This lawyer's "crime"? Merely being present at a meeting, and presumably helping to give legal advice. Because of that, she was accused by authorities in the state of being a criminal "accessory" to the Trump campaign team's attempt to appoint false electors representing the state of Georgia for the Presidential election. This seems like another attempt to go after anyone who supported Trump with a vengeance. Perhaps I am wrong, but this is my understanding from what I am reading in the article, and from what I was able to pull up in a few other places. First of all, it should be pointed out that even though this team was sending people to falsely and fraudulently claim they were the appointed electors from the state of Georgia, there is a really no way this was ever going to fool anyone. It's not that difficult to determine who the actual electors are from the relevant state officials who are in charge of appointing them. Rather, probably this was all to give the Vice President an excuse to delay counting the votes for the electors, in order to give states time to possibly change their minds. (A strategy that, historically, Democrats used successfully in the state of Hawaii in 1960, although in that case it wouldn't have ended up changing the outcome of the national election) It can also be pointed out that the plan to send the false electors to try to cast votes did not end up happening, although some preemptive official papers were signed to prepare for the plan, in which the individuals falsely made the claim to be appointed electors. Many Democrats have it in their mind that this was a "plot" for Trump to fraudulently be able to win the election and be reelected as President. Whether they actually believe it, or whether they just want to convince themselves to believe it to be able to have another accusation against Trump, whom they hate. An irony is that Trump's plan was an attempt to expose suspected fraud by Democrats, by buying time and delaying the final election decision. But this lawyer did not actually take any actions to send those false electors. "The evidence surrounding her plea reflects that she aided and abetted the false statements at issue through her presence at the Georgia Senate Subcommittee meeting but did not otherwise contribute to drafting or preparing the false statements," the settlement concerning said, concerning the suspension of her law license in Colorado. "Charging documents also noted Ellis's various communications and meetings with lawmakers in other key swing states." This is an example of how the justice system pushes people to apologize and act like they did something wrong, even if that person did not do something wrong, or did not actually do something illegal. They have to put on a show like they are sorry because they fear harsher punishment if they do not. Jenna Ellis made a plea agreement with prosecutors Georgia, pleading guilty to one count of "aiding and abetting false statements and writings", and was then sentenced to five years of probation, 100 hours of community service and ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution and write a letter of apology to Georgia citizens. It should be pointed out that a person pleading guilty does not mean they are guilty. (The system can intimidate and coerce defendants to plead guilty, because they are afraid the punishment will be much harsher if they do not plead guilty, and there is often good reason to think so) In exchange for pleading guilty, the prosecutor dropped the charges of "conspiracy" (under the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law that carries potentially harsh penalties) and "soliciting a public officer to violate their oath". In Colorado, Jenna Ellis reached an agreement with authorities for her license to practice law to be suspended for three years. She must file a petition if she wants to reinstate her Colorado law license. Former Trump attorney has Colorado law license suspended for attempting to overturn 2020 election results, Lauren Irwin, The Hill, May 28, 2024 Of course the media is gloating that she was convicted and had her law license suspended, and that she is now expressing apology, but I would be curious if anyone could explain exactly and precisely what she did wrong, or what she did that was illegal. And I mean without resorting to vague characterizations and overgeneralizations. I would say that it is NOT clear and obvious how what she did is wrong or illegal. At the very least, this case is a legal grey zone.
Maybe the legal system is just pushing her to act like she did, to avoid the wrath of her persecutors who have the legal power to put her in prison. Or maybe she is (like so many women) just emotional and weak-willed, and has allowed herself to be gaslighted by the court into now believing what she did was so wrong. When people have power over you and you are at their mercy, especially when they are in an official position of power, there is a tendency to start believing what they say, and buy into their perspective of reality. (a little analogous to Stockholm syndrome) It is true that she was involved with a group that was pushing a lie (even though a lie that they did not actually expect anyone to truly believe, realistically) for strategic political reasons. So based off of that, she has some basis to believe what she did was "wrong". Especially if it is now in her self-interest to convince herself that it was wrong, to be able to more genuinely show repentance. In other words, if she fell under the Trump cult spell before, she has now fallen under the spell of the judges and prosecutors against her.
