Members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have warned America for three years to take former President Donald Trump at his word.
Now, as Trump is poised to win the Republican presidential nomination, his criminal trials face delays that could stall them past Election Day, and his rhetoric grows increasingly authoritarian, some of those lawmakers find themselves following their own advice.
In mid-March, Trump said on social media that the committee members should be jailed. In December he vowed to be a dictator on “day one.” In August, he said he would “have no choice” but to lock up his political opponents.
“If he intends to eliminate our constitutional system and start arresting his political enemies, I guess I would be on that list,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose). “One thing I did learn on the committee is to pay attention and listen to what Trump says, because he means it.”
Lofgren added that she doesn’t yet have a plan in place to thwart potential retribution by Trump. But Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), who has long been a burr in Trump’s side, said he’s having “real-time conversations” with his staff about how to make sure he stays safe if Trump follows through on his threats.
“We’re taking this seriously, because we have to,” Schiff said. “We’ve seen this movie before … and how perilous it is to ignore what someone is saying when they say they want to be a dictator.”
Non-American just double-checking I’ve got his right…
Private citizen makes actionable credible threat to unlawfully detain legislators, legislators choose to do nothing for about half a year before slowly murmuring without specifics other than “yeah he said it” and “I think he means us”.
You OK USA? Just checking in.
Going after Trump for his crimes would set a precedent for going after the rest of them for their crimes. It's in their interests to not open that door.
Yes this is exactly why the impeachments failed. It would have been easy to take him down for the violation of the emoluments clause (profiting from their office), but nobody in power would do it because then they'd face corruption charges for it too
We are not okay. Nothing will happen to him about it, though. He can be literally court ordered to not talk shit about courtroom staff or families, then talk shit about them, and he gets nothing other than a reduced bond and an extension to pay that.
There is, unfortunately, no law against saying you're going to be a power abusing jackass. And the Republicans have decided that if he gets into office, they'll protect him from impeachment and removal no matter what. His lawyers have literally argued that the president can order assassinations of their political rivals.
So no, we're not okay.
I see. I should have my lawyers argue buying a $1,000,000 house for $0 is reasonable, that way a deal for $500,000 is perfectly reasonable. In the same way that threatening to illegally detain is a halfway compromise between nothing and threatening murder.
And it seems that imprisoning political opponents goes beyond carting down a hill in a shopping trolley which is what we here overseas associate with “jackass”, but what do I know.
wow, this trump guy seems scary 😳 i wonder what the democrats are doing to stop him
Well they are supporting a genocide in Gaza, that should help convince people to vote for them right?
The diaspora of the crusaders are their primary funding source without which they will lose for sure against the unlimited funding from Russia and the criminal billionaire oligarchy. It pays to privateer.
Not justifying it.
the funding from russia is NOT unlimited. i work day and night to ensure hillary will lose to biden, and putin is barely paying me a living wage
Change contractors! talk to your union rep about opts. Sis is making bank with ros-X
They're preparing to do what? Tut tut and issue a statement? Impeach him a third time and fail again to remove him from office? The Democrats don't believe in anything
If they actually believed Trump is the next Pinochet they'd hire someone to kill him. Or they'd go after one of the legit crimes he did rather than anything he'll just slip out of. Biden could get the national guard to burn down Mar-a-lago but he won't.
They don't actually believe in anything. They're spineless dorks who want to pretend they're saving democracy or whatever. It's all theater to these people. In fact, they probably want Trump to win so their districts will throw more money at Democratic fundraisers. What a bunch of goofy nerd libs.
Dork and nerd here. Please dont lump us in with those plutocratic assholes. They are not dorks nor nerds.
Invertebrate slime? I could call them a bunch of stuff. I mean to say the Democrats are cowards who have no beliefs except cynicism. I don't mean to catch anyone in the crossfire. If you're into coding or Gundam or something that's cool, don't worry, I don't mean you. I own an entire shelf of manga and I repair cassette tape players so I'm a dork too.
Why not call them what they are? They are capitalists. I can't think of a more apt and degregating term than that.
"We're taking this seriously"
Then why have they not arrested (and hopefully executed) Trump and most of his toadies yet? Seems like they're not that serious.
B-but then we're just as bad as them
How is arresting a fascist bad you ask? Uhhhhhh
America has executed tens or hundreds of thousands of black and brown people all over the world, without trial, for much lesser acts of alleged terrorism than publicly threatening to kidnap US legislators.
Yes. And that doesn't justify us killing their politicians. It does justify sending them to the ICC.
Why should American or Western laws or morality apply to a crime that occured overseas? If Pakistani or Iraqi law allows for the death penalty for mass murder, who is anyone to say that they're not entitled to try and execute an American politician in accordance with their laws?
In fact, who are "we" even in this situation?
The United Nations is to say. See the Declaration of Human Rights. Its a wonderful document.
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
That's not how jurisdiction or extradition works. Invoking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to block the death penalty from being applied to the politicians of a State Member that allows and applies the death penalty domestically is also a hilarious thought, even if the UN had any way to intercede to stop the death penalty from being carried out (it does not).
