Bringing it full circle, there was an incident where someone at Fox News put a caption below two pictures of Biden and Trump: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested”. It was taken down and Fox apologized, but some conservatives are saying “Ha ha—no, really”.
Against that description, Washington Post says: “The Biden administration has maintained that it has no role in the federal Trump prosecution, with Attorney General Merrick Garland turning to a special counsel to avoid a conflict of interest.”
I looked for more, and Fortune says:
Garland said Friday that Trump’s announcement of his presidential candidacy and President Joe Biden’s likely 2024 run were factors in his decision to appoint Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor, to be the special counsel. Garland said the appointment would allow prosecutors to continue their work “indisputably guided” only by the facts and the law.
...
The Justice Department described Smith as a registered independent, an effort to blunt any attack of perceived political bias. Trump is a Republican, and Biden is a Democrat.
“Throughout his career, Jack Smith has built a reputation as an impartial and determined prosecutor who leads teams with energy and focus to follow the facts wherever they lead,” Garland said. “As special counsel, he will exercise independent prosecutorial judgment to decide whether charges should be brought.”
Is that enough? It may well be that Jack Smith is determined to uphold principles and keep his personal opinions out of his work, and might also be that his personal opinions are neutral, but neither of these will be particularly legible to the public. (His Wikipedia page doesn’t show anything obviously politically relevant from him, except that he married someone who produced a documentary about Michelle Obama.)
Also, political bias isn’t the only relevant dimension; if one in Garland’s position were determined to get Trump taken down, one could pick a prosecutor who was politically neutral but “tough on crime”, or even tough on that particular type of crime, not to mention personally disliking Trump. And one might be able to use one’s network to find a prosecutor whose private opinions were what one wanted; with a good network, one could probably even find a tough-on-crime Republican who disliked Trump but hadn’t said so publicly.
Well, what then? Is there no way to prosecute someone like Trump without risking it looking like your side is inappropriately using the legal system against your opposition? Well… maybe not. I do think it’d be different if Trump were, say, caught on video (deepfakes aside—let’s say there are plenty of witnesses) punching someone unprovoked. But for a case like this—no one has been injured, precedent is murky, and it’s easy for Trump to tell stories about it where he did nothing wrong.
I think arresting him was a mistake. It’s bad if some people end up being “above the law”, untouchable to an extent because of the political implications of prosecuting them; but those implications, the precedent it sets in many people’s eyes, seem worse. There are cases where we say, e.g., that although some speech is bad, wrong, and net negative, those in power shouldn’t be trusted to decide which speech qualifies, and thus they must let it all be: we adopt a rule that limits tyranny, and accept that this means we must tolerate some genuinely bad stuff. For the same reason, there should be such a strong taboo against arresting political opponents that one just doesn’t do it—unless they’re committing crimes so obvious and serious that, say, >80% of the public agrees he should be arrested.
His favourability correlated with how people felt about charges bought against him. Around 47 per cent of people said the charges against Mr Trump were politically motivated, compared to 37 per cent who did not see politics behind the indictments.
[...]
Nearly half – 48 per cent of Americans – said Mr Trump should have been charged in the cases while 35 per cent voted against it.
(Amusingly, this implies that many of those who are uncertain whether the charges are politically motivated, and likely some who believe they are politically motivated, do believe Trump should have been charged.) It also seems to have fired up Trump’s supporters, and increased his chances of winning the Republican primary. I suspect that, if Trump ends up in jail, that will lead to riots.
Ironically, this seems to have been bad for anti-Trump Democrats, and I think this was foreseeable; which in turn is decent evidence that the prosecution is not a considered political move, more a case of individuals doing what they think is their official duty. I’m tempted to wonder if Trump anticipated and deliberately provoked this; I think that type of thing has served him well in the past. It’s hard to distinguish between “the guy is terminally childish” and “the guy has excellent political instincts”; probably both.
there should be such a strong taboo against arresting political opponents that one just doesn’t do it
Nobody arrested their political opponent (the politicians aren’t the ones doing the arresting).
Also, why not? Shouldn’t it be more important if a crime was committed, rather than if someone is someone else’s political opponent? Why should public figures have immunity from being arrested unless >80% of the population agrees?
Nobody arrested their political opponent (the politicians aren’t the ones doing the arresting).
Biden nominated Merrick Garland as attorney general, who chose Jack Smith, who is doing the prosecuting. The separations here are not going to impress someone who thinks the Democrats are using the system to attack the enemy they hate.
Why should public figures have immunity from being arrested unless >80% of the population agrees?
