Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Lucian, this is the federal statue. I was familiar with it because of my reporting on criminal civil rights cases I investigated in Texas. Those cases were police brutality cases. But, it’s obvious when you read this statute that it could also apply to depriving Vice President Pence of the right protected under the constitution to certify electoral college results.
I like the part about how those found guilty under this statute can be sentenced to death! Not gonna happen, I know, but it’s nice to think about tRump strapped into that chair. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were both executed for doing FAR less damage to our country than tRump has done and continues to do.
With all due respect, fantasizing - online, posted in a forum like this one - about bloody, barbaric executions has some obvious drawbacks, one being that it allows the usual right-wing suspects to characterize all of your much more judicious and reasonable demands for progressive reforms as a dishonest cloak for your "real goals," absurd as that may sound to both of us.
It "gives us progressives a bad name," in other words, besides advocating a barbaric punishment system, to the extent you are serious at all. But if you aren't serious, why post even the hypothetical incendiary scenario of killing someone with a guillotine, decapitating them as some sort of gory warning to other would-be authoritarian rulers, like the head-chopping terrorist crackpots in various degenerate religious cults have done, albeit for other goals?
Nice try - but a fail, sorry, because attacking the messenger with some pompous bilge about "sermonizing," as if you are some middle school kid into pointless nihilism and upset at being asked to explain what the fork kind of wacky tripe you think is "enlightening and worth consideration," is just a tawdry sophistical debating trick.
I routinely slap that gibberish silly, as you cannot reasonably DEMAND your views are sacrosanct and beyond challenge, so UNLESS you engage in a good faith discussion attempting to refute my opinions with cogent, relevant, empirically grounded arguments and considerations, you will take it and like it, capiche?
Because I don't want to continue to recommend this excellent website to people with that bilge on here, unchallenged. It reflects badly on me, and it's also great rhetoric practice to explain exactly WHY the views are so preposterous and juvenile.
The fact is you have begun to sound, well, unhinged, or as the Germans put it (with finger twirling and pointed at their head) "Gespinnt," verstehen?
Now it's back to watch some films and listening to cool jazz, have a good one.
EDIT: The upvote is for your eagerness to serve as a "bad example," thanks for that!
What a shame that you're using this venue to try to bully a person you disagree with. Just one insult after another. I'm surprised Lucian lets you get away with it; he usually comes down pretty hard on people who use his essays' comments section for personal attacks. Good thing I don't give a damn what you think of me. No more bothering to read your posts.
Jul 23, 2023·edited Jul 23, 2023Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
26December 1862, ~38~ of my kind were hanged by the neck until they died. The order was given by President Abraham Lincoln. He actually ordered a 39th however that was overruled. Was looked upon favorably due to the "benevolent" President Lincoln whittling down the original number scheduled to be hanged from...303. Those in charge made certain the families of the ~38~ were all present.
Is up to the Government to seek or not seek the death penalty anytime they charge a crime that is death penalty qualified. There is a provision in this one if the reporting of the target letter is accurate.
One's political leaning is rarely the determinative factor in formulating a position on capital punishment. Life and death issues most often speak to one's moral code.
Personally have no quarrel with the DP at the Federal level because they are crimes against the nation and the people. States present an entire different range of issues and questions. So, hypothetically if Trump was found guilty of a death qualified crime(s), would favor the USG pursuing it, and leave it up to the Jury to decide. The manner of execution is always cruel and unusual due to the convicted/sentence being totally defenseless and posing zero threat.
Note: FTR find LWOP to be far crueler than any government run executions. To be sentenced to the hooman zoo until death cannot be justified.
And am not attempting to get into the middle of your back and forth w/Richard. The DP produces way too much emotive thoughts than it is worth.
Great get. Love that includes a death penalty qualified provision. Knowing Rs/cons, right wingers, and FNC prime time hosts once they read it, they're sure to claim [President] Biden is out to execute Trump. And of course, Trump will unleash the same old victim spiel.
As a lay person who tries to evaluate information with some degree of common sense, why is it even relevant what information is contained in the classified documents. Regardless of content, THEY ARE CLASSIFIED and should be treated accordingly. They could contain information on Purim’s bowel movements. The docs are still classified full stop. Let’s get on with it!
I fully agree with you, Jeffrey. Classified documents should remain classified. I see no obvious reason the content of these documents, especially any Sensitive Compartmented Information, needs to be open to scrutiny by anyone.
At any other time in human history in any nation or tribe on Earth a man who had committed trump's crimes would have been the subject of capital puinishment. That he is still among the living and even considered by our most prestigious news outlets (New York Times) to be a viable candidate for the highest office in the land suggests our nation has become some weird sewer with any semblance of Democracy mere theatrics, window-dressing. WTF does "CONSIDERING" charging even mean?!!!
