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Trump says US has "captured" Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife in "large scale strike" - latest (www.bbc.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
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[–] 21 points 10 months ago (18 children)

Why take him alive? Aren't they essentially going to have to put together an embarrassing kangaroo court now? Do we think they are going to try and go the secret military tribunal route?

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  • [–] 14 points 10 months ago (15 children)

    Trump is the reality TV president, I wouldn't be surprised if he did it like a TV court drama.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (14 children)

    How will they neutralize all the procedural protections for defendants in the US courts and prevent Maduro from turning it into a mockery of itself?

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (9 children)

    Trump has shown a tendency to just ignore procedure and just do whatever he wants. The only reason he wouldn't be able to do that is if he was opposed, but who is going to oppose it? There's a few Democrats, but not even a majority of the electeds. I doubt there's a single Republican that'd oppose. Would the Supreme Court stop him?

    I think he can make this as big and stupid as he wants, and unless the masses protest against it he'll get away with it.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (8 children)

    So that's the thing that's most confusing to me, of all the powers and systems and institutions in the US, the only one that has ever meaningfully constrained Trump at all is the courts. (Of course I grant that they have given him completely unprecedented leeway and rolled over in many many instances)

    If the Trump DOJ brings charges in federal court, which they seem to be signaling is their plan, then then Maduro will have a right to a lawyer, the right to discovery, the right to cross-examine witnesses, the right to appeal....

    I guess they could try and have it both ways? Instead of sovereign immunity meaning that the US courts have no jurisdiction whatsoever, try to use sovereign immunity as a justification for why Maduro doesn't get defendant rights? It all seems super messy and like Trump and his clatch of idiots are marching down a line of rakes

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (7 children)

    The lower courts can meaningfully delay Trump, but that lasts until it reaches the Supreme Court. The rigged 6-3 fascist Court almost always either rules in his favor, or delays an official ruling to let him get away with whatever he's doing.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (6 children)

    They will have to really tie themselves in knots to put aside the absolutely foundational legal doctrine of sovereign immunity. If any court would though, it's these fuckers.

    I still don't see how they avoid a years-long circus in the lower courts

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    They can also fast-track cases from the lower courts to accelerate them to the Supreme Court, and have done so. Another trick they have is to make an interim ruling without issuing a majority opinion through the so-called "shadow docket". Then they can have the whole trial while the circus in the lower courts plays itself out. He could be in prison for years before they rule it unconstitutional.

    Assuming Trump doesn't push for public execution.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (4 children)

    Kind of a turning point moment IMO

    Does Trump have his final victory over "The rule of law" and bulldoze his way to a grand spectacle execution in a stadium?

    Or will this enterprise be mired in procedure and their own incompetence until the whole thing falls apart?

    I think my prediction is more towards the latter, but I think both ends of the spectrum are within the realm of possibility

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (3 children)

    I'm 60/40 thinking Trump is going to win here, because there's no one to actually oppose him. In other cases where he's tied up in court it's because there's political opposition. Who opposes this? A few progressives? It's almost a bipartisan consensus.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)

    I think that's what makes it such a perfect test case.

    All the politics and all the neocons and all the propaganda versus international law older than the nation itself

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (3 children)

    As if they even care about this. This is case with no precedent, they will just use some lip service patriot act shit to neutralise all protections and then torture him and use his wife as hostage before the trial. Of course they could flop everything spectacularly out of sheer incompetence and thoughtlessness on their part, but i wouldn't count, and even if, they can always murder him like Milosevic.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    People have mentioned torture of Maduro or his wife in other threads and I do agree that a tortured confession would be an easy way out of this for them. The thing that gives me pause is that a cartoon villain always treats a named antagonist with kid gloves, which is how Trump seems to behave in my opinion. If we see Maduro fight the charges versus giving up relatively soon with a confession we should know which way it went

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Trump is not a cartoon villain, and the letter agencies thugs are certainly not cartoon villains, they are real ones, and on the forefront of torture enhanced interrogation techniques research.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    Oh yes the deep state / neocons are pure evil. Trump is evil too, but he has all these weird hang-ups and hesitations when he "should" be decisive. I think it's some weird TV image thing that he himself doesn't even understand. There's nothing I would put past these people but they also keep fucking up

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