Rethinking the New York election fraud case, again

I do not understand the New York state lawsuit against Trump for election fraud in connection with the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, or whatever the crime(s) is called. This is the clearest explanation I have seen so far. 

Writing for Lawfare, Quinta Jurecic laid out the legal reasoning behind prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s lawsuit based on opening arguments and other information made publicly available so far. This summarizes most of her analysis:

Charting the Legal Theory Behind People v. Trump

The mechanics of the case as District Attorney Alvin Bragg is prosecuting it

Bragg had charged Trump under New York Penal Law § 175.10, falsifying business records in the first degree. The falsification of business records alone is a misdemeanor under § 175.05—but Bragg had boosted the charge to a felony by alleging that Trump fudged the records with the “intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof.” But what other crime? The indictment didn’t say.

Perhaps the charges against Trump are difficult to follow in part because the underlying facts are so byzantine. The 34 counts against Trump—all under § 175.10—each correspond to a business record allegedly falsified in service of covering up Trump’s link to the hush money payment provided to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actor and director, in October 2016. That month—at Trump’s instruction, Bragg argues—Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to remain silent about a past sexual encounter with Trump. The Trump Organization then paid Cohen back in increments from February through December 2017, with Cohen submitting invoices fraudulently labeled as charges for legal services under a retainer. The “business records” at issue in the indictment comprise Cohen’s invoices, the checks cut to repay him, and the internal records kept by the Trump Organization of these transactions—all of which were mislabeled, Bragg argues, to conceal the nature of the repayments.

So those are the business records. What about the “object crime”—that is, the crime that Trump allegedly intended to commit or conceal in such a way as to transform the underlying misdemeanor offense into a felony?

If you’re looking for the clearest statement of Bragg’s legal theory, you can find it in a November 2023 court filing opposing Trump’s motion to dismiss the case, along with Merchan’s ruling on that motion. Notably, in that ruling, Merchan clarified that § 175.10 “does not require that the ‘other crime’ actually be committed”—“all that is required is that defendant … acted with a conscious aim and objective to commit another crime.”

 

Tax Fraud (looks like the weakest charge to me)

The potential tax fraud arises from the particular method by which the Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen for his payments to Daniels. Bragg alleges that “defendant reimbursed Cohen twice the amount he was owed for the payoff so Cohen could characterize the payments as income on his tax returns and still be left whole after paying approximately 50% in income taxes.” Here, Bragg points to federal, state, and local prohibitions on providing knowingly incorrect tax information.

The twist here is that because Cohen reported his income as greater than it actually was, he paid more in taxes, rather than less—which is probably not what most people have in mind when they think of tax fraud. On this point, Bragg argues that “[u]nder New York law, criminal tax fraud in the fifth degree does not require financial injury to the state” and that “[f]ederal tax law also imposes criminal liability in instances that do not involve underpayment of taxes.” Merchan seems to have been convinced, rejecting Trump’s argument “that the alleged New York State tax violation is of no consequence because the State of New York did not suffer any financial harm.” He does not explain further, simply writing, “This argument does not require further analysis.”

Federal Election Law (intermediate strength charge?)

More central to Bragg’s legal theory are violations of federal election law under FECA (Federal Election Campaign Act). 

Bragg is arguing that Trump falsified the Trump Organization’s business records with the intent to criminally violate FECA. Ruling on Trump’s motion in limine, Merchan held that Bragg may not point to Cohen’s guilty plea or the Justice Department or FEC agreements with AMI as themselves evidence of Trump’s guilt, but that the district attorney may offer “testimony about the underlying facts … provided the proper foundation is laid.”

Trump has leveled multiple legal challenges against Bragg’s use of FECA as an object offense, arguing in his motion to dismiss that a violation of federal law can’t serve as the “other crime” under § 175.10. Merchan, however, held it could. Trump also argued that FECA preempts state law and thus rules out prosecution under § 175.10 with FECA as the object offense. Merchan rejected this argument as well, relying on a ruling last July to that effect by Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in the context of rejecting Trump’s attempt to remove this case to federal court.

New York Election Law (the strongest charge?)

