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Comment by Supermancho | Hacker News Reader

"In return, Bushart will drop the federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against Sheriff Nick Weems, investigator Jason Morrow and the county for violating his constitutional rights."

Even at his age of 60 (I'm getting up there), I wouldn't have made that deal.

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates...

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Maybe he should try to get compensation through the new Anti-Weaponization Fund.

> “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...

What that actually is, is a reward pool for Jan 6 participants and other people who have done illegal things to support Trump.

The vast majority of the money from that pool will certainly go to Trump himself (and his family when he dies) in the long run.

He'll dole out small amounts of it to J6ers and other supporters in a public display of rewarding loyalty, but enriching himself is always the prime directive over every other concern and who (in his mind) has been the biggest target of "DOJ/govt weaponization?"... himself, of course.

He will take almost all of it to go along with the various other billions of dollars he has scammed away from the American people as president.

I think there's something in place where he's not directly eligible, but I doubt that applies to his family.

I was just thinking that James Comey would also have a valid claim

I hope he applies (he's thought about it) just to further point out what a joke the whole thing is. Zero chance they treat his case fairly.

Under today’s administration and courts a federal lawsuit like that was going nowhere anyway, except maybe an executive order praising the Sheriff.

"Thrown out due to Qualified [read: absolute] Immunity"

Absolute immunity is much broader than qualified immunity; the former generally applies to government officials (judges, prosecutors, legislators, etc.), and the latter applies to law enforcement officers (e.g. police).

While we'd all like to see justice, I can understand taking this offer. SPY has averaged 15% APY over the past decade, which means if you dropped the full $835k into SPY you'd have passive income of $125k per year without touching the principal. That's a never-work-again, very comfortable life in large parts of the country. He's in Lexington Tennessee where the median income is less than half of that, and those people actually have to work for their money. I'm sure some of that money is going to pay the lawyers but I'm also assuming he's not starting at $0 savings either so he really should never have to work again, especially considering at his age he'll be raking in that sweet social security and medicare.

Potentially winning a drawn-out lawsuit against that sheriff, investigator, and county would have been a big improvement for the rights of his neighbors and friends, but I'd wager that with even half of those settlement winnings that he could do a lot more good than one lawsuit.

For example, there are surely dozens of others who are taking plea deals because they can't afford a lawyer to bring such a lawsuit, a few hundred thousand could multiply the impact tenfold.

His choice makes sense when you consider that the Supreme Court under Trump has essentially gutted Bivens. Our legal system is currently very broken sadly requiring strategic choices versus just (as in justice) choices. It's not clear the Supremes wouldn't contort to just gut 1983 as well (especially with their judicially created qualified immunity nonsense).

https://ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics/supreme-court-ice-r...

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