After Years of Spreading Lies, Election Deniers Face Consequences

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 457 points – After Years of Spreading Lies, Election Deniers Face Consequences
nytimes.com

Legal repercussions have arrived for the leaders of the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential contest, in what could serve as a warning to those who meddle in future elections.

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Took way too long. Happy justice was served. But frustrating they can fuck around for years spreading garbage doing immense damage.

Considering the gravity of indicting a former president I imagine the investigation needed to be thorough

I must have missed the part of our constitution that says a regular old citizen who once held a government office is forever entitled to special treatment under the law. Seems like a pretty dumb way to run a society.

Taking down a president it even a past president has to be done thoroughly and carefully. Trust me doing it any other way would be catastrophic. Your high school civics teacher can explain it. Why don’t I? I’m in the bathroom at work. I definitely don’t have the time.

But the short answer is, there really is no other faster way to “run a society”.

Every single use of the government's criminal law powers should be done thoroughly and carefully because all citizens are entitled to due process of law. A former or current president should not get preferential treatment. Beyond the basic morality of it, if we don't push back on this crap hard we're going to get a lot more George Santos-es and other two bit con artists who use our political system as cover for their fraud, and that kind of kakistocracy would be way more catastrophic than making Republicans upset will be.

The only thing worse than never bringing these charges would have been to half-ass and rush them, handing these criminals an easy win in court and preventing them from ever being tried again (double jeopardy). The system is slow on purpose.

Sitting on your hands and hoping it will all just go away for a year is not avoiding a half-ass rush job, it gave criminals time to attempt to destroy evidence and intimidate witnesses

In the weeks before Jan. 6, Trump supporters boasted publicly that they had submitted fake electors on his behalf, but the Justice Department declined to investigate the matter in February 2021, The Post found. The department did not actively probe the effort for nearly a year, and the FBI did not open an investigation of the electors scheme until April 2022, about 15 months after the attack.

The Justice Department’s painstaking approach to investigating Trump can be traced to Garland’s desire to turn the page from missteps, bruising attacks and allegations of partisanship in the department’s recent investigations of both Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Inside Justice, however, some lawyers have complained that the attorney general’s determination to steer clear of any claims of political motive has chilled efforts to investigate the former president. “You couldn’t use the T word,” said one former Justice official briefed on prosecutors’ discussions.

[Bolding added throughout]

The FBI themselves have said the investigations were hamstrung.

Don't be so quick to dismiss people pointing out OBVIOUS problems. It makes you look rather stupid. The government failed to respond to literal sedition and secret documents theft and dissemination. For years. More than thirty months.

How quickly did they arrest that goon in OR/WA that leaked a few documents, let alone boxes upon boxes? This has been nothing but a national embarassment, and the Republicans keep helping him!

Damage has been done!

The people who bought into those lies don't just automatically not believe them now. If Democrats would go on the offensive once in a while and if our useless mass media would do some investigating, we wouldn't have to rely on lawsuits years after the fact to finally shut some of these people up.

Are they though? Sure there are charges, and may even be convictions (I'm not convinced on that one) But will they actually serve real time, in a real prison, with other real criminals? It wouldn't surprise me at all if it doesn't end up being some sort of Wolf Of Wall Street type sentence (if any). And the ring leader in this circus will probably get a lo-jack on his ankle and be confined to Mar-a-lago (again if actually convicted)

Now, they deserve far worse IMO, for something like what they all did, capital punishment doesn't feel strong enough for them. But our system is so screwed up beyond any real semblance of real justice, it wouldn't surprise me if this all in the end, results with absolution no real world consequences for any of them, let alone the head clown..

They're largely cooked--read the indictments in their entirety or watch two lawyers geek out over it. They were way too brazen, and even a conservative judge would have their hand forced by the law and public interest. These are the consequences of criminal behavior, and all criminals must face this eventually; I know because I've been locked up quite a bit and am familiar with the machinations of the US Justice system. They are in for complete psychological torture. I literally couldn't imagine a worse punishment for these people whose realities depend upon narcissistic delusions and extrinsic reinforcement. It will be a painful disintegration for any person, much less an aged person with affluenza. They will experience isolation reserved for the worst people alive because of their profile and because of Thomas Silverstein making the Ultramax system airtight. Trump's most likely end point is 100+ feet underground in Colorado, with all the other high profile crims, having destroyed all friends and family.

The RICO charges is an unappealable AND unpardonable 5 year minimum sentence, for example.

I will get such a raging justice boner if you’re right.

even a conservative judge would have their hand forced by the law and public interest

Lol. Yeah, because the law and public interest has stopped them before.

Just watch; they have Judge Cannon in zugzwang. Also, at the end of the day, there will be jury pools deciding, just as with the indictments.

They are getting off easy. They attempted a coup. It's a wonder they aren't on trial for their lives.

Getting the death sentence would be difficult on a former president.

Add in his cultists, who seem to have a boner for vigilante "justice," and I could absolutely see, from my vantage point in the south, red necks turning to violence over the death of their cult leader.

Personally I'd rather see them rot in a cell, deprived of all they relish. No more big macs for Trump. No binging fox. No more yes men kissing his diaper laden ass.

Good! They should be accountable for their actions.

They didn't just deny the election. The took steps to overturn the will of the people! No one should cares that they lied. Politicians lie all the time. You should only judge them based on their actions, because they never do what they say/promise. What they actually did was submit electors that were not voted for. They tried to remove, add, and change votes. They tried to change laws without going through the legal process. They used government resources to achive the overthrowing of democracy.

I mean, lying is an action that we also shouldn't tolerate. Though I agree there are bigger things to focus on right now.

The lesson here is that you can get away with terrible shit for decades and risk a slight chance of a slap on the wrist. Also, having a ton of money means you can continue to do it while dragging out a trial start date for years.

If they don't all end up in prison until they die of old age, the only lessons are that justice is delayed and minimal at best.

Also, they're not "facing consequences". "Facing consequences" is when they're all actually in prison.

Federal sentencing guidelines are a thing. You can know the sentencing range before the trial even starts.

Good these worthless GOP/Nazi scum deserve what they get bankruptcy and jail.