trump-gennifer-flowers-debate/

No Flowers, apparently

bummer

You don't bring me Flowers
You don't swing Wisconsin

Once again, Trump fails to bring home the D-List celebrity bacon...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOV6bf6DzVs

\m/

David Fahrenthold is promising something big coming tomorrow about the Trump Foundation. Cautiously excited.

Don't those related tweets indicate perhaps criminal tax evasion, albeit mitigated by his "ignorance *is* a defense" note? That is, perhaps Trump Inc. was truly up to illegal stuff, but he was following the advice of council, which perhaps led him astray?

I saw someone on twitter say that if the moderator of the debate aren't supposed to have fact checking authority, then... why should it be a journalist? If they're just there to keep the thing going, get Ryan Seacrest to do it.

Stay safe, America. The world is fucked up.

No, get Oprah!

Someone on twitter

It was Ryan Seacrest

No, it was Oprah!

I don't know whether moderators should intervene or not. Partly I think no, that's the whole point of the debate, for the two people up there to go at each other. But as What's A. Mook said on one of the shows this morning, if Clinton has to spend the whole debate fact-checking Trump, she won't have time for anything else.

obviously there can't be an expectation that the moderator is Arbiter of Right and Wrong but there's a huge gulf between asking for that and asking the moderator, you know, to at least *question* the obviously wrong thing that was just said (ie "well now, actually Obama wasn't President in the 60s so he couldn't have been at fault for Bay of Pigs", not "I think you'll find trickle down economics don't work!").

https://twitter.com/victomato/status/780119655423676416

Maybe instead of a moderator trying to fact check, the network should just do the CNN chryon thing and state facts on the screen so that the viewers get some helpful details but the debate itself doesn't get bogged down.

"Trump says he will take the oil (this doesn't make sense)"