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AOC joins calls for Bob Menendez to resign from Senate over corruption charges
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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politics
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Well if he did grope and kiss them, if he called them liars they could take him to court for it. Then, because the burden of proof is lower in civil court, he'd risk actually being found liable even if there isn't enough evidence to convict him of a crime. So, if the allegations are true, then he has a lot of incentive to use this mealy mouthed legaleeze to keep it out of civil court.
And then that swings the other direction! Why hasn't he sued for defamation? The legal burden of proof is lower so he should be able to prove they're lying. Yet he didn't do that.
We'll probably never know for sure, but it really doesn't look good for him.
Franken did say, "I would have sworn that I’d never done anything to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but it’s clear that I must have been doing something." That alone is reason enough not to call them liars. It's clear that he admits he did something to make these women feel uncomfortable, but he himself at the time didn't feel like there was any inappropriate actions at the time. Men are often oblivious to things they do that make women feel uncomfortable, trust me I know, been there before.
Now, for why he hasn't sued them for defamation? The burden is wildly different for public figures vs. private figures in the U.S. The bar for defamation is higher and harder to prove for political figures, to the point it's almost impossible for politicians to prove, so they don't even bother with it. Who knows though, with this Supreme Court I guess that's subject to change now tbh.
He was accused of groping and kissing. Unless he was raised in a literal sex cult there's no fucking way he wouldn't know that would make people uncomfortable.
There in lies problem. With there being no Senate investigation into the allegations we will never actually know the truth of the matter. Truth is Franken was a sacrificial lamb. Dems could claim the moral high road, justice or not, while republicans could continue to try to defend trump after multiple allegations that were of a much more serious degree.
Yeah uh no shit? We've gotten pretty far afield - my only point is a bribery scandal isn't going to sink Menendez because Democrats don't actually care about that, but Democrats will whine extremely loudly about it until it's out of the news cycle.
Maybe they'll launch a Senate investigation against him if this stays in the news? But so far, its just whining.
Yeah, sure, whatever you say.