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Comment by jesse_dot_id | Hacker News Reader

It seems as though you can basically do anything in this administration if the money is right, so selling state secrets free of punishment sounds about right to me.

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The rule of law does appear to be dead, instead it's a protection racket system in the US these days.

It has been for decades now, they are just open and blatant now because the corruption is so deep rooted that there is little average people can do except choose to burn down the house around themselves.

This administration has taken it to a whole new level -- basically an organized crime syndicate.

The system has always been corrupt in that the rich write the rules but this is pure kleptocracy. Remember that Nixon was told by his own party that his conduct was unacceptable and they would not support him...

Nixon also got pardoned and faced no real repercussions for his actions other than leaving. Again, I very much believe we have been this corrupt for many decades, it is only the visibility of the corruption that has changed. What few actions against corruption we have seen was just good PR work, as evident by its lack of teeth in sentencing and complete lack of any enforcement or investigation against anyone with money or political power.

I think that it's wholly incorrect to argue it has not gotten worse. The government has always been corrupt, true. They have gotten far more open and brazen about it, true. But they are also far more grotesquely corrupt in outright disgusting ways, which is different. No other president has just gifted themselves billions of dollars of taxpayer money. No other president has bulldozed the whitehouse for open ended self gratification projects on the scale Trump as. No other president has openly run family-centric money laundering schemes of this magnitude, or openly accepted foreign bribes, etc etc etc.

It was always corrupt but my word, you can't say that it's the same corruption just more exposed.

To me, it's just another example of what the poor and marginalized in this country have known for generations, finally catching up to the comfortable class. It's easier to count the institutions that AREN'T pay-to-play, especially those associated with the law and courts.

Know what's fun? Facing down a trained attorney as a pro se litigant in small claims court. Want to beat the 70-90% loss rate for pro se litigants in a forum that was originally designed specifically for pro se litigants? Hire a lawyer, lol.

Small claims, true to the name, is the lowest of low stakes. It's downhill from there.

> “These zero-day and exploit brokers tend to be unscrupulous," says Cole. “They sell to the highest bidder and they double dip. Many don’t have exclusivity arrangements. That’s very likely what happened here.”

I interpreted this a different way - that a shady supplier to the US Government double dipped to the other side.

You can get it for free if you have the right blackmail material.

> this administration

and the one before it, and the one before that, and the one before that, and so on. that's politics and there is nothing new under the sun

There are things that have never happened before in the 250 year history of the United States.

No sitting president has ever enriched themselves by billions of dollars.

We’re in a completely different universe from the days when Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm in a blind trust so there would be no appearance of a conflict of interest.

Or when Lincoln was given some gifts from the King of Siam. Because of the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution, he went to Congress to check if he could keep them. Congress said no; Lincoln donated them.

It was understood a president could be prosecuted if he broke the law—that’s why Nixon needed to be pardoned by Ford; otherwise, he would have faced at least some consequences.

SCOTUS did a 180 degree turn by ruling a precedent is immune from prosecution for crimes committed in office.

SCOTUS just made that up out of thin air.

All of this and much more is unprecedented.

Last one: no president has ever gone to war without making a case for it to the country.

So no, what’s happening now is not the same old thing.

Hierarchies can punish this. Note that the legislature and judicial branches exert their power. Epstein files got released if you need proof.

(However, if we are International Systems Realists, there are inevitable effects that happen. I have a feeling even Biden/Harris would be in Iran right now.)

Some got released, and in the way the Executive wanted them to be.

This proves the opposite IMO - while the Legislative is co-opted, the Judicial branch has shown it is quite inadequate exerting control or punishment of the Executive.

> I have a feeling even Biden/Harris would be in Iran right now.

I seriously doubt that; certainly not under the current circumstances of rising inflation with negative economic growth.

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