So very true, Jim. If, after retirement, I had disclosed any of the highly sensitive classified information I had been involved with during my Navy career, I would have been immediately locked up, tried, and sentenced to prison for many, many years. Clearly the Dumpster is a "special" case.
Stay tuned for coming attractions, coming attractions, coming attractions. And one more stroke of bad luck for DeeDuhSantis and good luck for us, his interview with Jake Tapper Tuesday afternoon got not one headline, which was supposed to be his effort at actually talking to the media he's so assiduously avoided to now. Bye bye Ron.
When I was little my small neurotic self spent an inordinate amount of time fearing avalanches, tidal waves, flowing lava - oh yes , and my favorite - quick sand. In Brooklyn.
Reading this piece brings images of those calamities back - all centered around the former idiot. I’d like to think he’s feeling a little bit like that kid with braids and scabbed knees. That he’s about to be swamped.
He is not a former idiot, he's a perpetual idiot. Oh, let's not forget about the monster under the bed that is going to grab you by the ankles and pull you under the bed with it.
You made my evening Lucian, when I read 8 felony indictments for each of the 16 electors in MI, I laughed out loud. I’m from GA, and we have our own 16 who were the pick of the litter among repugnantkins. It’s considered a plumb to be picked by your party to be an elector, they are not your average ignorant maggots, these people ran the repugnantkin party in GA, and I would think MI as well. None of them have ever spent a day in prison much less the years they so richly deserve and likely might face. Anyone that thinks they are going to go quietly is mistaken, they are going to be pointing fingers everywhere to try to lessen their potential sentence. They have been caught red handed, they signed those documents attesting to what they knew to be a lie, there is no way in hell I would do something like that. “Lock her up” is turning out to be a pretty biting phrase, only now look at who is about to get bitten, I get a warm fuzzy feeling at the very thought of it, what a nice way to end my day. 🙏
How can we get Jack Smith to issue target letters to all 54 Representatives and Senators involved in the planning and execution of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection - it would be fun to see the unseemly rush to the plea bargain tables.....
Thanks, again, to Mr, T. for synthesizing the latest in the kabuki theatre version of the Trump Show. How Lardass has cheapened the office he somehow got his hands on. Prison would be nice, but I want more is for him to shut up.
Amen, Ms. Howard!!!!!! I often fantasize about somebody winding an entire roll of duct tape around the orange cretin's piehole...(occasionally thinking: and maybe the nostrils, too?).
Whether the doc case is postponed, I think, is small potatoes. It seems to be the least of those potential other cases in importance. It is the Floriduh case and those being brought in other jurisdictions stand a greater chance of conviction. I still don't think this is the end of investigations and indictments. New Jersey seems to be a possibility as are more charges and/or superseding charges. IANAL, just a hopeful citizen who cares deeply about saving our democracy.
There's a great deal of merit to the idea that a tightly focused indictment charging former president Donald Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, and ancillary crimes that would have the effect of putting that conspiracy in motion, such as witness tampering, and seeking to perform illegal acts under the color of law, and other acts aiding and abetting others in a conspiracy in support of an armed insurrection, would present a triable case to the District Court for the District of Columbia, without incurring an undue burden of presenting cumulative proof of the truth of the facts alleged. Such an approach would have the benefit of simplicity, tight focus, as well as avoidance of duplicates of proofs, irrelevancies, and opportunities by the former president's defenders to divert, delay, and filibuster the court proceedings. The findings and conclusions of the House of Representatives' Select Committee On the January 6 Insurrection, are already embedded into the public record has a public document.
As a practical matter, the Republican Minority in the House of Representatives was intent on ignoring the ongoing televised presentations of the committee's findings and conclusions, and in the end, declined to file anything resembling a Minority Report that refuted any way the Select Committee's formal findings. It occurs to me that in any criminal trial to assess and prove the former president's culpability with respect to his participation, aiding and abetting of the assault on the Capitol building, and to the former president's expressed and implicit intent to overturn the 2020 presidential election, I believe it would be sufficient that the recorded speeches of both the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, and the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, each to the effect that the former president was expressly and implicitly responsible for instigating the attack. It would be sufficient if the Special Counsel's prosecutors move the District Court to incorporate the House Select Committee's Final Report into the Court Record by Reference as background material against which the prosecution's evidence as to the specific elements of the crimes the former president is alleged to have committed.
