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What’s Up With Mike Johnson’s Very Shady-Seeming Financial Disclosures?
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this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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politics
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Why is no one checking these things? 7 years of irregularities but it takes the guy becoming second in line for the presidency for someone to turn this up? That’s insane.
Once they did a sting investigation against members of congress to try to bribe them. It was called Abscam. Seven members of congress were convicted as a result.
So it was highly effective and seems like it would be a good thing to continue doing, right? Nope. Somehow, there's just not ever any money in the budget for these types of operations anymore.
You know how you always hear stories about police investigating themselves only to find that they did nothing wrong? Congress prefers to police themselves, as well, and for the same basic reasons.
The rules around campaign finance violations are similar. It's the only law where ignorance of the law is a valid defense. And that's the standard that the people that write the laws want to be held by.
The idea is that we don't just investigate as fishing expeditions. Abscam wasn't created to go after political figures.
You say "fishing expedition," but it's a common police tactic called a sting operation. It's hard to imagine a better use of taxpayer money than to try to stop corruption in government.
I think that when Jared Kushner got his 2 billion dollar "investment" from the saudi prince MBS, he should have been shitting himself thinking it was probably a set up. If you imagine how you could pull of an impossible stunt like that to trick Kushner into thinking he was dealing with MBS when he wasn't (This was after he left office. I wouldn't want police interfering with actual diplomacy.), then you'll understand the lengths that I think our law enforcement should go to in order to root out corruption.
We've given our politicians a great deal of power, and so they should expect a great deal of scrutiny.
I'm not really arguing about what needs to or should be done, I tend to agree with you.
However, my understanding is that sting operations start with a suspect already under investigation. They don't start with the sting. It's a pretty important distinction because otherwise you get into entrapment territory. We're interested in obtaining and and maintaining appeal proof convictions against wealthy and well defended people here.
If you want more direct scrutiny over congress critters, you need stronger ethics and disclosure laws to be passed with real teeth.
General sweep stings happen all the time without any known suspects before the operation. Prostitution and human trafficking stings are a couple of examples that are often reported on in local news.
I fully admit that I'm no expert here, I'll have to look into it more. Thanks for the civil discussion.
Listen, if they start scrutinizing this guy they're going to need to start scrutinizing everyone. And they don't want that.
No, no. Like trump said, "if they can indict me on fraud, election blah,blah,blah,(91 total) they can go after you! I'm the guy on the wall! You need me. Now give me money. Also, totally a billionaire.
Well, examining your bosses' finances might not be a good idea for your employment prospects, especially when your bosses are Congress.
"Checks and balances" are an illusion.
Keeping sending the checks to inflate their balances.