The final potential object offense, and the one that seems to bear the most weight in Bragg’s presentation of the case so far: New York Election Law § 17-152, a misdemeanor offense that prohibits “conspir[ing] to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.” Trump has sought to challenge Bragg’s use of this statute as well, arguing that it applies only to state and local elections, rather than presidential elections—which Merchan rejected. The former president likewise argued in federal court that FECA preempts § 17-152 in federal elections, but Judge Hellerstein held this to be “without merit.”

During opening statements on April 22, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo emphasized the role of § 17-152 in the district attorney’s case, declaring, “This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected.” Senior Trial Counsel Joshua Steinglass further underlined the importance of the statute the following day, describing § 17-152 as “the primary crime that we have alleged” as an object offense. “The entire case is predicated on the idea that there was a conspiracy to influence the election in 2016,” Steinglass said.

But § 17-152 requires that a conspiracy be carried out by “unlawful means”—so what “unlawful means” is Bragg alleging? Here, the legal theory loops back around to point to the other three potential object offenses: FECA violations, tax fraud, and AMI’s and Cohen’s misdemeanor falsifications of business records under § 175.05. (Note that while Merchan ruled out these third-party § 175.05 violations as object offenses for Trump’s violation of § 175.10, they’re still available to Bragg as a means by which to get to § 17-152.) Again, Bragg sets this out in his opposition to Trump’s motion to dismiss. Colangelo also gestured at this during his opening statement, describing the conspiracy as carried out “through illegal expenditures … using doctored corporate records and bank forms to conceal those payments along the way.”

Understanding this emphasizes the importance of the underlying FECA violations to Bragg’s case. The wrongdoing under federal campaign finance law supports two out of three remaining object offenses. Seen in a certain light, that makes it all the stranger that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York itself never brought federal charges against Trump under FECA—a decision for which there has never been a public explanation.
 

Summing It All Up

Let’s return to our chart for a moment. Once we incorporate the “unlawful means” needed to reach the § 17-152 object offense, it looks like this:

Clear as mud?

In all seriousness, what this deep dive has hopefully shown is that Bragg’s legal theory is genuinely tangled—though the district attorney’s office is doing its best to clarify matters. The next few weeks will show whether he’s able to walk the jury through it.

Well, that clears things up quite a lot? Not sure. But at least I’m now confident that I do not understand how to weigh various bits of evidence as the jury will see it in view of the underlying legal arguments that Bragg is asserting. It all boils down to how well Bragg can explain himself to the jury and whether Trump can sow enough confusion with at least one juror to avoid legal liability. 

Yup, clear as mud.

What about the rule of law?

This again raises the matter of laws being inadequate to deal with sophisticated white collar criminals like Trump. I keep seeing what looks to me to be major holes in both federal and state laws that allow smart criminals like Trump to avoid legal liability for their activities. It is starting to look to me like more actions that were intended to be illegal fall under various exceptions, ambiguities and loopholes than are found to incur legal liability or guilt. It’s like the exceptions and loopholes have swallowed up most of the actions that were supposed to trigger convictions for civil liability or criminal guilt.

No wonder this is costing DJT millions to defend against. A non-rich person could never mount the defenses that rich people like Trump can.

Global warming updates; New economic loss estimate; US policy if DJT is re-elected

Science Daily reports: 

Even if CO2 emissions were to be drastically cut down starting today, the world economy is already committed to an income reduction of 19% until 2050 due to climate change, a new study finds. These damages are six times larger than the mitigation costs needed to limit global warming to two degrees. Based on empirical data from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years, scientists assessed future impacts of changing climatic conditions on economic growth and their persistence.

"Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, with South Asia and Africa being most strongly affected. These are caused by the impact of climate change on various aspects that are relevant for economic growth such as agricultural yields, labour productivity or infrastructure," says PIK scientist and first author of the study Maximilian Kotz. Overall, global annual damages are estimated to be at 38 trillion dollars, with a likely range of 19-59 trillion dollars in 2050. These damages mainly result from rising temperatures but also from changes in rainfall and temperature variability. Accounting for other weather extremes such as storms or wildfires could further raise them.

"Our analysis shows that climate change will cause massive economic damages within the next 25 years in almost all countries around the world, also in highly-developed ones such as Germany, France and the United States," says PIK scientist Leonie Wenz who led the study.  