I wouldn’t extend this to all public figures, just those who are serious candidates for an election for leader of the country. The logic is similar to that which some have said underlies the justification for democracy: given an armed populace, voting is a less-bloody substitute for a violent revolution. 80% is a number I made up, but the point is that if there is any serious chance that arresting them leads to a violent revolution, then don’t arrest them.
The separations here are not going to impress someone who thinks the Democrats are using the system to attack the enemy they hate.
We can’t withdraw from arresting criminals and putting them on trial because conspiracy theorists will invent a different story in their minds. Unless...
I wouldn’t extend this to all public figures, just those who are serious candidates for an election for leader of the country.
...Oh, so you meant like 5-10 people tops, in the country of 300M. I see.
On the surface, it’s a very consequentialistic reasoning. Why arrest one criminal, if it can cause a revolution?
Of course, Trump has already been arrested, and the revolution hasn’t happened, so this isn’t the case here, apparently.
There are also three other problems:
Local consequentialism—locally (both spatially and temporally) optimizing can have disastrous global effects. Today, we can’t arrest an aspiring dictator. And so he, in 5 years, wins the election. Now he’s in power, and we have the problem we hoped to avoid. If we arrested him, there would be localized violent disturbances, but his ascension to power would’ve been slower, if he ever became elected in the first place. (The general pattern is that the less you oppose evil to avoid undesirable externalities, the faster and the more power the evil gains.)
Incentivizing self-modification against your values—if we reward people willing to invent conspiracy theories in their heads by not arresting their ideological leader, they are, both consciously and subconsciously, motivated to do just that, because they know you will back down.
The peaceful evolution, enabled by democracy, only refers to the kind of enabling where gaining the power is lawful. If I’m elected because you are too scared to arrest me, that’s a (non-violent) revolution, rather than a peaceful transition of power. Of course, you could say that doesn’t matter because the goal here is to avoid violence. But that brings us back to the problems (1) and (2). Also, the violence (a bloody revolution is very unlikely) will happen in both branches of the future. The difference is that in the no-arrest one, you signaled that you will rather let evil win by inaction (and then be victimized) rather than arrest the would-be-dictator (and be victimized afterwards anyway). You won’t end up being actually better off. Rather, you’ll end up being worse off, since you’ve now set the precedent that you will ignore the law under the threat of violence. (Which is sometimes a good idea, but in this case it’s not.)
Of course, Trump has already been arrested, and the revolution hasn’t happened, so this isn’t the case here, apparently.
I said “if Trump ends up in jail”; I meant as an outcome, like if that were his sentence; I would also count it if he were held in jail awaiting trial for months. From what I’ve read, he hasn’t spent a single night in jail and is still out giving speeches.
Local consequentialism—locally (both spatially and temporally) optimizing can have disastrous global effects. Today, we can’t arrest an aspiring dictator. And so he, in 5 years, wins the election. Now he’s in power, and we have the problem we hoped to avoid.
Surely you’re not saying that the point of arresting him is to prevent him from winning an election. Surely you’re not saying that.
I believe we’re discussing the merits of a general taboo against prosecuting presidential candidates unless the crime is particularly legible to the public.
Do you think such a taboo is likely to increase or decrease the risk from dictators taking over? Maybe you could claim that would-be dictators are more likely than good candidates to have committed crimes, and thus removing the taboo selects against dictatorial candidates; I guess that’s possible. On the other hand, if there is no such taboo, then a dictator who has already been elected is more likely to appoint cronies who will prosecute his political opponents for whatever might stick to them—even if they don’t stick, the prosecution itself can be damaging and onerous. The second thing seems bigger to me. The U.S. government has lots of interlock to limit the damage that the occasionally elected bad president can do, and I think that’s a much better security model than doing everything possible to minimize the chance of electing him.
If I’m elected because you are too scared to arrest me
Do you think the taboo would enable would-be dictators to commit crimes that make them more likely to get elected? Such crimes are conceivable, I guess, but the impactful ones (like tampering with voting machines) seem likely to be legible. The current example is… keeping a bunch of classified documents he shouldn’t have? I don’t see how that helps win an election.
Incentivizing self-modification against your values—if we reward people willing to invent conspiracy theories in their heads by not arresting their ideological leader, they are, both consciously and subconsciously, motivated to do just that, because they know you will back down.
Yeah, this is unfortunate. Though if we back down because there’s a taboo, or because we want to portray our country as better than others—rather than because we’re scared of violence, based on an evaluation of how violence-prone the population is—then there’s no need for self-modification (though some might engage in it anyway). I guess there’s a danger of self-modification shrinking the range of what crimes are “legible” to the public. But I don’t expect that to go very far and result in substantial damage due to additional crime by presidential candidates. Overall, I think the benefits of the taboo exceed these risks.
