{"id":5508,"date":"2017-05-20T13:48:02","date_gmt":"2017-05-20T13:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/05\/20\/the-stalinization-of-trump-derangement-syndrome-show-me-the-man-and-ill-find-you-the-crime\/"},"modified":"2017-05-20T13:48:02","modified_gmt":"2017-05-20T13:48:02","slug":"the-stalinization-of-trump-derangement-syndrome-show-me-the-man-and-ill-find-you-the-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/05\/20\/the-stalinization-of-trump-derangement-syndrome-show-me-the-man-and-ill-find-you-the-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stalinization of Trump Derangement Syndrome: “Show Me the Man, and I’ll Find You the Crime”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From a Cato Policy Report<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

. . . Alan Dershowitz discusses his time litigating cases in the old Soviet Union. He was always taken by the fact that they could prosecute anybody they wanted because some of the statutes were so vague. Dershowitz points out that this was a technique developed by Beria, the infamous sidekick of Stalin, who said, \u201cShow me the man and I\u2019ll find you the crime.\u201d That really is something that has survived the Soviet Union and has arrived in the good old USA. \u201cShow me the man,\u201d says any federal prosecutor, \u201cand I can show you the crime.\u201d This is not an exaggeration.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And now Donald J. Trump, the legally elected president of the United States, is the man.  To prosecute someone for a crime, some crime has to be alleged.  But in this case what is the crime?  Alan Dershowitz raises the question and answers it: there is no crime<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

There is no evidence that Trump or his team colluded with the Kremlin to swing the election in Trump's favor. But even if there were, such collusion would be at worst political wrong doing, not a crime.  This is not my opinion but the opinion of a distinguished Harvard law professor who is not a Trump supporter.  As Dershowitz told Tucker Carlson last night<\/a>, "I voted for Hillary Clinton very proudly."<\/span><\/p>\n

Around 3:10 Dershowitz speaks of "hacking the DNA" several times. He means: hacking the DNC, the Democrat National Committee.  Carlson failed to catch the mistake.<\/span><\/p>\n

I now want to make a point that Dershowitz did not make last night, namely, that phrases like 'hacking the election' have no definite meaning.  You can literally hack into John Podesta's e-mail account, but you can't literally hack an election.  (It has been claimed that the password he employed was 'password.' Could Podesta be that stupid or careless? I am skeptical.)  Of course, you could use 'hack an election' to mean 'influence an election,' but then you will have changed the subject.  Almost all of us, from low-level bloggers to the most august pundits, were trying to 'hack the election' in the sense of 'influence the election.' <\/span><\/p>\n

What we have here with the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller is not an inquiry into whether a crime has been committed, but a witch hunt: a search for a nonexistent crime to pin on a much-hated man.<\/span><\/p>\n

But didn't Trump obstruct justice by firing Comey?  Is that not what is maintained by such powerful intellects as Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi? Of course not, as Dershowitz points out at 3:38 ff. Trump's firing of Comey was well within the president's constitutional rights. "Under the unitary theory of the executive, the president has the right to direct the justice department." I would add that the  president fired Comey for good reason.<\/span><\/p>\n

No doubt the 'optics' were bad: the firing looked self-serving. So the haters pounced suggesting that the only reason Trump fired Comey was because Comey was about to expose criminal acts by Trump.  But that is just nonsense. Again: which criminal acts? <\/span><\/p>\n

Even if Trump was sick of Comey and wanted him out for personal motives<\/em>, he had solid impersonal legal reasons<\/em> for firing him.  They were set forth in the Rosenstein memorandum<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Trump haters appear to be committing a version of the genetic fallacy.  The psychological motivation of a claim or action is irrelevant to the question of the truth of the claim or the justifiability of the action.  Had Hillary or Bernie or Jill or Jeb! been president, each would have been justified in firing Comey.  Again, this is because of the availability of solid impersonal legal reasons for his firing.  And you can bet all of Hillary's ugly pant-suits that she would have fired him  had she won as she was 'supposed to.'<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/a>On 'Disenfranchise' and Hillary's Will to Power<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Is He Your Prophet?<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>America Was<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From a Cato Policy Report: . . . Alan Dershowitz discusses his time litigating cases in the old Soviet Union. He was always taken by the fact that they could prosecute anybody they wanted because some of the statutes were so vague. Dershowitz points out that this was a technique developed by Beria, the infamous … Continue reading “The Stalinization of Trump Derangement Syndrome: “Show Me the Man, and I’ll Find You the Crime””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,153,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law-philosophy-of","category-morality-and-legality","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}