To date, global projections of economic damages caused by climate change typically focus on national impacts from average annual temperatures over long-time horizons. By including the latest empirical findings from climate impacts on economic growth in more than 1,600 subnational regions worldwide over the past 40 years and by focusing on the next 26 years, the researchers were able to project sub-national damages from temperature and rainfall changes in great detail across time and space all the while reducing the large uncertainties associated with long-term projections.

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The NYT reports (not paywalled) about what DJT plans to do if he gets re-elected:

Five Major Climate Policies Trump Would Probably Reverse if Elected

He has called for increased oil production and said that electric vehicles will result in an ‘assassination’ of jobs

Former President Donald J. Trump has vowed to “cancel” President Biden’s policies for cutting pollution from fossil-fuel-burning power plants, “terminate” efforts to encourage electric vehicles, and “develop the liquid gold that is right under our feet” by promoting oil and gas.

When he was president, Mr. Trump reversed more than 100 environmental protections put in place by the Obama administration. Mr. Biden has in turn reversed much of Mr. Trump’s agenda.

But climate advocates argue a second Trump term would be far more damaging than his first, because the window to keep rising global temperatures to relatively safe levels is rapidly closing.

“It would become an all-out assault on any possible progress on climate change,” said Pete Maysmith, the senior vice president of campaigns at the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group.

Senior Republicans don’t necessarily disagree. Michael McKenna, who worked in the Trump White House and is supporting Mr. Trump’s bid for a second term, said the approach to climate change would likely be one of “indifference.”

“I doubt very seriously we’re going to spend any time working on it,” Mr. McKenna said. To the contrary, he said, the Biden administration’s climate regulations would be “in trouble.”  

Mr. Trump’s likely policies would add four billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, according to a study by Carbon Brief, a climate analysis site.

Mr. McKenna needs to get his dark free speech points of falsehood straight. The radical right Republican climate agenda cannot be called one of “indifference” if the Biden administration’s climate regulations would be “in trouble.” One could call that an aggressive, pro-global warming climate agenda.

Pro-global warming Republicans plan to drop regulations on (i) coal and gas power plants, (ii) gut auto emissions standards, (iii) gut as much of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act as possible, killing as many solar, wind and electric car incentives as possible, (iv) incentivize unrestricted oil and gas drilling, and (v) walking away from international climate agreements to try to reduce global warming.

That is definitely not a climate agenda of indifference.

How a Columbia U student sees the Gaza war protests

Jonathan Ben-Menachem, a PhD student at Columbia U, wrote a long essay, arguing that the protests against the Gaza war are being badly distorted and described as acts of antisemitism, which he claims is untrue:

I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Don’t Believe What You’re Being 

Told About ‘Campus Antisemitism’

Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety

“Reprehensible and dangerous.” “Terrorist sympathizers.” “It’s not 1938 Berlin. It’s 2024, Columbia University, NYC.”

The White House, Congressional Republicans, and cable news talking heads would have you believe that the Columbia University campus has devolved into a hotbed of antisemitic violence – but the reality on the ground is very different. As a Jewish student at Columbia, it depresses me that I have to correct the record and explain what the real risk to our safety looks like. I still can't quite believe how the events on campus over the past few days have been so cynically and hysterically misrepresented by the media and by our elected representatives.

Last week, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, representing more than 100 student organizations, including Jewish groups, organized the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, a peaceful campus protest in solidarity with Palestine. CUAD was reactivated after the university suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in the fall. On Wednesday morning, hundreds of students camped out on Columbia’s South Lawn. They vowed to stay put until the university divests from companies that profit from their ties to Israel. Protesters prayed, chanted, ate pizza, and condemned the university’s complicity in Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Though counter-protesters waved Israeli flags near the encampment, the campus remained largely calm from my vantage point.

