[kayla.meyer_144]

Quote from fw

Quote from kpack123

Arron burr was tried for treading

No he wasn’t.

He was indicted 4 separate times by a vindictive government and was acquitted every time. 

I dont think an unlawful and eventually unsuccessful political persecution is a good example that [i]’treason is anything we dont like'[/i].

 
Not exactly. It was a bit more complicated than you’d like, fw.
 
[link]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr_conspiracy[/link]

[b]Burr was charged with [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason]treason[/link][/b] because of the alleged conspiracy and stood trial in [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_Virginia]Richmond[/link], [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia]Virginia[/link]. [b]He was acquitted due to lack of evidence of treason, as Chief Justice Marshall did not consider conspiracy without actions sufficient for conviction.[/b]
 
 
Burr was charged with treason for assembling an armed force to take New Orleans and separate the Western from the Atlantic states. He was also charged with [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_misdemeanor]high misdemeanor[/link] for sending a military expedition against territories belonging to Spain. [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hay_(Virginia)]George Hay[/link], the prosecuting [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Attorney]U.S. Attorney[/link], compiled a list of over 140 witnesses, one of whom was [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson]Andrew Jackson[/link]. To encourage witnesses to cooperate with the prosecution, Thomas Jefferson gave Hay blank [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon]pardons[/link] containing Jefferson’s signature and the discretion to issue them to all but “the grossest offenders”; Jefferson later amended these instructions to include even those the prosecution believed to be most culpable, if that meant the difference in convicting Burr
 
The case was controversial from the beginning. The high misdemeanor charge was dropped when the government was unable to prove that the expedition had been military in nature or directed toward Spanish territory.
 
[b]Burr’s trial brought into question the ideas of [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_privilege]executive privilege[/link], [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege]state secrets privilege[/link], and the independence of the executive.[/b] Burr’s lawyers, including [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wickham_(attorney)]John Wickham[/link], asked Chief Justice [link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Marshall]John Marshall[/link] to subpoena Jefferson, claiming that they needed documents from Jefferson to present their case accurately. Jefferson proclaimed that as President, he was “…Reserving the necessary right of the President of the U S to decide, independently of all other authority, what papers, coming to him as President, the public interests permit to be communicated, & to whom…”[link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr_conspiracy#cite_note-12][12][/link][/sup] He insisted that all relevant papers had been made available, and that he was not subject to this writ because he held executive privilege. He also argued that he should not be subject to the commands of the judiciary, because the constitution guaranteed the executive branch’s independence from the judicial branch. Marshall decided that the subpoena could be issued despite Jefferson’s position of presidency. [b]Though Marshall vowed to consider Jefferson’s office and avoid “vexatious and unnecessary subpoenas,” his ruling was significant because it suggested that, [u]like all citizens, the President was subject to the law.[/u][/b]
 
Marshall had to consider the definition of treason and whether intent was sufficient for conviction, rather than action. Marshall ruled that because Burr had not committed an act of war, he could not be found guilty. Marshall narrowly construed the definition of treason provided in Article III of the Constitution; he noted that the prosecution had failed to prove that Burr had committed an “overt act,” as the Constitution required. As a result, the jury acquitted the defendant.

 

[hfinsel_355]

Power corrupts practically every time.
 
There are exceptions to this, of course, but in most cases those who come to power have been within the system for so long that they abuse it.

[btomba_77]

Timely reminder:

[link=https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/no-the-steele-dossier-did-not-invent-the-russia-scandal.html]No, the Steele Dossier Did Not Invent the Russia Scandal
[/link]
  [h2]The report was faulty, but Trump was very, very guilty.[/h2]

Donald Trumps attorney has written a [link=https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-lawyer-sends-demand-letter-threatening-to-sue-pulitzer-prize-board-if-they-refuse-to-rescind-2018-wapo-and-nyt-awards-for-russiagate-reporting/]letter[/link] threatening to sue the Pulitzer Committee unless it revokes the awards given to the Washington [i]Post[/i] and the New York [i]Times[/i] for their coverage of Trumps secretive ties to Russia. Trump, of course, will probably never actually file this suit. If he did, he would certainly lose, because the [i]Times[/i] and the [i]Post[/i] in fact uncovered enormous amounts of damning evidence against Trump and did not, contra Trump, rely on the Steele dossier, the report compiled by the British spy Christopher Steele. Trumps lawsuit threat is a publicity vehicle to advance the message he has never stopped making: that the entire Russia scandal is a hoax, ginned up by Democrats and the Deep State, of which he and his allies are innocent, and the crimes are all on the other side.

….
 
 

Knocking down Steeles unfounded speculation is a real public service by the Trump administrationappointed special prosecutor John Durham (who in general seems to have gone pretty [link=https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/durham-indictment-of-trumps-russia-enemies-is-falling-apart.html]far off the deep end[/link]). But conservatives are not satisfied with merely correcting the record on Steele. They want to make Steele the underpinning of both the FBI investigation and the journalistic narrative about Trump and Russia.

But the Trumpist argument that Steeles allegations formed the foundation of the FBI investigation is obviously false. The FBI began looking into Trumps ties to Russia because Trump foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos [link=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/politics/how-fbi-russia-investigation-began-george-papadopoulos.html]boasted[/link] that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton, who duly informed the U.S. government. That is obviously a very good reason to begin a counterintelligence investigation. The FBI did try to run down Steeles leads, but it also had other sources for its investigation (and, indeed, uncovered a great deal of incriminating information).

The notion that the media started questioning Trumps ties to Russia because of the Steele dossier is even more preposterous. While some insiders saw Steeles reports, his dossier was not made public until January 2017. But nearly a year before that, the suspicious alliance between Trump and Putin was already playing out before our eyes.
 
…
 
Even limiting the evidence to the parts that can be proven yields an extraordinarily damning indictment. For that reason, conservatives have almost entirely ignored the Senate Intelligence Committee report. None of the conservative columns I linked to above even mention the Senate Intelligence report; indeed, the conservative media has almost uniformly refused to acknowledge it at all. The source is simply too credible (the investigation was begun under Republican control, and its findings had bipartisan support on the committee) and its conclusions too incriminating for conservatives to spin away.
 
 
Better to ignore the report and pretend the whole Trump-Russia scandal was ginned up by Steele and the Democrats. This [i]National Review[/i] [link=https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/hillary-clinton-orchestrated-russia-collusion-farce/]headline[/link] is representative of the right-wing line: Yes, Hillary Clinton Orchestrated the Russia-Collusion Farce. This claim is more absurd and provably false than the wildest conjecture Steele dug up.
 
 
The mainstream media is currently beating itself up over Steele precisely because it holds itself to higher standards than the conservative media. The rights ability to form an echo chamber that blocks out confounding evidence and avoids any accountability is what allows cranks like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi who denied even such [link=https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/trump-bullies-media-exonerating-russia-corruption-barr-mueller.html]foundational elements[/link] of the story as Russias role in hacking Democratic emails to pose as vindicated crusaders of truth.
 
The truth is that Steele was a fraud, but Trump was very, very guilty.

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