It's like driving after you've drunk. You lose perception of reality. Same with drugs. The only solution is to observe what happens to others and not join the cult (get behind the steering wheel) in the first place.
I think this woman is just weak-willed, and doesn't have a strong sense of independent logic to be able to firmly make up her mind and hold standfast to absolute truth. But that seems to be true for a lot of people these days. The details of reality can be complex, and human psychology often tends to want to find simplified perspectives. Was she part of heroic effort to help Trump hold off election fraud committed by Democrats, or did she conspire as part of plot to lie and cheat in the election? Should what she actually did be viewed as illegal? Was it wrong? People can take different perspectives on that. I would say that the law does not really clearly say that what this woman did was illegal. But that did not stop her from being punished and pushed into pleading guilty and apologizing. I think it does demonstrate that things in the justice system are not black and white. I do find it concerning that she could be criminally charged only for attending a group meeting and giving legal advice, if that is all she really did (which it sounds like from all the articles I am reading about this). Of course there are many Democrats who want to represent that as a crime. Let's think about it. To simplify, she was part of a group that was preparing to send some people to lie about being state electors to fraudulently cast votes. Even though the truth about those people not being state electors would have been obvious to everyone (probably it was just a political-legal maneuver), and even though those people did not end up trying to the cast the votes, and even though this individual woman did not actually do anything herself to motivate or cause those people to do that.
Giving legal advice, and simply being present at the meetings in case any advice special advice was needed. The "lie", "false statements" and fraudulent electors was not really "fraud" in the sense that the crime of fraud requires people to be tricked and deceived. But in this case it would have been clear to everyone what was actually going on, and relevant officials in charge would have known that the names of the individuals representing themselves as Georgia electors were not the names of the electors who had been officially appointed. This was all just to put on legal pretense so the Vice President could have a flimsy excuse to delay the official count of Electoral College votes, citing supposed "ambiguity" in determining who the true state electors were. And the fake electors never actually ended up deciding to try to cast a vote in the Electoral College, because the Vice President made it clear that he was not going to along with it. So rather only false statements were submitted on official forms to prepare for the fake electors to be admitted to the Electoral College, a plan that never ended up happening. Democrats are trying to present this as a plot to commit fraud and overturn the election, but even if the Vice President had declared Trump to be the winner, there is no way that Congress was going to certify Trump as the winner, and it would still be pretty clear from a Constitutional perspective that Trump was not the President. It's not really possible to commit "fraud" in the Electoral College the same way that fraud could be carried out in a general election. Everyone can see what the true votes should have been.
Was it really a "plot to steal the election"? Many Democrats seem to think or claim so. But as I explained, FreshAir, it's not really so simple as that. The electoral college is not an ordinary general election, so "stealing" it is not the same type of fraud that would be in a normal election. The election wouldn't actually be stolen until officials with power chose to recognize this obvious fraudulent election and permanently installed the candidate who did not rightfully win. Therefore it could be argued that the fraud itself is not really the stealing. Two separate components. It also did not really "fail", but rather they all chose not to go through with the plan, because the Vice President was not on board and was unable to be convinced. What you are actually doing, FreshAir, is using vague language that carries implicit meaning, but the meaning of your words is not true. It can also be pointed out there are two components, two levels, in the U.S. Presidential Election system. The general elections in individual states, and then the Electoral College. It could hypothetically be possible for a candidate to be the rightful deserving winner at one level, but the fraudulent winner at the other level. And what if the plot was actually just to delay the final election, rather than to steal it? Which probably was the case. It's not "stealing" if states can be convinced to change their mind and switch out their electors. But let's suppose, just for the sake of argument, that it were a "plot to steal the election", simple as that. Even if that were the case, what crime did this lawyer actually commit? I think it could be argued that she did not contribute to the illegal aspects of the plot. This idea that lawyers can be criminally charged for giving legal advice seems ludicrous and asinine to me. Or even if she could be charged with a crime for standing by, ready to give legal-related advice.
