back

by fraywing·4mo ago·view on hn ↗
I'm growing pessimistic that this kind of activity + the egregious presidential-level crypto scams will never see justice. What's the path for that, really?
24 comments
It's not that complicated. Elect a Democrat in 2028 who will nominate a strong AG, not a useless ditherer like Garland. What a disgraceful tenure he had. If he was going to take so long to bring charges he should have just avoided it. Instead he takes 3 years to bring all these charges which naturally look like election interference and as such are paused until they choke the election away and the new justice department kills all the cases.

Don't elect a geriatric compromise candidate. The current administration's excesses create a massive opportunity for a pendulum swing. It's really not that hard. Hold yourself, your neighbors, your family and your friends accountable for who they vote for. And as tempting as it is, don't give into cynicism. It will take work but change for the better is always possible, and really in America, is far less out of reach than it would often seem.

Doesn't matter whom you elect, at least not as far as righting wrongs. You might prevent more egregious wrongs from happening, but convincing Congress to return to rule of law is impossible when Congress is almost entirely funded by the same powerful interests who chose to put a lunatic in charge.

You're also up against a large population which has been brainwashed, and even if someone deprogrammed is still not intellectually capable of reasoning beyond their own immediate interests. In other words, a democracy where ignorant people can vote is ultimately doomed to look quite like what we have now.

> Elect a Democrat in 2028 who will nominate a strong AG

Impossible. Democratic Party power is concentrated into a gerontocracy mostly interested in preserving their own wealth/power. Appeasement and encouragement of status quo will be the result of any Democrat victory.

Of course all this Trump shit is good precedent for them to use similar tactics to line their pockets next time.

The last dem did shit
> Elect a Democrat in 2028

Does everyone still believe this will be possible/happen/allowed by the current regime?

“It’s not that complicated. Give up your principles for short term house cleaning.”

People with strong political beliefs are going to turn their head to keep their side in power rather than put someone in power that will push policies they are fundamentally against.

Blagojevich was not replaced by a Republican.

At this point presidential elections are won by getting members of the other side to stay home. So encourage young people to get out and vote if you want a Democrat. Don’t waste your breath telling someone who cares about gun rights to vote for a Democrat.

I think it's likely that they'll see justice in a chaotic way, ie not connected to the specific crime. Most likely outcome is that they make huge paper profits that are then absolutely worthless because the dollar collapses and the property rights that enforce the wealth they gained from these transactions disappear as the government is toppled. Another likely outcome is that they get in the habit of doing criminal things that piss people off, piss the wrong person off, and then get offed.

There was an AskHistorians post about the French revolution a few years ago that really stuck with me:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/w18qt5/what_...

> Stability had hardly been a hallmark of the Revolution til that point, and really what we have seen is a revolving door of men rising to the summit of power, only to realize that once your head is above the rest it's a prime target for the guillotine. Of the early years of the Revolution, virtually any man who had been considered a leader was either dead or in exile. The King was executed in January of 1793. The Girondin, formerly indistinguishable from the 'left,' went en masse to the guillotine in October 1793. Danton & friends (dubbed by Robespierre 'the indulgents'), the literal authors of the Insurrection of August 10th which overthrew the King and declared the Republic, the 'giant of the Revolution,' had been executed in April 1794. Interspersed with these prominent deaths were hundreds of individuals who had been important players in the Revolution, whether in national or local politics, and who had now paid the price for their notoriety

In times of crisis and scarcity, the usual outcome is that anyone whose ego is big enough to think that he can lead or profit finds that they become a target for elimination. The folks who survive are the ones who focus on, well, surviving. We're headed for one of those times of crisis now, though most people don't want to admit it, and a lot of the people who are profiting off ill-gotten gains now may find that they don't live to enjoy it simply because it gives them a taste for profiteering that eventually makes them take stupid risks.

> Most likely outcome is that they make huge paper profits that are then absolutely worthless because the dollar collapses

Seems like it'd be pretty easy to diversify into inflation-protected assets after taking big profits.

But I also don't see the dollar collapsing any time soon. The dollar's strength is built on the US economy, and the US economy is still one of the strongest in the world, with high productivity per person. We'll see some inflation, sure, but nothing that the rich insider traders can't hedge against.

I do not expect that there will be any real justice here. They're not gutting the average American -- they're bleeding us, extracting a small enough amount of value that they can get away with it. And we don't live in a just world.

Hidden profiteering off ill-gotten gains happens continously. In some areas it becomes more known or suspected, but because beheadings and such are very far outside the Overton Window that is mostly controlled by the media, the focus of society moves on as the media directs.
> and a lot of the people who are profiting off ill-gotten gains now may find that they don't live to enjoy it simply because it gives them a taste for profiteering that eventually makes them take stupid risks

They believe, rightly or not that they can withdraw from the world with their wealth more or less in one piece to some kind of safe zone.

