Well I heard from an esteemed legal scholar J. Eastman that because none of charges against Donald Trump are felonies recognized at common law (Murder, Robbery, Manslaughter, Rape, Sodomy, Larceny, Arson, Mayhem, and Burglary), it would violate the original understanding of federal criminal jurisdiction to prosecute Trump.
My young Grasshopper, you put in so much work to expose the nonsense about the Defendant-In-Chief's sentencing, if and when he is convicted of federal crimes.
The following may seem contrived but it may be the only compromise that will satisfy neither pro-Trumpers and anti-Trumpers...but it could spare rioting.
1. The Feds use Eminent Domain to buy Mar-A-Lago at prevailing fair market value.
2. The Ballroom would be recreated into the living quarters for the Prisoner-in-Chief, with space for all the boxes of memorabilia not wanted by the National Achivies.
3. The Prisoner-in-Chief would have no access to outgoing media...no phone, no computer. He would have a limit on incoming media...only PBS.
4. The current living quarters would be converted into headquarters and living quarters for the Secret Service.
5. Any other current living facilities would be converted into dormitory-like space for use by underprivileged youths, like Girls and Boys Clubs, who would have access to the pool and tennis courts.
6. The golf course would be converted to public links, with the Prisoner-in-Chief allowed to play three times a week, with no interaction with the paying customers.
7. At the end of his "bit" the Prisoner-in-Chief's living quarters would be converted into "The Museum of Political Crime History" to include exhibits and research on the legacy of the likes of the Criminal-In-Chief and William Marcy "Boss" Tweed.
1. Do not expose kids to this dirtbag. If the rumors about his behavior at his Miss Teen USA pageants is accurate, he shouldn't be allowed near teenagers.
2. Given the number of co-conspirators he had, we might as well put all of them in there and drain the pool and turn the golf course into fields. Given the amount of chemicals put on golf courses, no one will be able to eat anything from there for several years but I understand that enforced labor is a teaching moment in Florida.
And these yahoos could certainly use some civics education.
3. Can Congress revoke Secret Service? I have no problem with that, but it would seem the MAGAites would go batshit that their Master would not be protected...especially from the great unwashed non-White, anti-Christian, prison-gay population.
#4. Trump would probably want a prison that gives him great access to White Supremacists, who'd protect him ( before or after having their way with him in the shower)
#6. Unfortunately, Trump will not be forgotten for a generation, regardless of his place of death.
All fine, except one thing: no golf allowed. Certainly not 3 rounds per week! That's a vacation! Maybe one round every six months, which would be more torture than fun.
More torture would truly be his only source of media being NPR and PBS with all the stories about "negroes, Hispanics, immigrant laborers, gays" and no golf or studio wrestling.
Good general idea, but Mar-A-Lago does not have a golf course, only a putting green. So he could just putt-putt-putter away his thrice-weekly recreation shifts. Knowing him, he would kick any ball into the cup if he didn't get it in with one putt.
Well, now I almost feel bad for that post on your Facebook...
Also, I honestly find it impossible to believe Trump will actually be sentenced to time in the actual custody of the bureau of prisons. He's got a secret service detail, for Christ's sake. What are they gonna do, have his agents in the cells next to him?
Agree. That said, if by chance he were sentenced to the custody of the BOP with his Secret Service detail in adjacent cells, at least they wouldn’t have to pay market rates to Trump for the accommodations.
I mean, I understand that. And maybe Judge Canon will do that in the documents case. But it's highly likely he will end up at Zone D on the chart, and it's highly unusual to schedule a Zone D offender thank anything other than prison. So I think he does get sent to prison, if convicted in the DC case
My expectation as well, considering he doesn't have a criminal history . . . unless the judge sentencing him waits until all those other verdicts are in.
I've tried really hard to think of what I would actually want the Post to write in order to be useful to their readership on this topic. I guess the easy way out would be to quote Mitchell Epner as an expert, quote Scott Adams for balance, and then call it a day. But I sense they aspire to be better and in fact Philip Bump usually is. (For my part, when someone asks my professional opinion on what sentence a person in the news is likely to get, my answer is just "go see what Popehat says." It's a very non-intuitive system so my guess would probably be worse than useless.)