Surely you’re not saying that the point of arresting him is to prevent him from winning an election. Surely you’re not saying that.
There are many points to arresting criminals. Making it harder for them to amass power is one of them, of which winning an election is a subset.
Do you think such a taboo is likely to increase or decrease the risk from dictators taking over?
Increase, for the reasons I enumerated.
Maybe you could claim that would-be dictators are more likely than good candidates to have committed crimes
That’s one factor, yes.
On the other hand, if there is no such taboo, then a dictator who has already been elected is more likely to appoint cronies who will prosecute his political opponents for whatever might stick to them—even if they don’t stick, the prosecution itself can be damaging and onerous.
That doesn’t work for the reasons I gave (to very briefly repeat them—the dictator will not respect any informal taboos (or formal ones, for that matter)).
Aside from not respecting informal taboos, he will be helped by other Republicans in other branches of the government to get away with both overstepping his authority and committing outright crimes.
The idea you’re describing is the exact opposite of how social interaction and the system of power work, and has been generated and released into the wild by bad-faith actors who are invested in people falsely believing in them (another one is “we have to give the Babyeaters a platform and host their hate speech on our servers, so that people can see how terrible they are and stop supporting them,” which also works, in reality, the other way around).
Bringing it full circle, there was an incident where someone at Fox News put a caption below two pictures of Biden and Trump: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested”. It was taken down and Fox apologized, but some conservatives are saying “Ha ha—no, really”.
Against that description, Washington Post says: “The Biden administration has maintained that it has no role in the federal Trump prosecution, with Attorney General Merrick Garland turning to a special counsel to avoid a conflict of interest.”
I looked for more, and Fortune says:
Is that enough? It may well be that Jack Smith is determined to uphold principles and keep his personal opinions out of his work, and might also be that his personal opinions are neutral, but neither of these will be particularly legible to the public. (His Wikipedia page doesn’t show anything obviously politically relevant from him, except that he married someone who produced a documentary about Michelle Obama.)
Also, political bias isn’t the only relevant dimension; if one in Garland’s position were determined to get Trump taken down, one could pick a prosecutor who was politically neutral but “tough on crime”, or even tough on that particular type of crime, not to mention personally disliking Trump. And one might be able to use one’s network to find a prosecutor whose private opinions were what one wanted; with a good network, one could probably even find a tough-on-crime Republican who disliked Trump but hadn’t said so publicly.
Well, what then? Is there no way to prosecute someone like Trump without risking it looking like your side is inappropriately using the legal system against your opposition? Well… maybe not. I do think it’d be different if Trump were, say, caught on video (deepfakes aside—let’s say there are plenty of witnesses) punching someone unprovoked. But for a case like this—no one has been injured, precedent is murky, and it’s easy for Trump to tell stories about it where he did nothing wrong.
I think arresting him was a mistake. It’s bad if some people end up being “above the law”, untouchable to an extent because of the political implications of prosecuting them; but those implications, the precedent it sets in many people’s eyes, seem worse. There are cases where we say, e.g., that although some speech is bad, wrong, and net negative, those in power shouldn’t be trusted to decide which speech qualifies, and thus they must let it all be: we adopt a rule that limits tyranny, and accept that this means we must tolerate some genuinely bad stuff. For the same reason, there should be such a strong taboo against arresting political opponents that one just doesn’t do it—unless they’re committing crimes so obvious and serious that, say, >80% of the public agrees he should be arrested.
As it stands, The Independent says that an ABC news poll says:
(Amusingly, this implies that many of those who are uncertain whether the charges are politically motivated, and likely some who believe they are politically motivated, do believe Trump should have been charged.) It also seems to have fired up Trump’s supporters, and increased his chances of winning the Republican primary. I suspect that, if Trump ends up in jail, that will lead to riots.
Ironically, this seems to have been bad for anti-Trump Democrats, and I think this was foreseeable; which in turn is decent evidence that the prosecution is not a considered political move, more a case of individuals doing what they think is their official duty. I’m tempted to wonder if Trump anticipated and deliberately provoked this; I think that type of thing has served him well in the past. It’s hard to distinguish between “the guy is terminally childish” and “the guy has excellent political instincts”; probably both.
Nobody arrested their political opponent (the politicians aren’t the ones doing the arresting).
Also, why not? Shouldn’t it be more important if a crime was committed, rather than if someone is someone else’s political opponent? Why should public figures have immunity from being arrested unless >80% of the population agrees?
Biden nominated Merrick Garland as attorney general, who chose Jack Smith, who is doing the prosecuting. The separations here are not going to impress someone who thinks the Democrats are using the system to attack the enemy they hate.