> because the dollar collapses and the property rights that enforce the wealth they gained from these transactions disappear as the government is toppled.

sorry but this is such a coping mechanism, or doomsday talking. Neither is dollar collapsing nor US government is collapsing, as there has been no evidence whatsoever of any of that even moving towards happening, at least on any meaningfully predictable timescale (i.e. 3-5 years? while even that's rich for predictions). Anything past that is just broken clock being correct.. at some point in time.

What would it take for dollar to "collapse"? What are the exact mechanisms that would be required to start that process?

What is the evidence of US government being "toppled" with layers and layers and layers of diverse (financial, legal, military, political, social, you name it) protections in place? It's the kind of thing preppers like to dream of but it's not happpening in our lifetimes.

When things of that scale happen you see it YEARS in advance in true poverty (as in people starving), in anger (as in people getting increasingly violent) at scale, in mass mobilization of masses actually looking to topple the government. Nobody is working right now to overthrow US government, there were never any organized attempts at that, not even demonstrations of a vector that can once lead there, as in it's simply not happening (sorry you can't in all seriousness put Jan 6 there as that was shocking for US political PR, but shockingly irrelevant for any country that has gone through real upheaval). US is extraordinarily rich even in it's poor version, everyone has everything to lose and nothing meaningful to gain from any "revolution".

I like how "off them" is the libertarian way like thats some sort of stable procedure.
“The aristocrats!”
Organize, organize, organize. With some luck, we can have trials for the crimes of the past few decades and purge our government of hostile actors.
We particularly need a momentary repeal of double jeopardy to get justice for Epsteins victims. I don't care what the implications are, or the precedent. What he did was unprecedented. Retry gelane on rape and espionage, invalidate the non prosecution agreement for the 25 co conspirators, and convict Jeffrey in absentia in case he ever turns up.
Revolution, not election. We need a new governance framework in the US. I believe it’s genuinely silly to think this type of activity is limited to one party or one administration or that it is new.

I believe the Constitution and related artefacts should be stored in the British Museum with other historical documents. Civic religion needs to be done away with.

That assumes the new system will be better. History tells us otherwise
>We need a new governance framework in the US.

And what does that new framework look like to you?

> I believe it’s genuinely silly to think this type of activity is limited to one party

No, it is mostly just the one party.

Mass immigration from all other parts of the world would seem to completely disagree with you.
I have accepted that a lot of effort has been put into making sure these people never see justice and they probably won't. I put my energy into strengthening democracy and institutions for the next generation so they have the opportunity to do better than we have.
You are completely right. There are no avenues to seek justice here because the levers of power control the justice. And if the holders of power change, they won't spend political capital on this kind of thing. It's free crime.
Realistically I think it will come down to the aggrieved counterparties here. Who was on the losing side of the money, was it Joe Schmoe day trader or a bunch of funds who lost their shirt?

If it’s the hedge funds or institutional money, you can absolutely be sure this will come to a head. People don’t like being taken for a ride, and if they are repeatedly taken for a ride and they are organized market participants they will come around and make sure there is a comeuppance as a collective

> What's the path for that, really?

Record and wait. Justice is slow but has the power of the nation state. Once the leadership of this current government is gone and nobody is around to protect the offenders then its time to swoop in with the records and the justice system.

This is why its risky to join corrupt political movements led by old men, because they will use you to break the law, then die and you'll be on the hook. Much like the people who worked for the Soviets in the Baltics post war as young staffers, who administered the forced deportations and were eventually prosecuted ~50 years later for genocide or crimes against humanity.

i.e. everyone working for ICE today should be agitating for a pardon, given how racial profiling and warrentless raids are probably rather illegal in the long run.

> Record and wait. Justice is slow but has the power of the nation state.

this is pretty much how things will unfold in USA. Everything that has to happen will happen but very slowly. There is all the evidence supporting that.

Donald Trump has one big advantage over many other members of the administration: He will be long dead before the justice system can act on him.

Also something to keep in mind in the future: Old people have no reason to fear prison, they will die before they can get convicted.

Partly why I'm against anybody over retirement age taking office even if it is a heavy handed approach and could be seen as age discrimination.

The odds are too low of anybody getting meaningfully punished while they get to openly setup their entire family for generations using means and information not available to any normal citizen.

And while not guaranteed they are statistically more likely to suffer age related cognitive decline while still in office.

