Upcoming Conflict Between Justice and Politics in the United States

Written By: - Date published: 8:08 am, November 8th, 2022 - 12 comments
Categories: Donald Trump, elections, uncategorized, us politics - Tags:

Unlike even Brazil’s election and transition of power, events are going to make the full restoration of functioning democracy in the United States very, very hard and starting soon.

November 6th Donald Trump announced that he is “very very very likely” to run again in 2024 for President of the United States of America.

November 8th is Mid Term election day, with results in the week thereafter. Unless litigated. I’d put that prospect as quite likely together with white extremist mob protests.

November 14th: Donald Trump and team must produce documentation in preparation for his subpoena to the Jan 6th Commission.

This requirement to appear before the investigating committee will continue on successive days. The scope is pretty broad, He will likely ‘plead the 5th’ since he has a good lizard brain. The committee doesn’t have the power to press criminal charges by themselves but they can recommend them to DoJ.

Third week of November, Trump is likely to have to appear in front of the Jan 6th committee.

November last two weeks: Department of Justice needs to proceed with prosecution with multiple potential felonies including stealing government secret documents and not giving them back.

Stateside the New York Attorney General has a civil suit for more than 200 examples of misleading valuations leading to a variety of kinds of financial fraud. It’s a civil rather than criminal case. This case has started.

Also the New York State criminal probe into the Trump organisation. Trump business dealings are now significantly restricted as per last weeks’ ruling.

Trump’s team have already countersued.

Also on the private side there’s the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. Likely IMHO to settle with a cheque.

Then further stateside is the Georgia State election tampering probe. At least 17  people are investigation targets here, including likely Rudi Giuliani.

I see Trump nudging a few more people under the bus, but not damaging Trump himself.

But in Trump brand terms it means wall to wall Trump media coverage for the remainder of the year.

If any of those get to a conviction in 2023 there will likely be appeals through the whole of 2023.

Trump will play it like the theme song to the Dukes of Hazzard: making their way their only way their know how, n’that’s just a little bit more than the law will allow.

From mid 2023 the Republicans will be campaigning on who they will propose for US Presidential candidate. De Santis and team will considering whether conviction on any major count really dents his Republic base standing, or delivers full martyrdom. My bet is unless Trump gets big jailtime, De Santis bides his time to 2028.

DoJ is pretty shy about going after announced candidates in an election process, to avoid appearance of taking one political side against the other.

So you can see mid 2023 the great constellations of justice and politics are going to start having planets smash into each other like we have never seen before in US politics.

This is wayyyy bigger than Watergate when FBI agents established that the Republicans and the Republican President has generated a large campaign of political spying and sabotage, directed by officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. August 23 1972 Nixon accepted the nomination for president by the Republican Party, while under investigation.

Trump is different to Nixon because the court cases are already underway and at least a couple are going to go for sentencing mid next year while the Republican nomination process is in full swing. And he’ll be indicted in 2023 on at least one big one.

Trump team’s general modus operandi is to delay, delay, delay all processes all the time to get Trump through just one more political decision-cycle. So he can win, and keep winning. Can he buy enough time in 2023 to win? There’s a quite good chance the law will fail.

The United States remains both the most powerful economy, military and cultural power on earth, and better or worse is its largest properly functioning democracy such as it is. So all of this matters because it will dominate our news cycles and our international relationships. 2023 is shaping to be the biggest test of the constitutional ‘checks and balances’ that the US has had since the civil rights protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a strong likelihood of major civil unrest.

The test is as high as which will win: law or politics?

The question is now fully open.

12 comments on “Upcoming Conflict Between Justice and Politics in the United States ”

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  1. Maurice 1
    8 November 2022 at 10:30 am

    "better or worse is its largest properly functioning democracy such as it is"

    A common error as the US is a Constitutional Republic with trappings of democratic selection of a varied range of public appointments [from Dog Catcher to President!]

    Basically a floundering leviathan with its component parts pitted against each other in a tangled web of nepotism and crony capitalism loosely held together by raw grasping for power.

    • Drowsy M. Kram 1.1
      8 November 2022 at 3:56 pm

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#By_country

      Country Democracy Index (2021)
      Norway (1) . . .. . . . 9.75 (Full democracy)
      Aotearoa NZ (2) . . 9.37 [We don't know how lucky we are!]
      Ireland (7) . . . . . . . 9.0
      Australia (9) . . .. . . 8.9
      Japan (17) . . . . . . . 8.15
      UK (18) . . . . .. . . . . 8.1 (Full democracy)
      USA (26) . . . .. . . . . 7.85 (Flawed democracy)
      India (46) . . .. . . . . 6.91
      Brazil (47) . . . . . . . 6.86 (Flawed democracy)
      Fiji (84) . . .. . . . . . . 5.61 (Hybrid regime)
      Ukraine (86) . . . . . 5.57
      Russia (124) . . . . . 3.24 (Authoritarian)

      Aotearoa NZ is a "full democracy" (democracy index >9 for the last 17 years).

      The USA slipped slightly below the full democracy threshold in 2016, and remains a "flawed democracy". By population, India (more flawed) is the largest democracy.

      • alwyn 1.1.1
        8 November 2022 at 7:00 pm

        We are on the way down this year though.

