Apologies, it was not my intent to infer personal knowledge of the charges, only to try to report what some others were claiming.
I have not made the claim the charges were not politically motivated in any of my previous posts, and I am not making that claim now. I doubt any prosecution is completely devoid of political motivations entirely, and I imagine some are more politically motivated than others.
I am not sure how to measure the amount of political motivation in someone else’s actions but, assuming no prosecution is really 0% politically motivated, where would we draw an appropriate line?
Is a prosecution that is 10% politically motivated acceptable? 25%? 51%?
What about a prosecution that appears overtly politically motivated, but uncovers factual criminal conduct?
Is there a way to investigate politicians for criminal actions without being accused of political motivations? How much credence should be given when those accusations are themselves equally likely to be politically motivated?
There are a number of identifiers that a given prosecution is politically motivated.
- Did the prosecutor vow to charge the defendant as a campaign promise before any investigations possibly have revealed any wrongdoing?
- Is the prosecutor focusing all the efforts on charging a political enemy instead of prosecuting other crimes?
- Is the prosecutor consistent? Are charges being pursued against a person of an opposing party that would not be brought against someone of his own party?
- Is the case overcharged?
- Does it pass the smell test?
I guess I’m comfortable with the appearance of political motivation if the criminal investigation reveals factual criminal behavior...I’m honestly not sure how we could really avoid it, pragmatically speaking.
I find this shocking actually. Why not investigate everyone? I mean. If you have nothing to hide you shouldn't object. No evidence of a crime taking place? Just investigate. Everyone's hiding something. Everyone's guilty of something. Just dig until you find it.
Let me ask you this. Do you think Trump broke any laws worth locking him up for 134 years? Again, yeah. This is a sanity test.