682
Trump claims he didn’t have ‘fair notice’ that Georgia actions could be illegal
(www.independent.co.uk)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
682 points (96.1% liked)
News
23301 readers
1774 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Ignorance of the law has never been received in court as a viable defence.
unless youre a police officer.
the only people allowed to be completely ignorant of the law, and get away with it, are police officers.
sure, they are wrong, but whatareyougunnadoaboutit. courts have ruled "police officers do not need to know the law to enforce it" which means they can literally do whatever they want, and you have no choice until later.
awesome.
In general no. Some laws have this written as a specific out though right into them. Not aware if Georgia's laws have anything like this, but Trump Jr not being charged for criminal conduct in his meetings with Russian agents is a pretty famous example:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/mueller-report-no-evidence-trump-knew-about-trump-tower-meeting-n995816
Mueller declined charging him because "On the facts here, the government would unlikely be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the June 9 meeting participants had general knowledge that their conduct was unlawful. The investigation has not developed evidence that the participants in the meeting were familiar with the foreign-contribution ban or the application of federal law to the relevant factual context."
By no means am I saying this should be a valid defense, I don't think it should. As our laws are written though, sometimes being too dumb to know it's illegal might be a defense, at least for some of them.
Edit: this may not be the case, also see replies below.
Mueller dropped the biggest ball in American history with that whole report. He tried his best to deflect responsibility to deal with the situation to Congress and in so doing gave Republicans everything they needed to spin it all as inconsequential. What a fucking coward.
Mueller did exactly what he was legally allowed to do. A DOJ special counsel is not the same thing as an Independent Counsel.
He could not bring any charges himself, only report to the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General. And he was also legally bound to follow all DOJ policy, which under AG Barr was that the DOJ could not charge a sitting President or even recommend.
agreed. his name should go down in history as 'Failure'
Poor but uneducated = burden on society, better sterilize these folks
Rich but dumb = this person should have been taught better, shame on you all! Give them another chance and another company to be CEO of
Foreign contributions laws do not have anything written about ignorance of the law granting immunity. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/CFR-2017-title11-vol1/CFR-2017-title11-vol1-sec110-20
Interesting. IANAL, you could be right. I'm only taking the reporting of why Mueller didn't indict trump Jr at face value. Petty egregious he wasn't indicted if that's the case. It is the excuse the Justice department lawyers used. Like it's right there in the report.
Edit: Copy pasted out the definition of "knowingly" from the law in question
Doesn't seem like this refers to knowing the law exists, I wonder what Mueller was on about in his report, or if there's some other court precedent not directly in the law or something. Maybe Mueller meant he didn't have knowledge that information was an "in kind" contribution equivalent to funds, and therefore did not accept funds knowingly? Seems like a stretch though I don't know, would still be ignorance of the law in the end. Need an actual campaign finance lawyer, haha.
Also consider who they are saying is ignorant of campaign law, its Trumps campaign team, not just Jr but also Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner were at that meeting. I mean if the political campaign of a frontrunner presidential candidate isnt expected to know campaign law, who the hell is?