I think what I'd like, and this goes not just for the sentencing question but for a lot of questions floating around there like "is the judge going to revoke his bail," is for experts to focus a little less on predicting what will actually happen to Donald Trump in these cases and instead inform people how the typical defendant would be treated in the same situation. Many people don't pay close attention to other cases and don't have a basis for comparison, so when something surprising happens it's good for them to have a sense of "is this only happening because it's Trump" or "is this how the system operates every day and I just didn't know."
For example, the fact that a court would almost certainly give out concurrent sentences on something like the NY false-records charges, for any similarly situated defendant, that's useful to know. On the other side of things, something like the government not asking for the surrender of Trump's passport, it's useful context to know that would be a standard request for almost any other defendant.
That of course doesn't mean it's WRONG whenever Trump is treated differently but it would be very informative to the public if the press helped clarify how much the system is treating Trump differently from the typical defendant. We hear a lot of allegations from both sides about a two-tiered system of justice, and I think it is really useful if people are put in a position to have an informed opinion on whether Trump is getting special treatment, in either a harsh way or a lenient way.
I have written more than a few Guidelines computations. Rule #1 is to "show your work". I always run through every step of the Guidelines calculation, showing the number of offense level points each factor adds (or subtracts). This way, anyone who wants to make different assumptions can see how the sentence would change based on those new assumptions.
The Guidelines are slightly more user-friendly than the Internal Revenue Code, so the average person should be able to get a general idea of what sort of sentence is likely to be recommended by Probation to the Court.
I read a science article in the post many years ago, long before the Trump era.
Scientists had discovered a possible link between a gene and weight gain, in mice, and the scientist quoted in the article said, people are probably going to want to believe that this discovery means there’s a fat gene, and that’s why humans gain weight, and I just want to make clear that this conclusion is absolutely premature, it would be very wrong to conclude that.
Hah! Headlines are designed to attract attention, not impart the truth. In fact, since before social media was invented, newspaper headlines have long been part of the so-called attention economy social media has exploited. WaPo is a private company. As a result of the damage social media has done to newspapers, its mission now - it wasn't when Woodward and Bernstein worked for them - is first and foremost to survive as a company. (That's capitalism for ya'!)
Their first job was always survival as a company: it's hard to publish a newspaper without money. The difference now is that newspapers' traditional cash cows (advertising, both large-format and classifieds) have been commoditized. So instead of having an honest business subsidized by such a cash cow, newspapers have been forced to try to make money from their core business, which leads to all sorts of perverse incentives that negatively impact the quality of that work. And now, here we are, where there's no commonly-accepted journalistic standards and everyone has their own facts.
There are standards, nine actually (https://www.newsguardtech.com/ratings/rating-process-criteria/) accepted by many publications like The Dispatch, The Hill, USA Today, NPR and ABC News, to name a few. But to keep an audience enraged and engaged, right-wing media, like The Ben Shapiro show, and left-wing media like Daily Kos, dont subscribe to them (https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/). Those standards are disregarded on the publications with political agendas.
Dropped the NY Times, still with WaPo but holy shit, there's been WAY too much of this lately with them. Appreciate your posts. Your voice is so needed.
I appreciate your emphasis, first, on the Post’s failings as a institution, and then on the astounding personal failure by Phil Bump--a journalist I admire. I hope we see him attempt a correction & clarification, and the Post publish it above the fold on this piece. And I hope we recognize that everyone screws up once in a while, and Bump learns from this.
Don't hope. Be active. If you are a WaPo subscriber, we should let them know we don't like such sloppy analysis. I am, and I just sent a letter to the editor:
I’m so sorry to be distracted in the first sentence, Popehat is that young??? Man, life in the law has *not* been kind to you, you sigh like a much much older man! You sigh like my dad, who worked in federal government for 6 years and aged 20 in that time!!!
This is somewhat like comparing drowning in a bathtub to drowning in the ocean, i.e. the result is the same. IMO ANY significant incarceration will likely kill him or finish him politically by silencing him. Also this entire discussion by the Ruminating Classes has a Queen of Hearts vibe. Verdict first, please.
