this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
561 points (99.6% liked)

News

32974 readers
2732 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. 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 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Donald Trump made clear on Saturday evening that he is frustrated with his attorney general over her hesitance to bring politically-motivated criminal cases against a list of the president’s enemies, something the White House has been working to engineer on flimsy pretenses for months.

The president issued a Truth Social post on Saturday addressed to Pam Bondi, the U.S. attorney general, stating that he’d reviewed numerous reports from the Department of Justice apparently stating that no progress was being made on launching the prosecutions after criminal referrals were sent to Bondi’s team by William Pulte, an official at the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

In the post, which began “Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done,’” Trump assumes the guilt of Sen. Adam Schiff and others like Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, and demands that Bondi begin criminal prosecutions without “delay.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] tal@olio.cafe 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I mean, Trump's a pretty bad president, but under the system, as it stands, if an unjust prosecution happens, the courts are expected to shoot it down. That's why one has a court system. It shouldn't fall over just because he demands prosecution of political opponents.

In Japan, you have a system where prosecuted cases virtually always lead to a conviction, where for practical purposes, the "filter" happens at the decision to prosecute:

https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c05401/order-in-the-court-explaining-japan%E2%80%99s-99-9-conviction-rate.html

MURAOKA: The conviction rate in most countries, including those with plea bargain systems, is generally over 90 percent. Many trials do end in acquittals, though. By comparison, Japan’s 99.9 percent conviction rate is unnaturally high.

Prosecutors in any country generally pursue cases where they are confident of a positive outcome. However, they are still required to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Japan’s conviction rate creeping toward 100 percent has raised red flags among legal scholars overseas who question whether judges are actually ruling according to the law or are merely deferring to the prosecution.

But that's not how the US works.

There's a legitimate issue in that a prosecution can cause a defender to incur legal fees


and maybe it's the case that we should try to mitigate than more than is the case today. Or maybe nuisance. Trump certainly has managed to fire people in the Executive Branch who he was angry at. But I'm not especially worried that Trump is going to be just running around convicting people of crimes because he doesn't like them. Trump was prosecuted and convicted because he broke the law. He is, no doubt, pissed off about that. But it doesn't mean that he can just readily go out and have people convicted who he personally doesn't like who haven't broken the law.

I'd also add that even past judges acting to throw out cases that flagrantly don't have any merit or to rule in favor of a defendant, even if you could somehow compromise a judge, the common-law system has the right to a jury trial to add yet another barrier to a compromised government attempting to misuse prosecution.

Finally, there's the pardon, something that Trump has used himself very vigorously to remove punishment from people who he liked, which can come from a future administration.

This is something that the system is already designed to handle. It doesn't need out-of-band involvement.