US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

When a different side takes control of the justice department they may choose to go after all those who broke the law by order of this president. The president might be protected from consequences according to the supreme court, but those answering to the president are not.

This administration has set the standard that the justice department can be weaponized against political enemies. The ratchet only goes one way in American politics, presidents never relinquish the powers claimed by their predecessors.

> The president might be protected from consequences according to the supreme court, but those answering to the president are not.

Unless they are granted a blanket pardon beforehand.

Then all you can really do is an "audit" for who did what, from which no charges can be laid.

The obvious solution to this is to change everything structurally needed to ensure the other side never again takes control, which is clearly also in progress.

> Like Biden didn't weaponize the justice department first?!

Out of genuine curiosity: what specific actions do you think were 'weaponized' investigations / prosecutions under Biden?

That does not allow escaping from international laws.

As someone not from the US and looking from the outside: it seems there is a _significant_ difference between the two administrations in this regard?

> When a different side takes control of the justice department

That's an argument about the degradation of the rule of law, taking as a prior that the rule of law won't degrade. It's... unpersuasive. The end goal of this kind of thinking is that the other side never does take control, ever.

The current administration pretty clearly does not intend to give up power. They tried to evade democracy once already, and have fixed the mistakes this time.

Whether they will be successful or not is unknowable. But that's the plan. And the determining factor is very unlikely to be the normal operation of American civil society. Winning elections is, probably, not enough anymore.

Can't escape State law either.

The left doesn't acknowledge any of that.

Let's say for a moment he did.

Shouldn't that be fixed rather than now abused further?

If your justification for Trump doing something is that "Biden did it first", then that means Biden is no worse than Trump. It means Trump just just following along the path Biden laid for him to the same goal.

For the left to acknowledge something, a specific claim would have to be made and proved. The opposition party standing up a congressional committee with a scary name and making a bunch of press conferences doesn't prove anything.

The US army does, though.

Actually it does if the US, bullies the other countries into not enforcing it and the US it's actually the main country enforcing international law. If a country dare to enforce international law against an us person, they will cut resources or threaten to use military

International law makes traffic cops look like Judge Dredd

As another someone from the outside looking in, the difference is in the reporting in the old media.

Biden had the support of the media and his lawfare and misdeeds were glossed over.

One example was the Hunter Biden laptop. Nord Stream pipeline sabotage was another.

Trump's shenanigans are just getting more attention. But to be fair, his shenanigans are dialled up to 11 while Biden was at a more modest 8.

He prosecuted his own son.

We're talking specifically about lawfare - so no idea why you're talking about the Nord Stream pipeline? These banal observations about 'both sides' are so shallow.

Name Biden's lawfare. What exactly did he abuse the Justice Department to do?

It’s because it’s nonsense. It’s just yet another case of accusations from the far right being a confession.

... and pardoned the moment it was declared guilty.

Just lock them up anyway and pardon yourself for ignoring the pardon if that's how the game is played.

The idea of a blanket pardon is absurd on its face and we're only allowing it because we're allowing political prosecution.

Trump seems to have been able to.

There are some signs that the current Administration has no intention of allowing “a diferente side” to retake power.

Trump third term being one.

So the exact opposite of political prosecution, then?

I think the Clintons might take issue with who was weaponizing the justice department when. From Starr to Bengazi...

Like, do you truly believe Biden started this? What was the first act?

He will very likely just pardon everyone on his last day.

or civil lawsuits.

If you assume that Biden had influence on the prosecution, then we should not forget that the original deal posed by the DOJ was for Hunter to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges for which he would have received 2 years probation, and pre-trial diversion on the federal gun charges.

The judge threw this out, but those are pretty generous terms for what penultimately amounted to guilty charges on 6 felonies and 6 misdemeanors (before all charges were pardoned.)

Or arrest them using ICE and make false claims. Or just make their life miserable and punish anyone who hires them.

In reality stuff like this feels like the beginning of an end.

I seriously don't know how anyone can look at what is happening right now and be okay with it.

Escalation always happens.

The classified documents thing with Trump was a manufactured scandal, for example. Everyone in our government is mishandling classified documents because we have a massive over-classification problem, as seen by the lesser reported and covered subsequent finding of Biden having documents.

Only one of those events was associated with a televised raid (which the press was notified of beforehand so they could be sure to film it).

It was all theater.

It's the same with Trump's prosecution in NY, that case was ridiculous. One deed expanded into 37 misdemeanors that were escalated to a felony because they were committed in an effort to cover up an alleged felony. I say alleged because he was never convicted of the original crime but, conveniently, that's not a requirement of that escalation in NY law.

Ironically, both of those cases only increased Trump's support among non-Democrats (Republicans and, importantly, independents) because it was transparent.

Here's a quote for the NY AG that sued Trump.

> "We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well," [0]

That sounds an awful lot like she went looking for crimes of a person rather than finding who's responsible for crimes. And threatening his family as well.

[0]https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/incoming-new-y... as well,"

>The obvious solution to this is to change everything structurally needed to ensure the other side never again takes control, which is clearly also in progress.

- Signed, the side that tried to throw a candidate in prison.

Even before Trump, the US had a standing policy of threatening severe retaliation against anyone who tries to enforce international law against US citizens-- this isn't just an informal policy, it's a specific law passed by Congress. And the scope has only gotten broader since then.

The whole concept of "international law" is polite fiction anyway, the reality has always been "the strong do what they can, the weak endure what they must".

A convicted felon. Candidacy shouldn't be part of the equation.

Prison is typically where felons go, yes.

Individual federal government employees are generally immune from civil liability for all official acts, even if those acts were illegal.

> The classified documents thing with Trump was a manufactured scandal, for example.

It was not. Trump was asked for months to return the documents.

He purposefully had staff to move documents onto his private jet and moved them around his various properties. He stored boxes and boxes, not just a few file folders, in random bathrooms.

Yes, plenty of folks may mishandle stuff, but many folks try to fix their errors when they're pointed out. Trump ignored the requests and continued doing things consciously even when notified.

They assisted in the NY AG's prosecution.

So the televised raid? Is that normal operating procedure for the DOJ? Did that happen with Biden's classified docs?

No. If you don't use a weapon that your enemy will use, you will lose. It's a matter of survival.

> So the televised raid? Is that normal operating procedure for the DOJ? Did that happen with Biden's classified docs?

It is normal for news trucks to show up once a news event has been learned of.

And yes, the same thing happened with Biden: news broke, and footage was recorded:

* https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/fbi-search-biden-vacation-h...

Setting aside the ludicrous idea that something is a "matter of survival" for the party currently controlling every single branch of the US government, what you said is still wrong and just an excuse for weak leadership.

Following that thought path literally anywhere just leads to the party in question being actively worse than the thing they claim to fight against.

A competent leader would see something abusable, an opportunity for corruption, and take steps to prevent its abuse.

Weak, corrupt leadership sees an opportunity for corruption and says "$core! They did it fir$t!". And that's how we lose. All of us I mean.

You might be talking about lawfare, I'm pointing out how your media carries water for one side covering up petty vendettas against Trump by the Biden regime, all the way to suppressing blatant acts of terrorism against an ally - sorry vassal state - Germany.

Read something other than NYT.

This is not a serious response. The raid was intentionally leaked in order to maximize news coverage.