I am so happy you're doing this public service. I remember the media & cultural hysteria surrounding Manafort's sentencing years ago and the seeming incredulity at the light sentence. If the media–both traditional and social–had started from a place like this we might have had less screeching & howling at the time. We could have lowered the temperature and saved some of that outrage for when it really counted. Thanks for doing this, Ken.
I appreciate your clear and succinct explanation of how federal sentencing works. You made a complex and mysterious subject quite clear, for which we all thank you! I also found Mitch Epner's walk-thru of the sentencing process, particularly the assignment of weights, illuminating. Many of us would prefer "life + 30 years," but we know that won't happen. ANY prison time that extends past January 20, 2024, would be an invitation to a massive celebration!
Well I heard from an esteemed legal scholar J. Eastman that because none of charges against Donald Trump are felonies recognized at common law (Murder, Robbery, Manslaughter, Rape, Sodomy, Larceny, Arson, Mayhem, and Burglary), it would violate the original understanding of federal criminal jurisdiction to prosecute Trump.
I saw this article and heard your primal rage scream five states away. My condolences.
My young Grasshopper, you put in so much work to expose the nonsense about the Defendant-In-Chief's sentencing, if and when he is convicted of federal crimes.
The following may seem contrived but it may be the only compromise that will satisfy neither pro-Trumpers and anti-Trumpers...but it could spare rioting.
1. The Feds use Eminent Domain to buy Mar-A-Lago at prevailing fair market value.
2. The Ballroom would be recreated into the living quarters for the Prisoner-in-Chief, with space for all the boxes of memorabilia not wanted by the National Achivies.
3. The Prisoner-in-Chief would have no access to outgoing media...no phone, no computer. He would have a limit on incoming media...only PBS.
4. The current living quarters would be converted into headquarters and living quarters for the Secret Service.
5. Any other current living facilities would be converted into dormitory-like space for use by underprivileged youths, like Girls and Boys Clubs, who would have access to the pool and tennis courts.
6. The golf course would be converted to public links, with the Prisoner-in-Chief allowed to play three times a week, with no interaction with the paying customers.
7. At the end of his "bit" the Prisoner-in-Chief's living quarters would be converted into "The Museum of Political Crime History" to include exhibits and research on the legacy of the likes of the Criminal-In-Chief and William Marcy "Boss" Tweed.
I like the idea but with a few tweaks.
1. Do not expose kids to this dirtbag. If the rumors about his behavior at his Miss Teen USA pageants is accurate, he shouldn't be allowed near teenagers.
2. Given the number of co-conspirators he had, we might as well put all of them in there and drain the pool and turn the golf course into fields. Given the amount of chemicals put on golf courses, no one will be able to eat anything from there for several years but I understand that enforced labor is a teaching moment in Florida.
And these yahoos could certainly use some civics education.
Nice add-ons.
He should not be able to get with shouting distance of anyone, other than guards and Secret Service. So the kids are safe.
To make it more tantalizing to the Prisoner-in-Chief, he can have conjugal visits with any of those women who dig convicts.
But no "enhancement" pills.😉
That would be different from standard treatment. Rationed overcharged phone access and paid pseudo-email are allowed in the Federal system.
Ok, but NPR instead of PBS and he has to donate to each drive.
Great add-on!
But he'd find some way to give a rubber check.
Well, as long as we're doing fantasy...
1) Biden or name your Democrat wins in 2024.
2) Democrats retake the House and maintain control of the Senate.
3) Congress revokes Secret Service protection for the incarcerated.
4) Trump reports to the lowest security federal prison able to isolate him from gen. pop.
5) Melania sells Mar-A-Lago to Elon Musk.
6) Trump's forgotten and dies in prison.
Elton...love your counter narrative. My addins:
3. Can Congress revoke Secret Service? I have no problem with that, but it would seem the MAGAites would go batshit that their Master would not be protected...especially from the great unwashed non-White, anti-Christian, prison-gay population.
#4. Trump would probably want a prison that gives him great access to White Supremacists, who'd protect him ( before or after having their way with him in the shower)
#6. Unfortunately, Trump will not be forgotten for a generation, regardless of his place of death.