Either Trump is an existential threat that requires the strongest possible response, or he's just another corrupt asshole in a country dominated by others like him.
And before you go "but America doesn't do that sort of thing!", I'd encourage you to look up Fred Hampton.
I'm familiar with COINTELPRO and more recent black sites used by CPD.
My point is that we shouldn't sink to their level. We can neutralize the threat of a wanna-be dictator man child without murder. The man is sick and he deserves to be treated for his illness.
Sure, imprison, convert or kill. Those are the three ways to neutralize someone and they should at least try one.
The sentence in prison should be as long as is needed to rehabilitate them.
Prison isn't a place to "convert" or "torture" or "punish" someone. Its s place for them to get care and education until they are safe to return to society without being a risk to themselves or others.
There is no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
There are countries where prisons are used to torture and there are countries where prisons are used as rehabilitation centers. Both exist.
My point is that we should build the later, not the former.
There is no prison on Earth that does not punish people. Even the most humane institutions struggle to treat inmates as anything other than subhuman, because no matter how lofty the goals of a prison system it's still a prison. And the purpose of prisons is very clear.
My point is we should abolish prison.
Sorry, thats not true. There are definitely prisons that dont punish people. I mean they may lock you in a cage, but thats to protect you and help you, not to punish you.
Even the US prison systems (one of the worst I'm the world) is run by the Department of Corrections. At this point they may as well rename it to the Department of Torture (and also Department of Defense should be renex back to the War Department) as the name is double-speak).
We should strive to replicate prisons in nordic countries, not those of the US.
Here's what prisoners have to say:
Here, it is worth looking at the results without any comparative benchmark. Notably, around or above half of prisoners in Norway agreed with items including ‘I feel cut off from the outside world in here’ (56%) and ‘All the Prison Service cares about in this prison is my “risk factors” rather than the person I really am’ (50%); between a third and over two-fifths agreed that ‘This system treats me more like a number than a person’ (41%), ‘The level of security and control in this prison is oppressive’ (39%),‘Staff in this prison think that prisoners are morally beneath them’ (38%), and ‘I have no control over my day-to-day life in here’ (35%). Around one in five agreed with the items ‘The prison system is trying to turn me into someone I am not’ (23%) and ‘This prison is trying to mess with my head’ (22%) and or disagreed that ‘Staff in this prison do their best to help me’ (23%), ‘Staff here treat prisoners fairly’ (20%), and ‘I feel safe from being injured, bullied or threatened by other prisoners in here’ (19%); and substantial proportions disagreed with the item ‘I feel cared about most of the time in this prison’ (16%), or agreed that ‘I am not being treated as a human being in here’ (15%) and ‘Generally I fear for my physical safety’ (13%).
Most notably, as shown in Table 2, just under a quarter of prisoners in Norway agreed with the statements ‘My experience in this prison is painful’, ‘This prison is trying to take away my self-respect’ and ‘My treatment in this prison is humiliating’; just under a third agreed that ‘This prison is doing harm to me’; and well over half agreed that ‘My time in this prison feels very much like a punishment’. Overall, then, while the results are indisputably more positive in Norway than in England & Wales—supporting the claim that Norwegian penality is more humane in relative terms—there is no doubt that, in Norway, pain and suffering are still integral to the prisoner experience. In the following sections, we move on from these general results to discuss more specific findings that are particularly germane to debates about Nordic exceptionalism.
All prisons are prisons. You have a rosey imagined image of the Nordic model, probably because you're from a nightmare country that openly and gleefully tortures prisoners (don't worry, I am too), but the reality is that all prisons are punishment. The purpose of a system is what it does. We should strive for a world without prisons.
Yes. And that's not punishment.
If someone is mentally not healthy and a risk to themselves or others, you're going to have to do uncomfortable things to them. But the point is that they are given access to resources to be rehabilitated while they're in prison.
I dont know about Norway or Denmark or Iceland. Normally I refer to Finland.
I wasn't in a Finish prison, but I have a friend who was. He spent most of his time in school. As in, he left the prison during the day to attend Uni. A few times a year a guard would come to his class and make sure he was there. Of course it was a limit to his freedom, but he was given resources.
Finland isn't perfect either, and he never should have gone to prison to start with. But their prisons are how prisons should be. They exist to help people, not to make them suffer.
Surely, if your friend could leave the prison to attend school, then the prison itself wasn't necessary! What purpose did that serve other than to alienate and isolate and punish? It's "not perfect" because it can't be, the suffering is the point and all the Nordic model does is make their suffering productive.
Prisons should not be. We don't need Nordic prisons, we need prison abolition.
We don't need prisons to provide free beds, free food, or free therapy.
He got a free bed, free food, and the prison had facilities for therapy.
This prison is a good thing.
We should strive to replicate prisons in nordic countries
This is totally a bit
I very much do not give a shit whether Trump is rehabilitated or not, he's an existential danger to many groups of people, if somebody decides to put a bullet in his head I'm not gonna cry over it.