Columbia responded by imposing a miniature police state. Just over a day after the encampment was formed, university President Minouche Shafik asked and authorized the New York Police Department to clear the lawn and load 108 students – including a number of Jewish students – onto Department of Corrections buses to be held at NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. One Jewish student told me that she and her fellow protesters were restrained in zip-tie handcuffs for eight hours and held in cells where they shared a toilet without privacy. The NYPD chief of patrol John Chell later told the Columbia Spectator that “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”

Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers, who have levied charges of antisemitism and violence against Jewish students, are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety. I saw politicians compare student organizers to neo-Nazis and call for a National Guard deployment, apparently ignorant of the lives lost at Kent State and in Charlottesville, and with very little pushback from national media. This is a repulsive form of self-aggrandizement that I can only assume is intended to preserve relationships with influential donors. Calls to more heavily police our campus actively endanger Jewish students, and threaten the regular operations of the university far more gravely than peaceful protests.

It’s true, the fact that CUAD organizers fundamentally reject bigotry and hate has not stopped unrelated actors from exploiting opportunities to shamefully harass Jewish students with grotesque or antisemitic statements. I condemn antisemitism – which should seem obvious since I have experienced it many times myself. (This likely won’t keep controversial Columbia Business School professor Shai Davidai from calling me a kapo.) But the often off-campus actions of a few unaffiliated individuals simply do not characterize this disciplined student campaign. The efforts to connect these offensive but relatively isolated incidents to the broader pro-Palestinian protest movement mirror a wider strategy to delegitimize all criticism of Israel.

As this national discourse over “campus antisemitism” reached a boiling point over the weekend, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment saw CUAD organizers lead joint Muslim and Jewish prayer sessions and honor each other’s dead. This is wholesome, human stuff – it doesn’t make for sensationalist headlines about Jew-hating Ivy Leaguers.

.... a Passover Seder service was held at the encampment. Would an antisemitic student movement welcome Jews in this way? I think not.
 

I am wary of a hysterical campus discourse – gleefully amplified by many of the same charlatans who have turned “DEI” into a slur – that draws attention away from the ongoing slaughter in the Gaza Strip and settler violence in the occupied West Bank. We should be focusing on the material reality of war: the munitions our government is sending to Israel, which kill Palestinians by the thousands, and the Americans participating in the violence. Forget the fringe folks and outside agitators: the CUAD organizers behind the campus protests have rightfully insisted on divestment as their most important demand of the Columbia administration, and on sustained attention to the situation in Palestine.

When I posted Thoughts about the pro-Palestine protest at Columbia University two days ago, I got some sharp criticism for not diving deep enough into the sources of information that alleged antisemitism b y the protesters. My big mistake was not wanting to give my email out to a source, Jewish Insider, that required it to read the article. I found out this morning that I was partly mistaken about the email. Anyway, I just blew it off and cited some allegedly antisemitic rhetoric that allegedly came from the protestors. It didn’t come from protesters. It came from outside infiltrators.

It was pointed out to me that the source of one bit of alleged antisemitism by protesters, Chants from protesters of "Go back to Poland", was basically made up. It was a lie. This is what Jewish Insider actually wrote:

After Saturday night’s widespread antisemitic harassment on campus, several Jewish Columbia students said they felt afraid for their safety for the first time.

“[Saturday night] was an absolute breaking point and the first time people were truly afraid,” Eliana Goldin, a third-year political science major, told Jewish Insider. “My friends and I saw [non-Columbia students] sneak onto campus through a gap in the fence and we were verbally harassed, and some of my friends were physically assaulted. Public safety and NYPD did not help us. We were essentially stalked and followed as we tried to leave the escalating situation.”

According to Goldin, the physical assaults included assailants slapping a Jewish student, another pouring water on several students and others attempting to grab Israeli flags and run away with them.

“They yelled at us to go back to Poland, that we have no culture and chanted, ‘Strike strike Tel Aviv,” Goldin recalled. “My rabbi’s decision to tell everyone to stay away from campus was the right decision,” she said of Buechler’s statement, “because last night proved that the NYPD isn’t capable of protecting us… the environment here is openly hostile and possibly dangerous.”

Well, there it is. Right out in the open. The antisemitism was not coming from Columbia student protesters. It was coming from thugs, maybe antisemitic (maybe not), who snuck onto campus and harassed Jewish students.

That same Jewish Insider source in my post of two days ago was also cited for most of the rest of the allegedly antisemitic rhetoric. 