Re #3, Sure. It's not like it's in the bill of rights or anything. On 4 it would serve him right. Re 6, this was fantasy remember!
All fine, except one thing: no golf allowed. Certainly not 3 rounds per week! That's a vacation! Maybe one round every six months, which would be more torture than fun.
More torture would truly be his only source of media being NPR and PBS with all the stories about "negroes, Hispanics, immigrant laborers, gays" and no golf or studio wrestling.
Want torture? Require that his caddy be a rules official who records his actual score.
This is FABULOUS!
Good general idea, but Mar-A-Lago does not have a golf course, only a putting green. So he could just putt-putt-putter away his thrice-weekly recreation shifts. Knowing him, he would kick any ball into the cup if he didn't get it in with one putt.
Well, now I almost feel bad for that post on your Facebook...
Also, I honestly find it impossible to believe Trump will actually be sentenced to time in the actual custody of the bureau of prisons. He's got a secret service detail, for Christ's sake. What are they gonna do, have his agents in the cells next to him?
He's gonna end up on house arrest.
Agree. That said, if by chance he were sentenced to the custody of the BOP with his Secret Service detail in adjacent cells, at least they wouldn’t have to pay market rates to Trump for the accommodations.
I mean, I understand that. And maybe Judge Canon will do that in the documents case. But it's highly likely he will end up at Zone D on the chart, and it's highly unusual to schedule a Zone D offender thank anything other than prison. So I think he does get sent to prison, if convicted in the DC case
My expectation as well, considering he doesn't have a criminal history . . . unless the judge sentencing him waits until all those other verdicts are in.
I've tried really hard to think of what I would actually want the Post to write in order to be useful to their readership on this topic. I guess the easy way out would be to quote Mitchell Epner as an expert, quote Scott Adams for balance, and then call it a day. But I sense they aspire to be better and in fact Philip Bump usually is. (For my part, when someone asks my professional opinion on what sentence a person in the news is likely to get, my answer is just "go see what Popehat says." It's a very non-intuitive system so my guess would probably be worse than useless.)
I think what I'd like, and this goes not just for the sentencing question but for a lot of questions floating around there like "is the judge going to revoke his bail," is for experts to focus a little less on predicting what will actually happen to Donald Trump in these cases and instead inform people how the typical defendant would be treated in the same situation. Many people don't pay close attention to other cases and don't have a basis for comparison, so when something surprising happens it's good for them to have a sense of "is this only happening because it's Trump" or "is this how the system operates every day and I just didn't know."
For example, the fact that a court would almost certainly give out concurrent sentences on something like the NY false-records charges, for any similarly situated defendant, that's useful to know. On the other side of things, something like the government not asking for the surrender of Trump's passport, it's useful context to know that would be a standard request for almost any other defendant.
That of course doesn't mean it's WRONG whenever Trump is treated differently but it would be very informative to the public if the press helped clarify how much the system is treating Trump differently from the typical defendant. We hear a lot of allegations from both sides about a two-tiered system of justice, and I think it is really useful if people are put in a position to have an informed opinion on whether Trump is getting special treatment, in either a harsh way or a lenient way.
I have written more than a few Guidelines computations. Rule #1 is to "show your work". I always run through every step of the Guidelines calculation, showing the number of offense level points each factor adds (or subtracts). This way, anyone who wants to make different assumptions can see how the sentence would change based on those new assumptions.
The Guidelines are slightly more user-friendly than the Internal Revenue Code, so the average person should be able to get a general idea of what sort of sentence is likely to be recommended by Probation to the Court.
I read a science article in the post many years ago, long before the Trump era.
Scientists had discovered a possible link between a gene and weight gain, in mice, and the scientist quoted in the article said, people are probably going to want to believe that this discovery means there’s a fat gene, and that’s why humans gain weight, and I just want to make clear that this conclusion is absolutely premature, it would be very wrong to conclude that.
The headline: “fat gene discovered”
Hah! Headlines are designed to attract attention, not impart the truth. In fact, since before social media was invented, newspaper headlines have long been part of the so-called attention economy social media has exploited. WaPo is a private company. As a result of the damage social media has done to newspapers, its mission now - it wasn't when Woodward and Bernstein worked for them - is first and foremost to survive as a company. (That's capitalism for ya'!)
