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by untog 2883 days ago
The OP simply said that Obama's statement is not under investigation because it did not break the law. The leave campaign advertising did break the law, so it is. That's usually how criminal investigations work.
1 comments

And I'm saying that whether or not you "broke the law" isn't a very interesting argument to me because some truly horrific things are legal and some perfectly mundane ones aren't. Simply being a law isn't a compelling argument in my mind as to whether something is right or wrong. At the same time you can undermine the spirit of something while being perfectly legal. The original argument was about people attempting to sway the vote. Surely Barack Obama and his fame/notoriety taking a side would do that. It's a good counterpoint to make and one that I think has merit.
But no-one is discussing whether it is right or wrong. The original question was "what about Obama's statement?" in the context of the legal investigations against the Leave campaign. The "what about" answer is "there is no criminal investigation because nothing illegal happened".

I get what you're saying but it doesn't really have any relevance here. If you're disregarding legality then any questions about why a criminal investigation happened vs didn't is moot.

>But no-one is discussing whether it is right or wrong.

I mean we literally are. The original premise is about invalidating democratic results. If no one cares if it's right or wrong the conversation is moot in the first place because leave won regardless of circumstance.

>I get what you're saying but it doesn't really have any relevance here.

It actually does. Again the original premise was about mitigating factors of a democratic vote. That is almost entirely a moral/ethical issue. Regardless good laws should follow morals and not the other way around so they're totally inseperable in my mind.

The top-most commenter actually said

> At this point it amounts to fighting very hard to find any reason to undo a democratically determined result.

which is almost entirely a moral point. The "Obama statement" was just a reply to someone suggesting that "ad spending" might have swung the vote.