All of the testimony taken before the Select Committee was under oath, and subject to the pains and penalties of perjury, as we used to say in Massachusetts practice. That Final Report amounts to what would ordinarily be described as an administrative record, or legislative findings of fact and conclusions of law, to which the judiciary must accord great weight and conclusively presumed to be true, for the purposes of the trial at hand. The jury deliberating their verdict would be given an instruction to the effect that there is no inconsistency between the committee's Final Report, and the government's proof of the elements of its case at trial, because the committee was constrained in its ability to compel testimony from witnesses who voluntarily agreed to testify. Any attempt to distinguish between last year's committee report, and sworn testimony taken at trial, whenever that might occur, would not be permitted. In their summation, and arguments to the jury, prosecutors would be permitted to draw upon both the House Report, and sworn testimony adduced at trial to make the appropriate logical connections and inferences necessary to convict the former president of the crimes of which he is charged. Any variance would be treated as a distinction without a difference. The defense would not be so permitted, because House Republicans raised no effective challenge to the findings and conclusions of the majority report. Whatever they might've said at the time is now irrelevant, because the time to raise a timely objection has long since passed. If there are serious discrepancies between what a witness told committee members a year ago, and the testimony they offered at trial, the former president's counsel can raise those matters on cross-examination of the government's witness. On the other hand, the prosecutors had the benefit of having that witness' prior sworn testimony in hand at the time that the witness was sworn to give testimony before the federal grand jury that handed up its indictment against the former president. Some of these purported inconsistencies will likely evanesce into no real difference at all.
As a legal and practical matter, the former president has no effective defense against what he has done, and he should be judged accordingly.
TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Lucian, this is the federal statue. I was familiar with it because of my reporting on criminal civil rights cases I investigated in Texas. Those cases were police brutality cases. But, it’s obvious when you read this statute that it could also apply to depriving Vice President Pence of the right protected under the constitution to certify electoral college results.
Thanks. I didn't know the section, but it is a more general statute that covers a broad swath of crimes.
I like the part about how those found guilty under this statute can be sentenced to death! Not gonna happen, I know, but it’s nice to think about tRump strapped into that chair. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were both executed for doing FAR less damage to our country than tRump has done and continues to do.
I'm still fantasizing guillotines. ;-)
With all due respect, fantasizing - online, posted in a forum like this one - about bloody, barbaric executions has some obvious drawbacks, one being that it allows the usual right-wing suspects to characterize all of your much more judicious and reasonable demands for progressive reforms as a dishonest cloak for your "real goals," absurd as that may sound to both of us.
It "gives us progressives a bad name," in other words, besides advocating a barbaric punishment system, to the extent you are serious at all. But if you aren't serious, why post even the hypothetical incendiary scenario of killing someone with a guillotine, decapitating them as some sort of gory warning to other would-be authoritarian rulers, like the head-chopping terrorist crackpots in various degenerate religious cults have done, albeit for other goals?
In other words, you're better than this.
Enough already with your sermonizing and finger-shaking.
Nice try - but a fail, sorry, because attacking the messenger with some pompous bilge about "sermonizing," as if you are some middle school kid into pointless nihilism and upset at being asked to explain what the fork kind of wacky tripe you think is "enlightening and worth consideration," is just a tawdry sophistical debating trick.
I routinely slap that gibberish silly, as you cannot reasonably DEMAND your views are sacrosanct and beyond challenge, so UNLESS you engage in a good faith discussion attempting to refute my opinions with cogent, relevant, empirically grounded arguments and considerations, you will take it and like it, capiche?
Because I don't want to continue to recommend this excellent website to people with that bilge on here, unchallenged. It reflects badly on me, and it's also great rhetoric practice to explain exactly WHY the views are so preposterous and juvenile.
The fact is you have begun to sound, well, unhinged, or as the Germans put it (with finger twirling and pointed at their head) "Gespinnt," verstehen?
Now it's back to watch some films and listening to cool jazz, have a good one.
EDIT: The upvote is for your eagerness to serve as a "bad example," thanks for that!
What a shame that you're using this venue to try to bully a person you disagree with. Just one insult after another. I'm surprised Lucian lets you get away with it; he usually comes down pretty hard on people who use his essays' comments section for personal attacks. Good thing I don't give a damn what you think of me. No more bothering to read your posts.
Bloody but —or so it’s claimed—painless.
26December 1862, ~38~ of my kind were hanged by the neck until they died. The order was given by President Abraham Lincoln. He actually ordered a 39th however that was overruled. Was looked upon favorably due to the "benevolent" President Lincoln whittling down the original number scheduled to be hanged from...303. Those in charge made certain the families of the ~38~ were all present.