When I’m old I’m going to commit so many violations of the emoluments clause.
Sometimes there is no justice. You just have to accept that bad people get away with bad stuff, usually at a significant cost to others.
Sure, we should ban all insider trading of any kind; including people in congress which have done this repeatedly without any consequences.
They should be banned from trading or accepting any money whatsoever and be forced to divest from all assets.

And then to compensate they should be paid more in terms of salary, even if that salary seems absurdly large it would be less than most of them gain from the insider info they use to make deals.

Take the median income, multiply it by 5-10 and thats their salary.

The thing with justice is that when you look past it in one place, you don’t really get to ask for it in another. I’m talking about Gaza - it set the precedent that the U.S. and its client state, Israel, can get away with anything. Nothing is out of bounds, criminality is normalized, and accountability is dependent on the identity of the victim. Now that the victims are people affected by the stock market manipulation (people in the West), suddenly we’re interested in justice.
I think one of the things that goes unmentioned in these discussions is that while the US gets a lot of attention for this kind of activity, it has also (historically) been in the forefront of criminalization and prosecution. I may be wrong, but don't know of any other jurisdiction that prosecuted insider trading before the Eighties, and the US has had a pattern of investigating and regulating this since the 30s.

I don't think that this is a particular form of exceptionalism, beyond the US having a longer tradition of widespread, retail-owned shares, and law-making around that fact.

But sometimes I wonder when people are criticising the US as a culture, they're often choosing as the baseline that should be respected standards that were also defined in a US cultural context. What this sometimes means is that in internal US culture these points are seen as something that is heavily discussed, because there was a point where it was democratically decided and therefore could be undecided in the same way, like corporate personhood, or money-as-speech. In the case of the criminalization "insider trading", there is lively debate about whether this is actually a "good thing". That can sound horrific externally, because of course insider trading is a bad thing. But someone decided to make that a bad thing, and -- for historical accident reasons -- the edges of that debate was largely defined within the US.

(This is mostly just barely-informed speculation: sometimes issues like this emerge in international fora, or start in another culture and quickly spread. But the cultural and financial dominance of the US in the last century or so really makes these things often a point of debate in American terms, and a fixed point elsewhere. I speak here as an immigrant to the US and also someone who is dipped in global policy work, rather than someone who is stating this as a good or a bad thing.)

A lot of the United States historical influence and soft power comes from it being a nation of rules and laws. The credibility of the country provided a perception that it was a stable place to store value (investment in treasuries, greenbacks, etc). When the government is facilitating insider trading out in the open (repeatedly), we’re losing a lot more than money due to fraud.
Less power to the government.
> What's the path for that, really?

Elect people who will make justice a priority.

Congressional hearings combined with SEC regulatory incursions.

There will never be an investigation while Trump is president, but, it's entirely feasible to force some action in the time being to enable a case later.

FYI it may not be technically illegal it depends on all sorts of things.

If trade were made public it could be very damaging.

> There will never be an investigation while Trump is president, but, it's entirely feasible to force some action in the time being to enable a case later.

And realistically we don't want that. Similar with Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, better to sit on things until Trump is out of office, so there can be no pardon.

Elections and a collectively demonstrated will for justice.
Elections elected Trump twice, so what other strategy should Americans try next?

Americans have been a democracy for 200 years and have no healthcare, no public transit, a crippling drug and homeless problem, a crippling gun violence problem... The list goes on. Democracy doesn't seem to be having the desired affect there.

Why should that suddenly change? Where's this hope coming from?

The last 10 minutes of The Sum of All Fears.
Getting rid of the delusion of American exceptionalism in how politics is conducted. In other words, do something about the two party system, or the pardon power or any number of things, the possibilities are endless. But doing anything about it would require admitting that the USA is something other than perfect, so it’ll never happen. Too bad really.

At least the USA is only 4% of the world’s population so the world economy will just find other financial hubs and currencies, no big loss.

For starters, you're not alone in this feeling. A lot of us are very hungry for justice, and a lot of the Trump administrations current tactics are openly grappling with the reality of jailtime and restitution if they lose power. These are unusual times, and so people who are not usually inclined toward retribution are hungry for it.

That said, it's hard to reconcile that with the fact that Democrats continue to be the opposition party, and failed to even imprison Trump over four years for the things he'd done. And even in the best case scenario, we wouldn't expect Trump himself to live long enough to face much justice.

The optimism left in me hopes that this era can serve as an enduring cautionary tale for future societies.

Elections.
"The Treasury just declared the U.S. insolvent. The media missed it" - https://fortune.com/2026/03/23/us-government-insolvent-fisca...
Zero when the president has the power to issue blanket pardons to his family and inner circle. Hell, he might even extend it fully to ICE. There's precedent too since the previous president pardoned his son for all crimes committed over a period of time.