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by yayana 2716 days ago
It seems to get into the impossibility of such a law being at the discretion of law enforcement.

Should he be arrested at the next NH primary for his knowingly false statements and their relationship to an actual bomb threat? Probably not, so probably this law is illegal.

1 comments

Criminal libel laws are at the discretion of law enforcement and prosecutors. Anybody can bring a civil suit for libel.

Only 23 states have criminal defamation laws. The problems with defamation being criminal is what the article is about.

I don't see what you think I missed.

It's annoying to always use Trump, but it makes sense to use the person in the position of President to demonstrate that the law without discretion would net big fish.

IMO, law enforcement/DA discretion is ALWAYS a violation of civil rights. Laws would be less prevalent and less severe if they had to be applied equally. If you go through the mental exercise in obvious cases then you end up with a model of how the American System achieves discrimination through populist control of the executive branches and discretion, bypassing constitutional equality for minorities or the otherwise unpopular.

What you're missing is that civil defamation suits are not at the discretion of prosecutors.
I am talking about whether Trump is theoretically guilty or not guilty of criminal defemation if 1(NH) or more (23) states claimed their jurisdiction applied and why that being discretionary in those states is therefore extremely problematic to our civic system.

I'm not sure why you are interested in civil defemation law.

Trump has certainly defamed many people in a civil manner as well. If you understand why there seem to be so few civil suits against Trump for defamation, you will be closer to understanding why there are so few criminal cases against him for the same.
The interests of people who have been defamed is very different than one of those 23 DAs looking to gain from politics and/or subscribing to shock doctrine. It's virtually impossible to sue a DA for starting a criminal case.

But coming the original question is whether this is on topic. Yes it is.