Their first job was always survival as a company: it's hard to publish a newspaper without money. The difference now is that newspapers' traditional cash cows (advertising, both large-format and classifieds) have been commoditized. So instead of having an honest business subsidized by such a cash cow, newspapers have been forced to try to make money from their core business, which leads to all sorts of perverse incentives that negatively impact the quality of that work. And now, here we are, where there's no commonly-accepted journalistic standards and everyone has their own facts.
There are standards, nine actually (https://www.newsguardtech.com/ratings/rating-process-criteria/) accepted by many publications like The Dispatch, The Hill, USA Today, NPR and ABC News, to name a few. But to keep an audience enraged and engaged, right-wing media, like The Ben Shapiro show, and left-wing media like Daily Kos, dont subscribe to them (https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/). Those standards are disregarded on the publications with political agendas.
Dropped the NY Times, still with WaPo but holy shit, there's been WAY too much of this lately with them. Appreciate your posts. Your voice is so needed.
Democracy dies with clickbait.
I appreciate your emphasis, first, on the Post’s failings as a institution, and then on the astounding personal failure by Phil Bump--a journalist I admire. I hope we see him attempt a correction & clarification, and the Post publish it above the fold on this piece. And I hope we recognize that everyone screws up once in a while, and Bump learns from this.
Don't hope. Be active. If you are a WaPo subscriber, we should let them know we don't like such sloppy analysis. I am, and I just sent a letter to the editor:
- I’m a WaPo subscriber and I oppose Trump, but the recent piece by Philip Bump (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/03/how-much-prison-time-might-donald-trump-actually-face/) about his potential sentencing is sloppy. I agree with the argument made by Ken White about Bump’s piece: “Beware the Flood of Trump Sentencing Disinformation: It Can Come From Anywhere — Even The Washington Post”. He said:
--The Post does a lot of good, accurate work on criminal justice, including on the cases against Trump. This ain’t it. Editors, please gatekeep.
If you're a subscriber, you can do so here: https://helpcenter.washingtonpost.com/hc/en-us/articles/236004788-Send-a-letter-to-the-editor
I’m not a subscriber anymore; I cancelled when they fired Randy Balkon and used thar money to support him.
Do you mean Radley Balko? He is a great journalist.
It was a Swype error, posted without proofing. Sigh.
I’m so sorry to be distracted in the first sentence, Popehat is that young??? Man, life in the law has *not* been kind to you, you sigh like a much much older man! You sigh like my dad, who worked in federal government for 6 years and aged 20 in that time!!!
Fabulous article tho, an utter joy. You make dry and dull legal maths so fun and engaging!
This is somewhat like comparing drowning in a bathtub to drowning in the ocean, i.e. the result is the same. IMO ANY significant incarceration will likely kill him or finish him politically by silencing him. Also this entire discussion by the Ruminating Classes has a Queen of Hearts vibe. Verdict first, please.
It was nice that you included the table.
The ONLY fucking relevant infographic.
Thank you for this and all the things........ I do miss your twitter wit...... but.
You always write exceptionally well, but when you're pissed off it's just (chef's kiss)! I hope your day got better.
Love that meme, "chef's kiss." It captures what you're thinking so well.
There should be an emoji for it.
I am so happy you're doing this public service. I remember the media & cultural hysteria surrounding Manafort's sentencing years ago and the seeming incredulity at the light sentence. If the media–both traditional and social–had started from a place like this we might have had less screeching & howling at the time. We could have lowered the temperature and saved some of that outrage for when it really counted. Thanks for doing this, Ken.
Doesn't the press now DEPEND on screeching and howling and raising the temperature? Isn't that necessary to keep subscriptions up and investors happy?
I appreciate your clear and succinct explanation of how federal sentencing works. You made a complex and mysterious subject quite clear, for which we all thank you! I also found Mitch Epner's walk-thru of the sentencing process, particularly the assignment of weights, illuminating. Many of us would prefer "life + 30 years," but we know that won't happen. ANY prison time that extends past January 20, 2024, would be an invitation to a massive celebration!