The former is literally the real legal system, nothing shadow about it. Shadow would be some hidden deal to drop charges or something.
It's also not DDOS when a huge part of what you call "real" is exactly the same, so not unwillingly overloaded but willingly complicit.
No, this is literally a "both sides" issue. Lawfare is not new. See the continuous legal battles over the second amendment in states like NY, NJ, and CA.
> Two other judges, John Higgitt and Llinét Rosado, said James had the authority to bring the case but argued for giving Trump a new trial. And the fifth judge, Justice David Friedman, argued to throw out the case, saying James lacked the authority to bring it.
The reason a democrat would be involved in such prosecution is because every GOP member has effectively sworn fealty to Trump and they will fiercely protect him from any accountability.
Biden was many things, but not corrupt in the sense that Trump is. Yes, his son did business trading on his relationship but that was legal (albeit distasteful).
Most dem voters dislike corruption, even if it's one of their team; I don't see that on the other side of the aisle. Disclaimer: I am not a dem.
If you're talking about the criminal case, it's even worse, as CNN's chief legal correspondent explained: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-... ("Most importantly, the DA's charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process."). Or, as an MSNBC legal columnist explained: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-guilty-hus... ("Most DAs wouldn’t have pursued this case against Trump. Alvin Bragg got lucky. Let’s be honest with each other. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump was convoluted.").
You could write an entire Harvard law review issue about the novel legal issues raised by the Trump criminal case: Can a state crime be predicted on an uncharged federal campaign finance violation? can someone violate campaign finance law--which is focused on preventing candidates from misusing donated funds--by using their own money to pay off a porn star? Can you bootstrap a misdemeanor into a felony through a triple-bank-shot involving an uncharged secondary crime and a choice of three possible tertiary crimes? When you prosecute someone for a business records misdemeanor, but almost all the allegedly bad conduct relates to unspecified secondary and tertiary crimes, how do you instruct the jury? When you give the jury three different options of uncharged tertiary crimes to support the uncharged secondary crime, which in turn supports the charged primary crime, on what points must the jury reach a unanimous decision?
Google's and Apple's "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich" was a more straightforward legal theory than the Trump criminal case.
1. Trump is the epitome of a corrupt pol and has pretty much gotten away with everything his entire life.
2. Prosecuting him was not in the form of of attacking a rival, it was addressing issue #1
3. If the roles were reversed and this was Biden we were talking about, most dem voters would still be for prosecution of blatant corruption. The magic of Trump is that his supporters (which apparently you are one of) are fine with him doing anything he wants, up to and including shooting someone on Fifth Ave
You're correct about (2), and that's the problem! A criminal case that relies on an uncharged secondary crime, which in turn relies on one of three uncharged tertiary crimes, to bootstrap a primary misdemeanor into a felony must stand on its own. Uncharged, unproven past conduct is irrelevant.
> magic of Trump is that his supporters (which apparently you are one of)
My wife and I are Fed Soc members, but we like the Georgetown cocktail parties and voted for Biden in 2020! We weren't going to vote in 2024 until the Trump criminal conviction. It was literally radicalizing. My wife used to loathe Trump, but she drove up to Pennsylvania to volunteer for his campaign after that conviction came down.
The 6 members of SCOTUS who are of your ilk are the exact enablers of our subject of discussion.
And yet you dodge #1. How artful. Now I know that you've not been engaging in good faith, either intentionally or just how Fed Soc taught you.
I didn't "dodge" it. I explained it was irrelevant. The conduct for which Trump was convicted was having a payment to Stormy Daniels recorded in the books of his family owned company as "legal expenses" instead of "hush money." To turn that into a felony, prosecutors invoked several other uncharged crimes--which means they didn't have to prove them--in a triple-bank-shot legal theory so convoluted it's best explained with charts: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/charting-the-legal-theo.... The prosecution never clearly articulated the exact legal theory, but what comes closest to their trial presentation is something like:
1) Violation of New York records law (175.05). But this is a misdemeanor. To step it up to a felony, you need to prove that the records were misrecorded to cover up a second crime.
2) Stepping (1) up to a felony based on New York Election Law 17-152, which makes it illegal to influence an election by "unlawful means," which requires a third crime. According to the press: "Attorneys specializing in state election law believe the statute has never been prosecuted." https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-hush-money-case-relies.... Moreover, the prosecutors never actually charged this crime, meaning they didn't need to prove all the elements.
3) Supporting (2) based on violation of federal campaign finance law. Notably, the FEC, which is charged with administering federal election law, had declined to bring any charges against Trump in connection with the Stormy Daniels payoff. Prosecutors also never actually charged this crime, meaning they didn't need to prove all the elements.
The prosecution also threw out two alternative crimes for (2), and the judge then instructed the jury that they didn't need to be unanimous as to which other crimes the business records were doctored to cover up.
The merits of this prosecution are entirely about the legal theory and the legally relevant facts. Whatever else you think Trump did is completely irrelevant. That's one of the few things Fed Soc folks and liberals agree on. If the target of this prosecution had been a child-trafficking kingpin, the lawyers at my former white shoe firm would be lining up to take on the multiple Supreme Court cases that would come out of challenging this prosecution.
> Fed Soc, eh? I'm shocked you'd consider Biden as everything I see about the org is as a right wing networking club, culminating in ownership of SCOTUS.
Fed Soc has far more Democrats than your typical non-ideological lawyer's organization (e.g. the American Bar Association) has Republicans. It's just lawyers who aren't feelers, and those are on both sides of the aisle.