Is up to the Government to seek or not seek the death penalty anytime they charge a crime that is death penalty qualified. There is a provision in this one if the reporting of the target letter is accurate.
One's political leaning is rarely the determinative factor in formulating a position on capital punishment. Life and death issues most often speak to one's moral code.
Personally have no quarrel with the DP at the Federal level because they are crimes against the nation and the people. States present an entire different range of issues and questions. So, hypothetically if Trump was found guilty of a death qualified crime(s), would favor the USG pursuing it, and leave it up to the Jury to decide. The manner of execution is always cruel and unusual due to the convicted/sentence being totally defenseless and posing zero threat.
Note: FTR find LWOP to be far crueler than any government run executions. To be sentenced to the hooman zoo until death cannot be justified.
And am not attempting to get into the middle of your back and forth w/Richard. The DP produces way too much emotive thoughts than it is worth.
Great get. Love that includes a death penalty qualified provision. Knowing Rs/cons, right wingers, and FNC prime time hosts once they read it, they're sure to claim [President] Biden is out to execute Trump. And of course, Trump will unleash the same old victim spiel.
As a lay person who tries to evaluate information with some degree of common sense, why is it even relevant what information is contained in the classified documents. Regardless of content, THEY ARE CLASSIFIED and should be treated accordingly. They could contain information on Purim’s bowel movements. The docs are still classified full stop. Let’s get on with it!
I fully agree with you, Jeffrey. Classified documents should remain classified. I see no obvious reason the content of these documents, especially any Sensitive Compartmented Information, needs to be open to scrutiny by anyone.
Purim is a Jewish holiday. I think you meant to write Putin?
Right you are! Victim of autocorrect.
My first laugh this morning. My sister told me her and her husband have to interpret my emails sometimes. Auto correct kills me.
That's ok. I got a chuckle.
Me too!😁
At any other time in human history in any nation or tribe on Earth a man who had committed trump's crimes would have been the subject of capital puinishment. That he is still among the living and even considered by our most prestigious news outlets (New York Times) to be a viable candidate for the highest office in the land suggests our nation has become some weird sewer with any semblance of Democracy mere theatrics, window-dressing. WTF does "CONSIDERING" charging even mean?!!!
Jim, good points.
I've been wondering if the historians have any similar happenings?
Any comparisons?
So very true, Jim. If, after retirement, I had disclosed any of the highly sensitive classified information I had been involved with during my Navy career, I would have been immediately locked up, tried, and sentenced to prison for many, many years. Clearly the Dumpster is a "special" case.
Ooh, can I please "Like" this times ten?
This makes me so happy. I'm kvelling. Indictments as far as the eye can see.
Stay tuned for coming attractions, coming attractions, coming attractions. And one more stroke of bad luck for DeeDuhSantis and good luck for us, his interview with Jake Tapper Tuesday afternoon got not one headline, which was supposed to be his effort at actually talking to the media he's so assiduously avoided to now. Bye bye Ron.
When I was little my small neurotic self spent an inordinate amount of time fearing avalanches, tidal waves, flowing lava - oh yes , and my favorite - quick sand. In Brooklyn.
Reading this piece brings images of those calamities back - all centered around the former idiot. I’d like to think he’s feeling a little bit like that kid with braids and scabbed knees. That he’s about to be swamped.
...in quicksand!
He is not a former idiot, he's a perpetual idiot. Oh, let's not forget about the monster under the bed that is going to grab you by the ankles and pull you under the bed with it.
I had that ankle monster too, and the quicksand and that the bridge would open and our car would fall in and we'd drown.
I feel that
You made my evening Lucian, when I read 8 felony indictments for each of the 16 electors in MI, I laughed out loud. I’m from GA, and we have our own 16 who were the pick of the litter among repugnantkins. It’s considered a plumb to be picked by your party to be an elector, they are not your average ignorant maggots, these people ran the repugnantkin party in GA, and I would think MI as well. None of them have ever spent a day in prison much less the years they so richly deserve and likely might face. Anyone that thinks they are going to go quietly is mistaken, they are going to be pointing fingers everywhere to try to lessen their potential sentence. They have been caught red handed, they signed those documents attesting to what they knew to be a lie, there is no way in hell I would do something like that. “Lock her up” is turning out to be a pretty biting phrase, only now look at who is about to get bitten, I get a warm fuzzy feeling at the very thought of it, what a nice way to end my day. 🙏
Looks like the original utterers of "lock her up" are about to be the ones locked up. I love it when it works that way. Irony is not dead after all.
How can we get Jack Smith to issue target letters to all 54 Representatives and Senators involved in the planning and execution of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection - it would be fun to see the unseemly rush to the plea bargain tables.....