That is your opinion and assessment. Whereas in the opinion and assessment of this team, they believed (or had convinced themselves) that what they were doing was restoring the will of the voters. The obvious fraud would buy some time and help allow the possibility that the states might reassess the count of votes in the general election. The election is not finally over until the Electoral College casts their votes and the vote counts are recognized and certified. It is theoretically possible for the Electoral College to vote one way, and then have some of the electors replaced by the states that sent them, and then vote another way. It could be said that this team believed that committing this fraud was (somewhat ironically) the only way they believed that the actual "will of the voters" could be discovered. Because it takes time to do an investigation of the public votes in the general election. Probably even more time to convince state legislatures to intervene, if you're trying to get them to change the state's votes in the Electoral College.
Trump lawyers who have plead guilty and or been disbarred include:- Michael Cohen Jenna Ellis Sydney Powell Kenneth Chesebro Rudy Giuliani Roy Cohn Lin Wood John Eastman https://www.justsecurity.org/90509/...ment-how-should-the-legal-profession-respond/ Another 17 have been sanctioned https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-lawyers-sanctioned-by-courts-election-lawsuits-2022-12 The common issue here was :- being a lawyer for trump
Are you trying to argue that Democrat officials have launched attacks to try to take down all Trump's former lawyers? Because I think if we look at each of those cases, the charges were rather questionable and did not have the most solid basis, given the situations and evidence. I tried to describe one of the cases here: The problem with the case against Cohen (Law & Justice, Aug 22, 2018 )
You abbreviated my post and if you had looked at the links it is up around 30 lawyers plus people like Wiesselberg plus all those deluded sods who were involved in the “fake elector schemes plus all those caught up in January 6. At some point justice demands that the person at the root cause of this sees justice
Why, do you think, that justice demands the people in this plot be punished? They were preparing to do something, but did not actually end up deciding to do it. And even if they had carried out their plan, their fraud, it would have been pretty obvious that those people were not real electors. So it's not really like the plot would have misled or deceived anyone. It would only have given other officials a flimsy legal excuse to delay certifying the election. Some Democrats believe this was going to be used as an excuse to fraudulently reelect Trump as president again, but as I explained before, that is unlikely. I think it is a lot more likely there were just trying to use it as a tactic to delay, because they believed there was fraud on the other side and they wanted extra time to be able to investigate it and reverse things.
'Pro-Trump defamation attorney Lin Wood must pay former law partners $4.5 million after defaming them as 'criminal' extortionists on social media" Source: Law and Crime 'Pro-Donald Trump defamation attorney L. Lin Wood must pay three of his former law partners a combined $4.5 million after he was found liable for defaming them on social media, a jury on Friday determined. In March, a federal judge ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor on a motion for summary judgment — finding Wood liable but leaving the matter and amount of damages up to jurors in the Northern District of Georgia. After a two-phase trial that lasted eight days with eight people sitting in judgment, the jury decided on actual damages of $3.75 million and concomitant litigation expenses of $750,000.' Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profil...em-as-criminal-extortionists-on-social-media/
Peopl People are not made to do bad things-they choose to do bad things. The person you talk of may have been caught up in the Trump poison but they chose to go along with it just as Nazi supporters did or supporters of Mussolini or any other dictator-they went along with it when they saw personal benefit in it. Your comment is incorrect in that it ignores all Americans who from the get go made the decision not to become maggits in the Trump personality cult. For example former VP Pence did refuse to act illegally as a dupe for Trump at the end but it will not erase the 4 years he sat their as an enabler and mindless puppet of Trump and never spoke out or resigned. Pence stayed there and chose to be VP ignoring all Trump's lies which he was well aware of before accepting the VP position because of the personal benefit he thought being VP gave him, i.e., becoming President if Trump died or resigned and believing it would give him an advantage as a Presidential candidate if Trump lost the election. Pence's support of Trump doesn't vanish anymore than Rudolph Hess's support of Hitler did just because Hess flew to England to supposedly ask for peace. The Nuremberg trials taught us simply claiming you followed orders mindlessly is not and will never be an excuse. We all make choices. Trying to blame that on others we expect from immature children or manipulative sociopaths NOT adults UNLESS they lack mental capacity to formulate decisions or have been given intoxicants without their knowledge. Responsibility for what we choose begins and ends with us as individuals. All Trump supporters who may now or later on say "I was brainwashed" are part of what has fueled Trump's base of support. They chose to have Trump to exploit their fears, ignorance. They know his formula is to blame others.