The US is the most violent and one of the most classist societies in the world. Slavery is still legal in US prisons.
Its hardly a benchmark.
Those three methods are taken from the FBI suppressing Black revolutionary thought. I'm this model, prisons are absolutely places to torture, punish and convert people.
Doesn't treason carry the death penalty? If they seriously think he's going to become a dictator and end democracy, he should be killed. The US government has had 0 problem doing it to leaders of other countries who did far less; why should Trump get special treatment? Just because he's a rich white guy? Hell, they've even set precedent under Obama that it's legal to drone strike US citizens on foreign soil for being terrorists. Get him next time he leaves the country.
Can we instead join the ranks of most countries and not do capital punishment?
Just disqualify him from becoming a public servant, and lock the man in a nice prison with access to educational programs and other social services. He needs a good history teacher and therapist.
Also, yes, stop all funding to the military and send the generals and their henchmen to the ICC to see if they should receive the same treatment.
He needs a good history teacher and therapist.
Absolute lib shit lmao. The man is 77 years old and has never faced consequences for his actions in his entire life. That's who he is. He's not going to suddenly reverse his entire personality because you made him talk with a therapist for a couple hours.
Like I understand the desire for rehabilitation, but some people are just fucked.
At any rate he deserves it for his war crimes alone.
A couple hours? He's very sick. I think he would need to see a therapist and study history every day for at least 20 years...
Yes, he should be put in a reeducation camp. But we don't have one of those, do we?
Look, it'd be great to abolish the death penalty, the army, and the current version of the government in favor of something more equitable and humane. But that's not the world we live in. Last year cops killed over 1000 people. In the america of today, under the laws that exist today, why should Trump not be killed?
I dont hear an argument for why we can't lock them all up in a nice facility with access to educational programs and other social services to help them be rehabilitated.
Trump and most police need a lot of therapy and a proper education about US and world history.
Empty all of the prisons of folks charged with victimless "crimes" and you have plenty of space for white collar criminals and 99% of the police officers
hey, i can tell you're a good faith user and that's really great, we need more of those. thank you for that.
nobody is saying that what you're arguing for isn't a good thing, most people on hexbear would agree. their point is we can't just have that for rich assholes like trump, we should have that for everyone, and that's what should be happening. but the Democrats aren't going to do that. so to deal with him, at least for now, treat him like they do everyone who's jailed in america
hey, i can tell you're a good faith user
Are they? They seem like a bit
None of what you advocate can happen without revolution, and as a certain philosopher and activist said, “a revolution is not a dinner party.” It will be violent, and many people will die.
You can either have that, or you can have the Democrats/Republicans pretending to be the party of civility while they commit genocide. No ruling class in history has ever given up power peacefully.
Are you suggesting that a state built on ongoing genocide and imperialism like Canada, or a backward, semi-colonial, semi-feudal country like India, are models that anyone in their right mind should follow?
Thete was plenty of violence in the struggle for Indian independence as well. Libs just only think of Ghandi
Most white collar crime is just stuff like embezzlement and causes less harm than normal crime.
Aren't most people convicted in the US charged with "victimless crimes"?
Sorry, but white collar criminals embezzling from pension funds and doing mortgage lending fraud causes immense harm. Possessing a specific species of flowers doesnt do harm.
No, most people imprisoned in the US are charged with victim-having violent crime (as of 2020). The order goes violent crimes(650k), property crime(150k), drug crimes(130k, and public order crimes(100k). This data is going off state prisoners so it will bias towards long sentences, but not by a factor of six.
Looking at incidents (not arrests or convictions) reported by police over the past decade, you see violent crime decrease but property crime increase. For the past decade there have been 30m property crime incidents, 6m drug crime incidents and 4m violent crime incidents.
Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), who has long been a burr in Trump’s side, said he’s having “real-time conversations” with his staff about how to make sure he stays safe
Bro will absolutely let himself be jailed under belief that the system works and everything will turn out okay lmao
LMAO I love how all the libs who've been salivating at the idea that Trump might get jailed are now appalled at the idea that Trump would jail his opponents. This is what happens when you start weaponizing your legal system. And before you come here to tell me that the charges against Tump are totally legitimate, I guarantee you that when Trump goes after his opponents, he'll have no trouble finding dirt on them because all US politicians are corrupt as fuck.
Oh no the political opponent we're trying to jail is threatening to jail us, his political opponents!
Trump himself isn’t going to do anything.
Who would be the ones arresting them.
Barron and Eric showing up in brown shirts to haul Dems away would be funny.
“We’re taking this seriously, because we have to,” Schiff said. “We’ve seen this movie before … and how perilous it is to ignore what someone is saying when they say they want to be a dictator.”
They just have a bunch of Trump merch in hidden safes in their offices... "We'll just blend in! Tell them we were always one of them! Its a fool-proof plan!"
It is good to see that people are finally talking about this outside of twitter.