Thanks, again, to Mr, T. for synthesizing the latest in the kabuki theatre version of the Trump Show. How Lardass has cheapened the office he somehow got his hands on. Prison would be nice, but I want more is for him to shut up.
Yes please. Shut him up. Shut him up. Shut him up.
Amen, Ms. Howard!!!!!! I often fantasize about somebody winding an entire roll of duct tape around the orange cretin's piehole...(occasionally thinking: and maybe the nostrils, too?).
I want that traitorous, seditious sob in prison so badly, I can taste it!
I'm just over here with the popcorn for now.
How many times in how many jurisdictions does a person have to be indicted before it is no longer a witch hunt?
Here’s to peace in our time...soon.
Let us pray!
Whether the doc case is postponed, I think, is small potatoes. It seems to be the least of those potential other cases in importance. It is the Floriduh case and those being brought in other jurisdictions stand a greater chance of conviction. I still don't think this is the end of investigations and indictments. New Jersey seems to be a possibility as are more charges and/or superseding charges. IANAL, just a hopeful citizen who cares deeply about saving our democracy.
Another mystery acronym: IANAL. I have no idea what this means.
I am not a lawyer
Thank you— at least it has nothing to do with “anal!”
Let's let Autocorrect decide on that!
"Fake electors" sounds so innocent. Shouldn't they be called "fraudulent electors?"
There's a great deal of merit to the idea that a tightly focused indictment charging former president Donald Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, and ancillary crimes that would have the effect of putting that conspiracy in motion, such as witness tampering, and seeking to perform illegal acts under the color of law, and other acts aiding and abetting others in a conspiracy in support of an armed insurrection, would present a triable case to the District Court for the District of Columbia, without incurring an undue burden of presenting cumulative proof of the truth of the facts alleged. Such an approach would have the benefit of simplicity, tight focus, as well as avoidance of duplicates of proofs, irrelevancies, and opportunities by the former president's defenders to divert, delay, and filibuster the court proceedings. The findings and conclusions of the House of Representatives' Select Committee On the January 6 Insurrection, are already embedded into the public record has a public document.
As a practical matter, the Republican Minority in the House of Representatives was intent on ignoring the ongoing televised presentations of the committee's findings and conclusions, and in the end, declined to file anything resembling a Minority Report that refuted any way the Select Committee's formal findings. It occurs to me that in any criminal trial to assess and prove the former president's culpability with respect to his participation, aiding and abetting of the assault on the Capitol building, and to the former president's expressed and implicit intent to overturn the 2020 presidential election, I believe it would be sufficient that the recorded speeches of both the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, and the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, each to the effect that the former president was expressly and implicitly responsible for instigating the attack. It would be sufficient if the Special Counsel's prosecutors move the District Court to incorporate the House Select Committee's Final Report into the Court Record by Reference as background material against which the prosecution's evidence as to the specific elements of the crimes the former president is alleged to have committed.
All of the testimony taken before the Select Committee was under oath, and subject to the pains and penalties of perjury, as we used to say in Massachusetts practice. That Final Report amounts to what would ordinarily be described as an administrative record, or legislative findings of fact and conclusions of law, to which the judiciary must accord great weight and conclusively presumed to be true, for the purposes of the trial at hand. The jury deliberating their verdict would be given an instruction to the effect that there is no inconsistency between the committee's Final Report, and the government's proof of the elements of its case at trial, because the committee was constrained in its ability to compel testimony from witnesses who voluntarily agreed to testify. Any attempt to distinguish between last year's committee report, and sworn testimony taken at trial, whenever that might occur, would not be permitted. In their summation, and arguments to the jury, prosecutors would be permitted to draw upon both the House Report, and sworn testimony adduced at trial to make the appropriate logical connections and inferences necessary to convict the former president of the crimes of which he is charged. Any variance would be treated as a distinction without a difference. The defense would not be so permitted, because House Republicans raised no effective challenge to the findings and conclusions of the majority report. Whatever they might've said at the time is now irrelevant, because the time to raise a timely objection has long since passed. If there are serious discrepancies between what a witness told committee members a year ago, and the testimony they offered at trial, the former president's counsel can raise those matters on cross-examination of the government's witness. On the other hand, the prosecutors had the benefit of having that witness' prior sworn testimony in hand at the time that the witness was sworn to give testimony before the federal grand jury that handed up its indictment against the former president. Some of these purported inconsistencies will likely evanesce into no real difference at all.
As a legal and practical matter, the former president has no effective defense against what he has done, and he should be judged accordingly.