One reliable source that was cited, the BBC reported rhetoric "echoing that of terrorist organizations, especially in the wake of the recent massacre against the Jewish people, is despicable." Is that necessarily antisemitic? 

Some people see the phrase or chant, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, as profoundly antisemitic. Others see it as a call for Palestinian liberation and dignity, in view of the lack of freedoms Palestinians have in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In short, the meaning ultimately depends on the speaker, listener, and context. 

Is it possible that the protesting students are not knowingly antisemitic and protesting what they see as genocide in Gaza and American complicity in it? Is the student who wrote this essay, Mr. Ben-Menachem, a cynical liar? He claims to be a Jew who was present and saw no antisemitism among the protestors. What reason would he have for lying? 

Q: Is Germaine a fool for even trying to figure out what is really going on here? 

Looking back: The origin of COVID; The failure of Ukraine-Russia peace talks

A long AP article reviews the uncertainty about where COVID originated. Not surprisingly, China privately obstructed and blocked investigations into the origin while publicly proclaiming transparency and cooperation. That is just how morally rotted dictatorships operate. The AP article includes these comments:

Toxic: How the search for the origins of COVID-19 turned politically poisonous

The hunt for the origins of COVID-19 has gone dark in China, the victim of political infighting after a series of stalled and thwarted attempts to find the source of the virus that killed millions and paralyzed the world for months.

The Chinese government froze meaningful domestic and international efforts to trace the virus from the first weeks of the outbreak, despite statements supporting open scientific inquiry, an Associated Press investigation found. That pattern continues to this day, with labs closed, collaborations shattered, foreign scientists forced out and Chinese researchers barred from leaving the country.

As early as Jan. 6, 2020, health officials in Beijing closed the lab of a Chinese scientist who sequenced the virus and barred researchers from working with him.

Scientists warn the willful blindness over coronavirus’ origins leaves the world vulnerable to another outbreak, potentially undermining pandemic treaty talks coordinated by the World Health Organization set to culminate in May.

At the heart of the question is whether the virus jumped from an animal or came from a laboratory accident. A U.S. intelligence analysis says there is insufficient evidence to prove either theory, but the debate has further tainted relations between the U.S. and China.

Unlike in the U.S., there is virtually no public debate in China about whether the virus came from nature or from a lab leak. In fact, there is little public discussion at all about the source of the disease, first detected in the central city of Wuhan.

Crucial initial efforts were hampered by bureaucrats in Wuhan trying to avoid blame who misled the central government; the central government, which muzzled Chinese scientists and subjected visiting WHO officials to stage-managed tours; and the U.N. health agency itself, which may have compromised early opportunities to gather critical information in hopes that by placating China, scientists could gain more access, according to internal materials obtained by AP.  

Secrecy clouds the beginning of the outbreak. Even the date when Chinese authorities first started searching for the origins is unclear. “There was a chance for China to cooperate with WHO and do some animal sampling studies that might have answered the question,” said Tulane University virologist Robert Garry. “The trail to find the source has now gone cold.”

It is not surprising that the Chinese government obstructed and lied. It is deeply disappointing that American scientists kept telling us that they knew the virus came from a natural source, while denying the possibility or plausibility of a lab-leaked virus that was possibly man-made, maybe funded by US tax dollars. 

We will never know the truth. We are thus free to believe what we want based on the incomplete evidence there is. I choose to believe (i) the origin was more likely a lab leak than natural source, maybe man made, (ii) the Chinese government is lying, (iii) the elite American scientists to told us a false story have no credibility, (iv) existing evidence fully supports calling what elite American scientists to told us a false story, and (v) we will never know the truth.

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An article published by Responsible Statecraft discusses a recent analysis of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in 2022. The talks got fairly close to being finalized. According to the RS article, the talks failed to bear fruit largely because (i) changing battlefield conditions convinced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he could win the war militarily, (ii) Western allies’ hesitance to engage diplomatically with Russia and simultaneous ramping up of military support for Ukraine, and (iii) the discovery that Russian forces had committed atrocities in Bucha. RS writes:

The RAND corporation’s Samuel Charap and Johns Hopkins University professor Sergey Radchenko published a detailed timeline and analysis of the talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators just after the Russian invasion in February 2022 that could have brought the war to an end just weeks after it had begun. 

