Trump's Crimes In NY Were Real And They Matter. Stop Saying They Don't, Sam Harris
Just because they're not big splashy crimes doesn't mean they don't count.
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Sam Harris has joined Substack and while I once read his books with great affection, for a long while, he took a deep tumble down the aggrieved white man rabbit hole. He never went quite as far as Richard Dawkins or Glenn Greenwald, but it was still pretty bad. Iâm given to understand heâs pulled back from the black hole of going full fash, but I stopped paying attention to him quite some time ago so I really donât know where he is these days. I thought Iâd check out his newsletter and keep my fingers crossed.
I had to close my eyes and count to 10.
Itâs not MAGA or MAGA-adjacent. Itâs not even alt-left. And thank god for that. But in his very first regular post, he makes a serious logical error and I cannot believe I have to get into this. Heâs smart enough to know better and itâs really disappointing that heâs not even trying:
This trial amply revealed the venality and squalor of Trumpâs world, but Iâm not sure it demonstrated his culpability for crimes that many Americans care about. Of all the cases brought against him, this one always appeared to be the most politically motivated.
Care about? What do Americans caring about a crime have to do with the legitimacy of a prosecution? How is that relevant to whether or not Trump actually committed a crime? How does that suggest, in any way, that the prosecution was politically motivated? Why not discuss if the charges are true or not?
OK, letâs do this as simply as possible. Hereâs the law:
Any money you spend to benefit your campaign is, by definition, a campaign expenditure. It doesnât matter if itâs something big like buying $1 million in TV ads or something small like buying pizza for your campaign staff. If you spend money to benefit your campaign, you must report it. This is not negotiable. With me so far?
So if I buy $1,000 worth of âOgre for Presidentâ stickers, I have to report it. If I do not, that is a crime. Got it? I broke the law. It doesnât matter if the public cares about the crime or not. It is, in fact, a crime.
If I were to then hide that $1,000 purchase by having a friend lay out the money and, on top of that, falsify business records to make it appear as if the reimbursement were payments for âfoot rubs,â that would be a separate crime.
Normally, falsifying business records would be a misdemeanor. But in New York State, committing a misdemeanor with the intent to cover up a different crime raises that misdemeanor to the level of a felony. Got that? A misdemeanor in the commission of another crime equals a felony. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
Itâs like the legal version of âHey, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!â But instead of a delicious chocolate peanut butter cup, you get 25-30 in Rikerâs.
This is how Donald Trump was charged with 34 felonies and quickly convicted by a jury of 12 ordinary people. It was not complicated or confusing. It was simple and straightforward.
And it matters.
These charges are not as big and splashy as the ones over the stolen documents. Theyâre not as vital to the future of the nation as the election interference charges in Florida and Georgia. But they still matter.
Donald Trump broke the law, defrauded the American people, and interfered with an election. All of the protests that every politician cheats and lies are bullshit. Iâve been hearing it all week from MAGAts and the alt-left. Sam Harris, thankfully, doesnât take that route. But he still downplays the charges as unimportant because theyâre not âcrimes that many Americans care about.â
He does not really explain why that matters, though, other than to claim that Republicans will be mad if Trump loses because âhalf the population feels that a presidential election has been riggedâthis time by an unfair prosecution and a spurious conviction.â
But they were always going to claim it was rigged. Everything is rigged unless they win. Didnât get that promotion? It was DEI. Lost the big race? Must have been a trans kid. Election blowout? The libs cheated!
Harris is breathtakingly disingenuous here. Itâs as if heâs never met a Republican before or listened to a word theyâve said in the last decade. One can only hope this is not going to be the tone of his writing going forward because we already have Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald lying to us on an almost daily basis. We donât need more propaganda on Substack.
Trumpâs crimes are real. It doesnât matter if theyâre âimportantâ crimes. Theyâre still crimes that he committed and he should be held accountable for them regardless of how sad it makes his followers. If Harris thinks otherwise, he should go back and reread âLetter To A Christian Nationâ and remind himself of what happens when you give in to extremism.
There are 151 days until the 2024 election. Vote blue like your life depends on it.
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They are important in that he broke the law to conceal information that otherwise may have prevented him from getting elected if it came out.
As others have said in much more colorful words, that has impacted freedom of choice, reproductive rights, the number of people who died in the early stages of the pandemic and a whole lot more.
Campaign finance fraud , once minimized, opens more floodgates for the abusers of it. Which is not bothsides. I dont want frauds on MYSIDE if they have to do it to win. Got that, trolls?