        New Zealand is now in 4th place, having dropped to 9.26 and having dropped below Iceland and Sweden. We are just ahead of Finland (9.25) and Ireland (9.24).

        If we pass Three Waters and the Hate Speech rubbish before they calculate the numbers I would expect us to get below 8 though.

        https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democracy-countries

        • Drowsy M. Kram 1.1.1.1
          8 November 2022 at 8:16 pm

          We are on the way down this year though.

          There there alwyn, sorry to rain on your "Three Waters and the Hate Speech rubbish" parade, but I wouldn't panic just yet.

          "We are on the way down this year" because we were up (to 9.37) last year, so perhaps give our Government some credit for that, hmm? Aotearoa NZ's democracy index from 2010 – 2019 (9.26) was the same as it is this year (2022), and 0.01 higher than 2020.
          Read what you will into these earth-shattering changes, but don't bust a gut smiley

        • roblogic 1.1.1.2
          8 November 2022 at 11:12 pm

          After seeing the piece by Bryce Edwards recently, I've softened my stance on the Hate Speech changes. The proposed reform is way more timid than I thought. Labour knows it's a divisive vote loser.

          Efeso's loss of Auckland signals to me that Labour’s woke Wellington cadre has alienated its South Auckland constituency of working class families, often religious, who lean towards economic justice, but find the SJW rhetoric off putting.

          As I have banging on about for years.

          Bryce Edwards: A Culture war over hate speech and free speech is unlikely – Democracy Project

    • Patricia Bremner 1.2
      8 November 2022 at 4:43 pm

      Maurice yes Agree 100%. Then add guns and stir. We better hope Biden can hold the Senate the best of bad choices.

  2. Stuart Munro 2
    8 November 2022 at 5:47 pm

    Interesting times.

    Putin is probably pretty much in favour of helping someone who thinks the Ukraine invasion was "sheer genius" into the Whitehouse – if he hasn't been rolled by then.

    The US is about to reap the whirlwind of cynicism with which it treated Latin democracies, and the Murdoch press is scarcely a bulwark, not even for a Dahlian polyarchy.

    Plenty of folk would love to see it fail – not sure what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouching towards Washington will be an improvement.

  3. SPC 3
    8 November 2022 at 11:02 pm

    The most corrupt state in the USA is Wisconsin.

    Wisconsin Republicans, who have had a viselike grip on the Legislature since enacting the nation’s most aggressive gerrymander after their 2010 sweep of the state’s elections, make no apologies for pressing their advantage to its limits. Mr. Michels, the party’s nominee for governor, told supporters this week, “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.”

    “When you can win a majority of voters and have close to a third of the seats, it’s not true democracy,” said Greta Neubauer, the Democratic leader in the State Assembly. “We are very much at risk of people deciding that it’s not worthwhile for them to continue to engage because they see how rigged the system is against the people of the state in favor of Republican politicians.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/us/politics/wisconsin-voting-republicans-supermajorities.html?

  4. SPC 4
    8 November 2022 at 11:14 pm

    The USA has been described as having reached competitive authoritarianism, a state where elections are still held so that people can continue to pretend they still live in a democracy.

    But even Aron, a longtime skeptic of the idea that America is on the path to authoritarianism, is rethinking her views in light of the GOP’s increased commitment to anti-democratic politics since January 6.

    “I can’t say anything good” about Republican behavior, she tells me. “They want to stay in power and they want to change the system so it will benefit them as much as possible.”

    This view is approaching a consensus among experts. A recent letter by 100 leading scholars of democracy warned that “Republican-led state legislatures across the country have in recent months proposed or implemented what we consider radical changes to core electoral procedures. … Collectively, these initiatives are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections. Hence, our entire democracy is now at risk.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/08/american-democracy-backsliding-competitive-authoritarianism/

  5. roblogic 5
    8 November 2022 at 11:19 pm

    The oligarchs have figured out how to hack democracy. They have been busy little beavers tearing up the social fabric, ever since the New Deal saved their asses from pitchfork wielding mobs.

    Their time will come again

  6. Mike the Lefty 6
    9 November 2022 at 9:12 am

    All this points to why the judiciary and the government should be separate. When the government IS the judiciary you do not get justice. You get Thailand, North Korea, China , Russia, and a whole heap of African and banana republics.

    I remember a long time ago when Geoffrey Palmer was Minister of Justice and he was being interviewed on television about some case where a person right's were effectively being denied by legal delays. The interviewer asked him "But can't you do something for her…." or something similar. Palmer answered that he personally would like to but he simply could not because as a member of the government it could be interpreted as political interference in the judiciary.

    The separation of government and judiciary is something we should treasure and not throw away lightly. The Americans should do likewise.

  7. Peter 7
    9 November 2022 at 10:23 am

    To some extent the US situation is summed up by Georgia. A candidate for the senate has campaigned on abortion and supported strict conservative attitudes to it. Turns out, as t6he electioneering has gone on that two women he had relationships with had abortions which he was involved with.

    Of course he lied, and when more substantial evidence was presented he lied again, and denied and on it went until a second woman came forward.

    He is going to deny abortion rights to others. One of the women he was involved with said the candidate "pressured her" into having an abortion.

    That's how it rolls in the US. How would such a candidate fare in NZ given the same history and demonstrating similar qualities? When you look at the ruckus about Sam Uffindell they'd probably not make the race or withdraw.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63293755

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