On some of these points, the authors contend that earlier accounts have been overstated. The idea that the U.S. and the UK “forced” Zelensky to back out of peace talks is “baseless,” say Charap and Radchenko, though they acknowledge that “the lack of Western enthusiasm does seem to have dampened his interest in diplomacy.”

On the suggestion that the discovery of war crimes convinced the Ukrainian president to abandon negotiations, the authors note discussions “continued and even intensified in the days and weeks after the discovery of Russia’s war crimes, suggesting that the atrocities at Bucha and Irpin were a secondary factor in Kyiv’s decision-making.”

But taken together, these factors, along with certain details of the agreement that were never finalized, were enough to imperil the negotiations.

Now several years later, it is reasonable to believe that the combination of Zelensky's mistaken belief in a winnable war and Biden's neutral to lukewarm attitude about a peace deal were tragic, catastrophic failures of US and Ukraine leadership. The costs for that gigantic mistake will be very high. The US just passed a bill funding another $60 billion in military aid to the Ukraine after a crippling delay. The Ukraine's position is likely to remain weak until the country can no longer sustain the human and other losses of Russia's ruthless war. At the point of collapse, Ukraine will be forced to surrender under hideous terms. There will be a second 21st century genocide.

The lesson should have been clear early on. Try for peace as hard as possible. Even if talks fail or an agreement is breached, no one can accuse political leadership of at least not trying hard for a peace agreement. 

The damage has been done. It cannot be undone. An end game along the lines of what is now playing out in Gaza seems likely for the Ukrainian people.

The world desperately needs better democracies and better democratic leaders.

Deeper thinking about pro-Palestine protests, rhetoric and actual war

Some have argued that most of the backlash against alleged antisemitism coming out of recent and ongoing pro-Palestine protests is a cynical attempt by some elites to deflect attention from the ongoing slaughter of civilians in Gaza. This 12:23 video is by Palestinian poet and journalist Mohammed El-Kurd. He argues that the allegations of antisemitism are designed to distract from what the Israeli government and military are doing in Gaza. He argues that (1) alleged antisemitism is mostly words, while the killing in Gaza is entirely bullets and bombs, and (2) giving equal weight to allegedly antisemitic words and actual bullets and bombs killing civilians is absurd. From that, he argues that complaining about antisemitism is a cynical propaganda ploy to at least distract attention from the bullets and bombs Gaza war to date, if not to downplay and/or justify it. 

Looking for a debate...........

 ............ NOT just, good, lock him up, and throw away the keys.

Prison time for teen Capitol rioter who pepper-sprayed officers, brandished Confederate flag

What is there to debate, you ask?

WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge on Monday imposed a 30-month prison sentence on a man who brandished a Confederate flag outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and pepper sprayed two Capitol police officers.

Isreal Easterday, who was 19 years old when he participated in the riot, faced a potential sentence of 12 years and seven months per to the Justice Department’s recommendation. 

Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg acknowledged the severity of Easterday’s actions and the serious injuries the two officers he sprayed suffered, but imposed a sentence five times lower than the government’s recommendation.

“The fact that you were very young and may not have fully understood what you were a part of” played a role in the Barack Obama appointee's decision, Boasberg said.

The now-23-year-old Easterday, who grew up in an Amish family in rural Kentucky and was homeschooled by his mother until he was 14, apologized for pepper-spraying the officers and said it was the “stupidest mistake” of his entire life. 

https://www.courthousenews.com/prison-time-for-teen-capitol-rioter-who-pepper-sprayed-officers-brandished-confederate-flag/

On other debate forums, LIBERALS wanted this young person sentenced longer and made comments like "good riddance to bad trash."

Being a liberal Snowflake myself, I am all about 2nd chances, especially for someone this young. Throw away the keys and you throw away his life and he will likely come out of jail a bitter person and more violent.

Check the incarceration rate for the U.S. AND then check the recidivism rate for the U.S. We are doing something wrong. 

BUT Snowflake, he pepper sprayed police officers and he is one of THOSE Trump supporters, he deserves no mercy.

SO, debate whether the judge made the right judgement or whether the judge was too lenient and this person who was 19 at the time of the offense deserves 12 years in prison.