I wouldn’t extend this to all public figures, just those who are serious candidates for an election for leader of the country. The logic is similar to that which some have said underlies the justification for democracy: given an armed populace, voting is a less-bloody substitute for a violent revolution. 80% is a number I made up, but the point is that if there is any serious chance that arresting them leads to a violent revolution, then don’t arrest them.
We can’t withdraw from arresting criminals and putting them on trial because conspiracy theorists will invent a different story in their minds. Unless...
...Oh, so you meant like 5-10 people tops, in the country of 300M. I see.
On the surface, it’s a very consequentialistic reasoning. Why arrest one criminal, if it can cause a revolution?
Of course, Trump has already been arrested, and the revolution hasn’t happened, so this isn’t the case here, apparently.
There are also three other problems:
Local consequentialism—locally (both spatially and temporally) optimizing can have disastrous global effects. Today, we can’t arrest an aspiring dictator. And so he, in 5 years, wins the election. Now he’s in power, and we have the problem we hoped to avoid. If we arrested him, there would be localized violent disturbances, but his ascension to power would’ve been slower, if he ever became elected in the first place. (The general pattern is that the less you oppose evil to avoid undesirable externalities, the faster and the more power the evil gains.)
Incentivizing self-modification against your values—if we reward people willing to invent conspiracy theories in their heads by not arresting their ideological leader, they are, both consciously and subconsciously, motivated to do just that, because they know you will back down.
The peaceful evolution, enabled by democracy, only refers to the kind of enabling where gaining the power is lawful. If I’m elected because you are too scared to arrest me, that’s a (non-violent) revolution, rather than a peaceful transition of power. Of course, you could say that doesn’t matter because the goal here is to avoid violence. But that brings us back to the problems (1) and (2). Also, the violence (a bloody revolution is very unlikely) will happen in both branches of the future. The difference is that in the no-arrest one, you signaled that you will rather let evil win by inaction (and then be victimized) rather than arrest the would-be-dictator (and be victimized afterwards anyway). You won’t end up being actually better off. Rather, you’ll end up being worse off, since you’ve now set the precedent that you will ignore the law under the threat of violence. (Which is sometimes a good idea, but in this case it’s not.)
I said “if Trump ends up in jail”; I meant as an outcome, like if that were his sentence; I would also count it if he were held in jail awaiting trial for months. From what I’ve read, he hasn’t spent a single night in jail and is still out giving speeches.
Surely you’re not saying that the point of arresting him is to prevent him from winning an election. Surely you’re not saying that.
I believe we’re discussing the merits of a general taboo against prosecuting presidential candidates unless the crime is particularly legible to the public.
Do you think such a taboo is likely to increase or decrease the risk from dictators taking over? Maybe you could claim that would-be dictators are more likely than good candidates to have committed crimes, and thus removing the taboo selects against dictatorial candidates; I guess that’s possible. On the other hand, if there is no such taboo, then a dictator who has already been elected is more likely to appoint cronies who will prosecute his political opponents for whatever might stick to them—even if they don’t stick, the prosecution itself can be damaging and onerous. The second thing seems bigger to me. The U.S. government has lots of interlock to limit the damage that the occasionally elected bad president can do, and I think that’s a much better security model than doing everything possible to minimize the chance of electing him.
Do you think the taboo would enable would-be dictators to commit crimes that make them more likely to get elected? Such crimes are conceivable, I guess, but the impactful ones (like tampering with voting machines) seem likely to be legible. The current example is… keeping a bunch of classified documents he shouldn’t have? I don’t see how that helps win an election.
Yeah, this is unfortunate. Though if we back down because there’s a taboo, or because we want to portray our country as better than others—rather than because we’re scared of violence, based on an evaluation of how violence-prone the population is—then there’s no need for self-modification (though some might engage in it anyway). I guess there’s a danger of self-modification shrinking the range of what crimes are “legible” to the public. But I don’t expect that to go very far and result in substantial damage due to additional crime by presidential candidates. Overall, I think the benefits of the taboo exceed these risks.
There are many points to arresting criminals. Making it harder for them to amass power is one of them, of which winning an election is a subset.
Increase, for the reasons I enumerated.
That’s one factor, yes.
That doesn’t work for the reasons I gave (to very briefly repeat them—the dictator will not respect any informal taboos (or formal ones, for that matter)).
Aside from not respecting informal taboos, he will be helped by other Republicans in other branches of the government to get away with both overstepping his authority and committing outright crimes.
The idea you’re describing is the exact opposite of how social interaction and the system of power work, and has been generated and released into the wild by bad-faith actors who are invested in people falsely believing in them (another one is “we have to give the Babyeaters a platform and host their hate speech on our servers, so that people can see how terrible they are and stop supporting them,” which also works, in reality, the other way around).