• Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Yeah check out Alex Jones for another example. The guy is making and spending to the tune of 100k per month, and yet he’s crying poor to the courts and getting away with it.

    • Nougat@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      This is fairly old (1961), but Advice of Counsel is a legitimate defense in some cases.

      What’s at issue, especially with Trump, is that if he relies on Advice of Counsel as a defense, it’s elementary to show that many legal advisers told him “No, you can’t do that,” and he chose to listen to the advisers who said he could. IANAL, but it would seem that that personal choice of which counsel to take advice from (“This is what I want to do; I’m going to find a lawyer who tells me I can.”) would make an Advice of Counsel defense void.

    • Telorand@reddthat.com
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      2 years ago

      That’s actually the defense they’re trying to use in Trump’s NY civil fraud case, and you can use “advice of council” as a viable defense if you can prove:

      • The lawyer(s) in question did indeed provide you bad advice (putting the lawyers in jeopardy of committing a crime)
      • The other evidence doesn’t point to you as having criminal intent.
        • Telorand@reddthat.com
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          2 years ago

          It’s laughable on its face, but it’s scary that it’s not out of the realm of possibility if people like them ever come close to the levers of power again.

          The fact that I can’t dismiss that possibility out of hand is terrifying.

    • slurpeesoforion@startrek.website
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      2 years ago

      When the bottom tier no longer believes the foundation is working, they’ll start to work against it. When it collapses, the top tier will fall.

      No one wants this outside of a fringe set of people. But it may have to happen.