Across the internet I have seen the sentiment:
“Donald Trump should not get to pick the next Supreme Court Justice because he is an indicted co-conspirator to… something.”
Let me remind you of something even Slate has touched on.
In a bid to make prosecutors more accountable for their actions, Chief Judge Sol Wachtler has proposed that the state scrap the grand jury system of bringing criminal indictments.
Wachtler, who became the state’s top judge earlier this month, said district attorneys now have so much influence on grand juries that “by and large” they could get them to “indict a ham sandwich.”
It’s just too easy for a prosecutor to get an indictment.
There is also wide latitude in the amount of circumstantial evidence it takes to prove a conspiracy.
Given the unprecedented latitude Muller seems to have in his prosecutorial discretion, that Trump wasn’t indicted means that either Mueller is a secret Trump backer or Trump is less culpable than the average ham sandwich in DC.
I’m pretty sure that by Federal standards of prosecutorial discretion, I’m an indicted co-conspirator to… something.
All this is, is further proof that “innocent until proven guilty” is one of the first bulwarks against tyranny that is being thrown out in the name of politics.
“indicted co-conspirator” is a blatant lie. “unindicted” would at least have some faint connection to truth. But the actually correct answer is there is only one connection — when Cohen pled guilty to something that isn’t a crime, and in the process of making that plea blamed it on Trump. I still don’t know if Lanny Davis was being very clever, or stupid, or whether he was merely throwing Cohen under the bus for the benefit of his actual client (the DNC).